Recent Illustrated Books

THE range of illustrated books is a wide one this year, both in style and in choice of subjects. The first place in dignity must be given to the stately volume on Greece and Rome,¹ which interests us, however, not so much by its monumental character as by the witness which it bears to the new treatment of antique subjects. Here is a learned work, but it is not exclusively nor in the first instance for scholars and antiquaries. On the contrary, it assumes at once an interest of the general reader in antiquity, and that the interest is very comprehensive and human. The light which has been thrown on ancient art bv the investigations of Dr. Schliemann and others has penetrated the familiar and homely scenes of life, and it is difficult to say whether we found the Tanagra figurines, for example, because we had an eagerness to establish an intimacy with ancient personages, and to see them free from conventional classical ism, or whether the discovery of these agreeable evidences of Greek and Roman humanity created a sense of our common share of life. At any rate, this great book, with its representations of domestic life, mingled with the more studied reproduction of ancient forms of high art, answers very well to the double interest which the educated public takes in antiquity. We go to the Greek play half to see something different from American civilization, half to discover likenesses.

The pictures in Greece and Rome are of German origin, and partake of the somewhat angular and matter-of-fact character of German art. A hardness of line and the absence of any imaginative concealment render the engravings rather specimens of topography or iconography than works of art, and they are to be taken in the strictest sense as illustrating the text and aiding the writer to present his matter intelligently. It is quite otherwise with the illustrations by W. H. Gibson to Mr. Drake’s book on the White Mountains.² Here the eye rests upon landscapes of great refinement. Mr. Gibson’s art is always possessed of most delicate feeling, and he has caught some exceedingly fine and gentle aspects of White Mountain scenery. The grace of his treatment is what impresses one most, and thus it is the more ethereal views which satisfy one best. Perhaps the most successful pictures in the book are the two winter scenes of Mount Kearsarge and Mount Lafayette from Bethlehem. Snow and frost are more effective even than haze in transfiguring mountain landscapes, and Mr. Gibson’s poetic, half - fanciful style agrees perfectly with the conception which one forms in such a presence. The same may he said of some of the quiet and diminutive scenes, where the sweetness of the picture is its characteristic. He is only less successful in those views of the mountains which in nature arrest one by the boldness and ruggedness of form. There has sometimes been given an appearance of greater height, as if the artist sought by this means to excite the right feeling; but exaggeration of form is by no means so effective as strong modeling, and it is in this respect that we think Mr. Gibson sometimes fails.

The text of the book is in singular contrast to the illustrations. Mr. Drake is no doubt an enthusiastic climber and an experienced mountaineer, but he manages to reproduce the mountains and mountain life in a literary form which is devoid of grace or beauty, and he gives no sign of the imagination and fancy which mark the artist’s work. He has preserved some legends and made some interesting records, but we wish he had not felt it necessary to be humorous and lively. The book irritates one by its unnecessary magnificence. So big a work should have had a poet’s text. Otherwise it would have been better had a smaller form been chosen, and the pictures accompanied by a simple, unpretentious text.

The sense of fitness between text and design is not offended by Bayard Taylor’s Home Ballads.³ Eleven artists have contributed the twenty-three pictures which make the embellishment of the book, but the variety which is thus secured has no dissonance, and the general treatment responds easily to the sober drab of Mr. Taylor’s ballads. The ballads have distinct stories ; they have also a little landscape background and a flowery foreground ; they do not stray far from the farm-house, and the life which they reflect is quiet, uneventful, but deep in its tremulous feeling. Something of all these characteristics reappears in the designs: they do not offend by superfine qualities ; perhaps they are best in their pretty suggestiveness ; the figures which constitute ihe central idea both of ballads and of designs are of the homely, rude character which occurs to one on reading the verse. Very successful, especially, is Mr. Hovenden’s picture of the mother looking from the window ; in this, as in other cases, there has been a happy mean chosen between a too direct reproduction in line of what has been said in verse, and a too enigmatical and oblique reference. One is likely to halt, with some misgivings, before Mr. Millet’s picture of Jane Reed leaning on the heifer’s neck, but the doubt is inherent in the artist’s faithfulness. The imagined scene is pretty and pastoral ; the actual scene, which has been distinctly rendered, has a touch of angular grotesqueness about it. The book leaves upon the mind a very pleasant impression through the nice sense of unity which pervades it. It has all the air of having received pains in the planning.

Pleasant feeling and a sketchy style characterize Mr. Bruce’s poem of The Hudson.⁴ He dedicates it to the memory of Washington Irving, and the poem is in truth a reproduction of river effects as seen by one who has looked through the medium of Irving’s delightful legends. Its slightness is not ill matched by Mr. Fredericks’ pictures, which are scarcely more than memoranda of the points noted. The unassuming nature of the work precludes special criticism. We can only express our pleasure at the simplicity of the whole design, and a certain rest to the mind and eye in this withdrawal from the elaboration and subtlety of most illustrated books of the day. One, at least, of the pictures, that of the Man in the Mountain, is worth returning to, after one has performed the easy feat of reading the little book through.

