Illustrated Books

IT is not every poem that gains by illustration. The scene presented by the artist to the eye sometimes jars with the word sung by the poet to the ear. It is not so much because the effects of the two arts are often different in kind, as because the heart maybe so subtly and directly stirred that delight in the outer beauty can only distract the inner feeling. But, in delineating the landscape amid which the action goes on, the artist may much enhance the value of the work by adding to its powers of expression. This is particularly the case if, like Sir Walter Scott, the poet is an accurate observer of nature and deals with known localities, for then the artist’s imagination—of all the faculties the hardest to subdue to another’s will — is waked by the same objects as was the poet’s, and obeys analogous limitations. It was, therefore, as necessary a condition of success as of truthfulness that the sketches for the engravings in this volume¹ should be made, as was done, on the spot. The Scotch landscape, too, has a singular attraction, a real as well as a romantic charm. It was not by chance that the literary movement at the end of the last century, so crudely styled the return to nature, was invigorated by Burns and advanced by Scott. From early days, even in the imitative Chaucerian verse, the heather bloom was entwined with the traditional daisy of the Scotch poets, and in their music was heard the bleak winter wind of the treeless wastes. Nature was ever close to the Scotch heart. Scott could not have made clansman and chieftain real without the moor that was their bed and the glen that was their covert. The country was in an unusual degree predominant in their lives; it determined their temperament and their experience ; mure than the plaid and the claymore it gave them character. The interest in nature in all Scott’s work was not imported to please a prevailing taste, but sprang from the subject. In The Lady of the Lake the two elements, the landscape and the actors, are intimately related, but the description of the former, although extraordinarily realistic, gains by having its inadequacies supplied by the visible outlines and shadows of the artist’s drawing. The poem acquires greater consistency and unity of impression when on page after page are seen the gray dome of Ben-an rising in midair, huge Benvenue throwing his shadowed masses upon the lake, and the long heights of Ben Lomond hemming the horizon. The imagination is aided ; one breathes more delightedly the Highland spirit when he sees Loch Katrine gloom with evening, grow misty with morn, and flash and darken with sun and cloud through the varying beauty of the day. The skill with which the same recurring scenes are given continual freshness, by differences of light and in the point of view, is a marked merit of the series. The great features of the landscape grow familiar to the eye, yet wear, as they ought, continual change.

The value of the pictured landscape is completely felt. The journey of the Knight of Snowdoun, from the moment that the crying pack break over the wild heaths until Roderick lies prostrate with such starkness by Coilantogle Ford, is visualized, and has locality as well as events. This is the artistic gain accomplished by the illustrations. Aside from these representations of the country through which King James passed in his romantic adventure, there are a few cuts of scenes which, though out of sight, are never far from the mind : Cambus-kenneth Abbey, the chapel of St. Bride, and Stirling Castle. It is also a graceful accessory to the general effect that the series concludes with the shocked wheat standing by Loch Achray, the Trossachs’ Glen silent after battle, and Ellen’s Isle more beautiful to the mind than before the lodge was empty. The fullness of illustration and the excellent choice of subject are easily seen. The engraving is not less to be praised ; the treatment of water is effective throughout, and, in this respect, such cuts as Loch Lubnaig, Brianchoil Point, and In Leny Pass deserve to be singled out for especial commendation. There are a few cuts in which the landscape, used as a background for figures, is negligently and obscurely treated, but they are very few, and must be looked on as very slight, and possibly unavoidable concessions.

