Mr. Laurence Housman stands alone among modern illustrators, though one may, if one will, speak of him as representing the succession of the sixties, or as connected with the group of artists whose noteworthy development dates from the publication of 'The Dial' by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon in 1889. To look at Mr. Housman's art in either connection, or to record the effect of Dürer, of Blake, of Edward Calvert, on his technique, is only to come back to appreciation of all that is his own. As an illustrator he has hardly surpassed the spirit of the 'forty-four designs, drawn and written by Laurence Housman,' that express his idea of George Meredith's 'Jump to Glory Jane' (1890). These designs were the result of the appreciation which the editor, Mr. Harry Quilter, felt for Mr. Housman's drawings to 'The Green Gaffer' in 'The Universal Review.' Jane—the village woman with 'wistful eyes in a touching but bony face,' leaping with countenance composed, arms and feet 'like those who hang,' leaping in crude expression of the unity of soul and body, making her converts, failing to move the bishop, dying at last, though not ingloriously, by the wayside—this most difficult conception has no 'burlesque outline' in Mr. Housman's work, inexperienced and unacademic as is the drawing.

'Weird Tales from Northern Seas,' by Jonas Lie, was the next book illustrated by Mr. Housman. Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market' (1893), offered greater scope for freakish imagination than did 'Jane.' The goblins, pale-eyed, mole and rat and weasel-faced; the sisters, whose simple life they surround with hideous fantasy, are realized in harmony with the unique effect of the poem—an effect of simplicity, of naïve imagination, of power, of things stranger than are told in the cry of the goblin merchants, as at evening time they invade quiet places to traffic with their evil fruits for the souls of maidens. The frail-bodied elves of 'The End of Elfin Town,' moving and sleeping among the white mushrooms and slender stalks of field flowers, are of another land than that of the goblin merchant-folk. Illustrations to 'The Imitation of Christ,' to 'The Sensitive Plant,' and drawings to 'The Were-Wolf,' by Miss Clemence Housman, complete the list of Mr. Housman's illustrations to writings not his own, with the exception of frontispiece drawings to several books.

MERCURY GOD OF MERCHANDISE LOOK ON WITH FAVOURABLE EYES
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. KEGAN PAUL.

To explain Mr. Housman's vision of 'The Sensitive Plant' would be as superfluous as it would be ineffectual. In a note on the illustrations he has told how the formal beauty, the exquisite ministrations, the sounds and fragrance and sweet winds of the garden enclosed, seem to him as 'a form of beauty that springs out of modes and fashions,' too graceful to endure. In his pictures he has realized the perfect ensemble of the garden, its sunny lawns and rose-trellises, its fountains, statues, and flower-sweet ways; realized, too, the spirit of the Sensitive Plant, the lady of the garden, and Pan, the great god who never dies, who waits only without the garden, till in a little while he enters, 'effacing and replacing with his own image and superscription, the parenthetic grace ... of the garden deity.'

Of a talent that treats always of enchanted places, where 'reality' is a long day's journey down a dusty road, it is difficult to speak without suggesting that it is all just a charming dalliance with pretty fancies, lacking strength. Of the strength of Mr. Housman's imagination, however, his work speaks. His illustrations to his own writings, fairy tales, and poems, cannot with any force be discussed by themselves. The words belong to the pictures, the pictures to the words. The drawings to 'The Field of Clover' are seen to full advantage in the wood-engravings of Miss Housman. Only so, or in reproduction by photogravure, is the full intention of Mr. Housman's pen-drawings apparent.

THE FIELD OF CLOVER By Laurence Housman, Engraved by Clemence Housman
BE KINDLY TO THE WEARY DROVER
& PIPE THE SHEEP INTO THE CLOVER
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. KEGAN PAUL.