Looking back, but a few months only, at the passing away of two such lives—the author of "Jackanapes" and the illustrator of the "Picture Books" (of whom it was well said lately, "they have gone to Heaven together")—the loss seems incalculable.
In the history of the century, the best and purest books and the brightest pages ever placed before children will be recorded between 1878 and 1885; and no words would seem more in touch with the lives and aims of these lamented artists than a concluding sentence in Jackanapes, that—their works are "a heritage of heroic example and noble obligation."
The grace and beauty, and wealth of imagination in Caldecott's work,—conspicuous to the end,—form a monument which few men in the history of illustrative art have raised for themselves.
Here may end fittingly the memoir of his earlier work. At a future time more may be written, and many delightful reminiscences recorded, of the years from the time of his marriage on the 18th March, 1880, to his lamented death at St. Augustine, in Florida, on the 12th February, 1886; when—in the sympathetic lines which appeared in Punch on the 27th February, 1886:—
"All that flow of fun, and all
That fount of charm found in his fancy,
Are stopped! Yet will he hold us thrall
By his fine art's sweet necromancy,
Children and seniors many a year;
For long 'twill be ere a new-comer,
Fireside or nursery holdeth dear
As him whose life ceased in its summer."