The personal references indulged by the critics could not be excised without destroying the value of the criticisms, and the undersigned can offer no other apology for their introduction than to say that to have excluded them would have done an injustice to the writers.
Respectfully,
JOHN URI LLOYD.
ETIDORHPA AS A WORK OF ART.
Professor S. W. Williams, Wyoming, Ohio.
If a fine statue or a stately cathedral is a poem in marble, a masterpiece of the printer's art may be called a poem in typography. Such is Etidorhpa. In its paper, composition, presswork, illustrations, and binding—it is the perfection of beauty. While there is nothing gaudy in its outward appearance, there is throughout a display of good taste. The simplicity of its neatness, like that of a handsome woman, is its great charm. Elegance does not consist in show nor wealth in glitter; so the richest as well as the costliest garb may be rich in its very plainness. The illustrations were drawn and engraved expressly for this work, and consist of twenty-one full-page, half-tone cuts, and over thirty half-page and text cuts, besides two photogravures. The best artistic skill was employed to produce them, and the printing was carefully attended to, so as to secure the finest effect. Only enameled book paper is used; and this, with the wide margins, gilt top, trimmed edges, and clear impressions of the type, makes the pages restful to the eyes in reading or looking at them. The jacket, or cover, which protects the binding, is of heavy paper, and bears the same imprint as the book itself. Altogether, as an elegant specimen of the bookmakers' art it is a credit to the trade. All honor to the compositors who set the type, the artists who drew and engraved the illustrations, the electrotyper who put the forms into plate, the pressman who worked off the sheets, and the binder who gathered and bound them in this volume.
REVIEWS OF ETIDORHPA.
B. O. Flower, Editor of The Arena, Boston.
The present is an age of expectancy, of anticipation, and of prophecy; and the invention or discovery or production that occupies the attention of the busy world, as it rushes on its self-observed way, for more than the passing nine day's wonder, must needs be something great indeed. Such a production has now appeared in the literary world in the form of the volume entitled "Etidorhpa, or the End of Earth;" the very title of which is so striking as to arrest the attention at once.