(Reproduced from their Fifty Years’ Work.)
To face page 113.
his youth when he willingly surrendered himself to this spirit, and if, as we come now to perceive, it was not enduringly implanted in his nature, there can be no reason for disputing the suggestion that it sprang at the time from comradeship with a man in whose work, whatever other changes it may have suffered, this quality remained always supreme.
“I believe,” said Mr. Ruskin, speaking of Rossetti shortly after the date of his death, “that his name should be placed first on the list of men within my own knowledge who have raised and changed the spirit of modern Art—raised in absolute attainment, changed in direction of temperament.”
And if we turn with these words in mind to the Tennyson illustrations, it will seem not possible to dispute Mr. Ruskin’s verdict.
Beautiful as are the drawings of Millais and Mr. Hunt, the final impression left by that volume rests in a pre-eminent degree upon Rossetti’s exquisite design of “Sir Galahad” and his beautiful illustrations of the “Palace of Art.”
Within two years of the issue of Tennyson’s volume, the illustrated periodical called Once a Week was established, and its pages for many years afterwards bore admirable witness to the wide influence which these three great leaders were already exercising upon their generation. Indeed, it may be said that it is impossible to understand the real trend of this new movement, and to appreciate at their just worth the many and varying individualities engaged in its support, without a constant reference to these earlier volumes of a now defunct periodical. There we find in rich profusion the earlier, and in many cases the more interesting, experiments of men like Du Maurier, Charles Keene, Frederick Sandys, Frederick Walker, and John Tenniel, side by side with numerous illustrations by Millais himself. Even Mr. Whistler was an occasional contributor, though his work, except in its very earliest essays where he frankly accepts the ruling convention of the time, quickly takes a place apart as a thing of purely individual temperament.
Afterwards, in the days of the Arts Club, I learned to know personally many of those men whose work I had loved when a boy as it appeared in the pages of Once a Week. Charles Keene, who had first been made known to me by his illustrations of Meredith’s novel of Evan Harrington, was a constant figure there during the time when he was already a valued member of the staff of Punch. He was a quaint and amiable character, with a head that suggested Don Quixote, and I recall him now as he used to sit for many an hour of the afternoon and evening with his cup of coffee kept hot upon the bars of the old fire-place in the front room of the Club, filling and refilling one of those tiny clay pipes dating from the period of Charles II., which had been unearthed during some building excavations in the City. Taciturn by habit, and perhaps by preference, he yet always willingly entered into conversation when the occasion arose. Sometimes I would go down and see him in his little house in Chelsea, and turn over his elaborately careful etchings of boats, made by the sea.
It cannot be said, I think, that he was ever deeply stirred in his own work by the movement to