Why should the figure-pieces, a large proportion of the whole, be less pleasing ?— for all that has been said thus far must be understood as applying only to the landscape cuts. The figures have been carefully studied, and are presented with antiquarian fidelity in their habits as they lived ; but, with all this exactness of costume-portraiture, there is a lack of simplicity in the mien of the characters, a stage-exaggeration of gesture, a consciousness of their artistic importance, all entirely foreign to the poem itself. Roderick was, we know, a dark-browed and moody man; he stalks through the poem a villain of conventional attitude and glance ; but surely it was not for a man on whose face fiercer passions only were stamped that the king would have given his “ best earldom.” In some cuts, too, there is a lack of dignity ; it is a questionable choice that gave to Fitz-James’ dream the emphasis of an illustration, but both here and where he puts the ring on Ellen’s finger, there is too much of the “ carpet-knight ” in his demeanor ; it is thus that we are accustomed to see the tourist-lover woo the lady in a summer novelette. In others there is an inattention to accessories, a concentration of attention on the main figure at too great cost to the surroundings, as in the Brian series. Much better are the Guardroom scenes, spirited, various, carefully finished. The engraving throughout is nearly always excellent, but the design must be set down as inferior, as a lowering of the imaginative conception of the poet and as misleading in sentiment. Notwithstanding all these imperfections in portions of the work, lovers of Scott have reason to be thankful that his most graceful poem has been strengthened in poetic interest, and adorned by wood-engraving, and they will have some gratitude to spare for the excellent, and in some cases unusually good, printing of the cuts ; especially all lovers of literature should be glad to find that this tale, with its human, natural, and moral charm, has outlived the Laras and the Giaours that once dimmed it to the popular view.

Longfellow’s poem² lends itself to illustration less readily than Scott’s. In Evangeline the minor portions, the simple peace and plenty of the Acadian settlement, the misery of its fate, and the dispersion of the emigrants among the colonies, are carefully subordinated to the individual human interest concentrated in the emotional life of the heroine. The history of the spirit, its refinement by effort and sacrifice, cannot be told or indicated by pictures in black and while, such as Mr. Darley makes. He has therefore been forced to concern himself with the background, the accidents of place and circumstance, the local and temporal setting of the poem ; but he has so far observed the method of Longfellow as to make all of the sixteen illustrations, except one, figure-pieces, with accessories of Acadian field and homestead, and Western river and prairie. By crowding these scenes with the characters of the village, and by his choice of subject as well, he has made the whole series seem rather an illustration of the Acadian colony and its fortunes than of the wanderings and self-conquest of a solitary maiden whom love had made strong as well as tender. The blacksmith, the priest, and the fiddler are as constant objects of interest as Gabriel ; more of life is taken in than was possible to the poet. The broader range thus obtained for fancy and sympathy is not a loss, however ; the main theme is not interfered with because the minor chord sounds more constantly and clearly. These groups are noticeable for the variety and excellence of their arrangement, which show much thought. There is no person in them whose motive is not easily seen as regulating attitude and expression; one principal event, one dominant interest, master all, but the operation of the event on complex individualities, the dispersion of the interest in differently moulded minds, are managed with such skill that in each cut there is an epitome of character. Mr. Darley’s manner is too well known to need any characterization or comment. It seems to eyes used to present modes of illustration a survival from the past, perhaps some might say a by-gonue style; but in its employment in this case its remoteness has a certain fitness and charm, for pastoral life needs to be felt as far off ; even if historic it needs to be presented as dreamlike, and to our eyes Mr. Darley’s manner gives something of this effect. At all events, it has some of the merits of good style, the permanent virtues ; it is simple, natural, well-thoughtout, without any effort at sensationalism.

By such methods he brings before us the life which was characterized by oldfashioned virtues and pleasures, the homely occupations and hearty pastimes of the villagers, their simple respect for the priest, their remembrance of the dead, their friendly association in adversity, the journey down the river to the South and over the prairies to the West, and, at last, the recognition of the two lovers in the hospital. In the Western scenes, with the conventional Indian clad as he has been seen only by Cooper in his imagination, there is a lack of local truthfulness in detail, but this defect is more than offset by the fidelity of the French characterization in the earlier scenes, and the variety and vigor of the delineations of the animals which, as is right in a colonial life, are the constant companions of the men. The text is beautifully printed in large type, and the book bound with taste.