To say that the illustrations to Lucile⁵ in the latest edition are good enough for the book is not to condemn either the poetry or the pictures, but to hint at the influence which the work to be illustrated ordinarily has over the mind of the artists who are called upon to furnish the illustrations. The easy-going, business-like verse of Owen Meredith and the well-controlled story reappear in the abundant illustrations which accompany this agreeable-looking volume. The little poetic flourishes are represented by clever vignettes, which give a curl to the printed lines without interrupting them ; the airy guidebook passages have architectural and landscape views, generally devoid of any special imaginative quality, —even Mr. Moran’s gorgeousness seems to be tamed into place; the personages have the same well-dressed, decorous, and half private-theatrical air. It cannot be said that the figure subjects are the most successful, and the frontispiece is unhappily chosen, for there are better pictures in the book ; but the artists seem generally to have drawn their inspiration from the text, and the stream can scarcely be expected to rise above the source. The popularity of Lucile, however, must be taken as justification for so profuse illustration, and there is as little to offend good taste in the pictures as in the poetry. Further than that we cannot bring ourselves to go.

It is difficult to find much to interest one in the illustrated edition of Jean Ingelow’s Songs of Seven.⁶ There is nothing unusually good; there is nothing unusually bad, unless one takes it upon him to object to looking at the disconsolate widow on page 31. We are told in the poem that she has not wished the happy and fair world to mourn with her; why, then, does the artist insist upon our looking at the situation over her shoulder ? It is the prevailing fault of the generality of illustrated poems that there is a lack of imagination in the choice of subjects. The illustrations add nothing to the poem; they go to it for everything they have, and a second-hand imagination is very apt to strike one as a little worn-out and lacking in freshness. For the rest, a certain hardness and stiffness both in design and engraving give this book an uninteresting general effect.

Mr. Locke’s story of Hannah Jane ⁷ is prosaic in its rendering, with a touch now and then of homely pathos, and an occasional bit of apparently unintended comicality. In his anxiety to be idiomatic and quaint in his narrative, Mr. Locke has sometimes forgotten that he is also a poet. The illustrations are chiefly by Mr. S. G. McCutcheon, who shows a curious contrast in style, when his pencil is engaged first on rural, then on civil, society. The frontispiece, despite its unrelieved squareness of treatment, shows a painstaking study of character in faces, and gives promise of even better work. The portraits, moreover, of Hannah Jane throughout the book indicate a thoughtfulness in the artist by no means a matter of course; the change from girl to woman, and the wistful yet uncomplaining face of the household drudge, are given with a skill which attract the attention ; but the selfish husband and his fine city friends are by no means so successful, and in the style of drawing used it would almost seem as if the artist hurried over subjects for which he felt little interest. The pencil that could draw the stumpspeech scene ought to record similar rude and native sights; for while there is not the evidence of strength in design, there is clear proof of a truthfulness in reporting.

The vigorous work of Mr. Dielman finds sufficient excuse in the way of subject in Brushwood,⁸ by T. Buchanan Read. The poem gives a pretty legend of a poor old woman bearing her burden of brushwood up the mountain side, wishing for some one to help her carry it at least to the foot of a wayside crucifix, receiving such help from one also toiling up the hill, and then, as she rises from prayer, finding her burden transformed into blossoming wood; for it was the great Sufferer who had helped and heard her, and now released her from all earthly pain, as the closing lines indefinitely and gently intimate. Mr. Dielman has taken the suggestions of Italian scenes, and used them freely in a series of designs which give a certain richness to an otherwise somewhat pale poem. It is a pleasure to see so much color in engravings, and so much freedom from mere refinement. The drawing is bold and direct; one’s eye is turned at once to the emphatic point of the picture, yet discovers that this emphasis has not been gained by any slighting of the other parts. A broad sunshine seems to pervade the landscape and children scenes, while a variety of incident within the scope of the little narrative adds to the general breadth of effect. In the treatment of the final scene, where the Christ speaks to the old woman, the artist has chosen to present her decay of life,— the arms being especially eloquent,— rather than her sudden surprise of glory. The make-up of the book is not quite good enough. One feels that the pictures are cramped.

It was a happy thought that suggested making an illustrated book of Thackeray’s Chronicle of the Drum.1 The ballad itself was worth being taken out of its place, and given a conspicuous isolation. The spirited, rattling measure, the fidelity to nature in the story, and then the keen, playful, but thoughtful comments by the poet all conspire to make the ballad a memorable one. It is a series of pictures in itself, and sketches the successive scenes so capitally that the artists employed upon the illustrations must have had their imaginations quickly kindled. The result is not uniformly good. There are some striking designs, some of the average commonplace character, and one or two which contribute nothing worthy of the company. Of the artists engaged Mr. Pyle has earned the right to the highest praise for his three pictures, each of which makes a vivid impression on the mind. The dramatic force of the third, where the queen sees through the prison bars the ghastly trophy upon the spear-heads, would have been greatly increased if the spectator had been left to guess everything from the queen’s face ; yet even with this serious drawback the scene is presented with a firmness and statuesque dignity, and the action by which the queen closes her ears to the terrible beat of the drum is a distinct addition to the

picture which the poet would surely have recognized. The grim solemnity, also, of mère guillotine, with the faint suggestion of the coming dawn, illustrates the romantic power of this artist, while the grouping and movement of the frontispiece, in which the drum is significantly given the front rank, show a definite and masterly control of his art. Of the other pictures, praise belongs to the admirable vignette portrait of Thackeray, to the carefully studied scenes by A. B. Frost, and to the vigorous work of H. P. Share, although dangerously near the violent at times. For a piece of violence which is not vigorous, but brutal and stiff by turns, the Brunswicker, by J. E. Taylor, may be mentioned, one of the two or three pictures which prevent the book from being flawless. Yet, in spite of these and of the ineffective half-title designs, the book must be named as on the whole the most original of the illustrated books which have passed under our review. It is not to be expected that publishers, either separately or in combination, will exercise an extreme care in selection; it is certain that time will perform this work, and that of all the wood-engravings of the year not many will be engravings of the generation.