Ballads of New England

By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. With Illustrations. Boston : Fields, Osgood, & Co.

THE most charming illustrations in this beautiful book are the pictures of Mr. Fenn, who in studies of the very scenes described by the poet has reproduced all the moods and sentiments of the New England landscape : the pathos of the rainy and cloudy coasts, the tender serenity of the river-bordered fields, the life and brightness of the villages, the sadness of the lonely farm, the solemnity of the hill-side graveyard. There, is none of the twenty-eight illustrations with which he has enriched the volume but gives a pensive and delicate pleasure of its own, and at once embodies the poet’s ideal and the reality of nature. The ballads are those familiar and beloved poems, “ Telling the Bees,” “ My Playmate,” “ Skipper Ireson’s Ride,” “ Cobbler Keezar’s Vision,” “ Amy Wentworth,” “ The Countess,” “Mary Garvin,” “The Ranger,” “The Wreck of Rivennouth,” and “ The Changeling,” in which Mr. Whittier has expressed the best feeling of country-life in New England, and has immortalized the local traditions. Some of Mr. Fenn’s pictures are made on a hint of the poet, and some are the reflection, in a sister art, of the poet’s descriptions ; they are always faithful to his spirit, and one believes that the author must have conceived just that lovely vision of the way-side orchard with its brier-grown wall, which the artist’s pencil evokes from the lines in “ Skipper Ireson’s Ride,”

and that in “The Countess ” he had in mind just that outlook front under the old bridge toward the hill-side graveyard; for they seem as much the image of his thought as that grand stretch of glad New England landscape,−farm, village, city, and sea,−in “ Cobbler Keezar’s Vision,” or that equally careful response to his words in “Telling the Bees,” where, taking the poem and the picture together, it is hard to know who is most poet and who most painter : −

There is not only fidelity to spirit and letter in Mr. Fenn’s work, but there is in its great variety the clear impress of individuality, without the least mannerism.

Of course, many things escape the formalities of praise; the light of the blooming apple-trees, the grace of the starry lilies that rock so light upon the ponds, the gloom and sorrow of the stormy seas, the wildness of the hemlock - bordered, rock-fretted forest streams, or their elmembowered peace and solitude, the strength of the gnarled and twisted cedars, the brave cheerfulness of the lamps kindled in the light-house after the splendid sunset following the ship-wrecking storm, the melancholy beauty of the harvest-fields, − all these elusive charms are here, though they refuse to reappear in our phrase. Yet they are to be felt by all: not less by the untechnical many who can never understand the skill that made them perceptible, − but who can nevertheless meet both poet and artist in the common and finer air of sentiment and sympathy, − than by the critical few, who without enjoying them more will do a stricter justice to the artistic power in them.

The book which is so rich in these pictures by Mr. Fean has also numerous illustions by Messrs. Winslow Homer, Hennessy, Alfred Fredericks, Granville Perkins, Eytinge, Ehninger, Colman, and Darley. Among these, “ Skipper Ireson’s Ride” through Marblehead, as Mr. Fredericks sees it, seems to us singularly fine, −excellently conceived and vigorously drawn. It expresses all the incidents and passions of the moment when Ireson stands tarred and feathered in the cart, and hooted at by the fishermen’s wives, whose movement and forcible faces and gestures are perfectly caught, while the local character of the scene, with the high-gabled, tumble-down houses of the little port, is as fortunately rendered. The picture of Ireson stealing away in the twilight is good in a different mood; and good, too, and strong are both of Mr. Fredericks’s illustrations for the “ Wreck of Rivermouth,” − the old witchwife in her mad grief by the sea-shore after the wreck, and the young fellow who stands in the wheat-field longingly watching the pleasure-boat sail away. Mr. Hennessy’s best thing is “ Goody Cole ” coming forth from Ipswich jail at dawn, and is admirable for the effect of morning quiet and peace in the landscape, of grim endurance in Goody Cole’s face as she moves unrejoicingly away, and of grim reluctance in the figures of her Puritan jailers. We particularly like, among Mr. Ehninger’s illustrations of “ Mary Garvin,” the sweet and tranquil faces in the last.

Mr. Anthony, who is in all cases here one of the two artists required to make a good illustration, has performed his part as engraver with a success evident from the pleasure which the pictures afford, and has been to the designers what they have been to the poet. For the printing, it is enough to say that it is so exquisitely done that none of the fineness and firmness of the engraver’s work is lost. The book is, altogether, one which marks a most decided advance in illustrative art among us.