One opinion in which all illustrators agree seems sound, and that is, that photographs are not to be tolerated. Photography is the most misrepresentative of arts. But an exception may be indulged in the case of those few celebrities who are too modest to allow themselves to be engraved, and of whom photography furnishes the only portraiture
A photographic copy of a rare portrait in oil is also admissible. Some also exclude wood-cuts. I am not such a purist as that. They are frequently the only means of illustrating a subject, and small and fine wood-cuts form charming head and tail pieces and marginal adornments. One who eschews wood-cuts must forego such interesting little subjects as Washington and his little hatchet, God’s scales, the skeleton in the closet, and many of those which I have particularized
I flatter myself that I have made the margins of a good many books very interesting by means of small wood-cuts, of which our modern magazines provide an abundant and exquisite supply. These furnish a copious source of specific illustration.
ith their zeal illustrators are sometimes apt to be anachronistic. Every book ought to be illustrated in the spirit and costume of its time. The book should not be stuffed too full of prints; let a better proportion be preserved between the text and the illustrations than Falstaff observed between his bread and his sack. The prints should not be so numerous as to cause the text to be forgotten, as in the case of a tedious sermon