The Artist’s Year³ consists of twelve landscape illustrations of the successive months, and of thirteen original and selected poems, meant to be descriptive of the changes in nature during their course. The poems do not merely fail in individualizing the months by sympathy or imagination, but, except for an occasional reference to roses or snowflakes, or the red and yellow leaves, they are entirely destitute of color ; nor do they compensate for this defect by thought or feeling, being starvelings in both. Without comment, the originality, freshness, and vigor of the verses may be judged by the first four lines : —

After a few lines we are told

and so the verses go on unto the end, with an occasional sentiment in Mrs. Browning’s worst style, faded and vacant. It is strange that, when there are so many admirable descriptions of the different months by the best of our poets, their verses should not have been taken as mottoes, if such were needed. The volume, however, is a picture-book, and as such is to be judged. But the artists seem to have been unable to succeed any better than the versifier in characterizing the seasons. Under the title May, for example, there are some birds that seem to have spent the winter North, some marvelous bees, and a spray of flowers without form or texture, and this illustration is the most individualized of any. The cows under the trees in July would serve equally well for December. The entire series is simply a conglomeration of meaningless lines, of trees without substance, having no tree-nature, unless that like Wordsworth’s yews they “ threaten the profane,” of pools and rivers rendered in perpendicular marks (the engravers’ trick of transparency), and exactly similar in appearance to the ragged and jagged skies which prevail in nearly all, as if the year were wrapped in extraordinary storm. It is hardly necessary to enter into detail when the first principles of the delineative arts are so completely disregarded. In the arts that depend on line, drawing is essential; without it as the basis there can be nothing valuable accomplished ; and in these illustrations, whether it be that the designers did not draw or that the mode of reproducing their work destroyed their lines, there is no drawing except of leading outlines, and that is careless and imperfect. It is possible by modern processes to make what passes for a picture with great cheapness and haste, and, when such modes are employed, any disposition the artist may have to attain excellence is necessarily destroyed. If the design is not to have justice done to it, there is no motive to make it good. This reaction of imperfect processes on the character of the artist, the lowering of aim which they induce, the habit of rapid and negligent workmanship which they form, are not the least of their evil effects. Art is corrupted at its source on the one hand, while the popular taste is degraded upon the other. The principal service which we look to wood-engraving to perform, in its present successes, is, by educating the public, to make such work as this volume contains unsalable; by observing the methods of good art, to preserve and raise the standard of excellence among designers, and thus to withdraw them from such ineffective and unprofitable employment as results in such pictures as these now under review. Art, like music, is one of the great instruments of popular education, at present too little applied, and whatever processes go to make art more common among the people deserve to be encouraged; but no good end can be achieved by processes that destroy the object in the means, and yield valueless works. Bad art, it is true, like bad books, satisfies only a rudimentary taste, and the public passes, it is said, through stages of appreciation in both art and literature. But, fortunately, art does not need an alphabet and a spelling-book ; a good picture, that is, a well-drawn picture, is at once recognized by the untaught eye as superior to one ill-drawn ; whatever weight the argument may have in literature, it certainly has none in art, for even a child’s preference is for a good outline rather than for undrawn effects of light and shade. Bad art is now of less importance than bad books, in popular education, only because it enters less largely into life, and it is each year touching the public at more points. But this book, The Artist’s Year, is not intended for the cheap market: it is made of excellent paper, well-printed, fairly bound, with dangling silk tassels, — a holiday book for the centre-table, for the uneducated rich. If the art in a volume thus recommended to the purse is of this kind, the art for the lower market is, we may be sure, too often on as low a scale. It is because the book is symptomatic of the increase of negligent and ignorant work in books pretentiously fine, because it is one of a class, that we have spoken of it with such plainness and at a length which in itself it did not call for. A bad book will disappear without the critic’s aid, but a bad class of books indicates a general fault, and the processes of manufacturing prints are becoming so multifarious that this bad class already includes several species. To characterize and discourage the wrong methods is a duty to every one who cares for the formation of a right taste in the public.

To the sumptuous volumes which M. Yriarte has already prepared on Italian cities has lately been added a large folio of similar style devoted to Florence.⁴ It is a volume which by its mass and distribution carries in its very aspect some physical suggestion of a crowded city: its serried files of text opening upon vistas of architecture and sculpture, leading into the interiors of temple or museum, and populated with many historic figures. One finds the whole municipality, in truth, spread out before him within these covers; first as a map, then as a general view from San Miniato ; and afterwards a vast array of its artistic treasures is made visible through the illustrations. Fortunately, as in the other members of this series, the text yields no small part of the profit of the work. The author begins with a sketch of Florentine history, conducting to the era of the Medicean supremacy; a full account of the Medicean family ensues, which terminates only in 1737, with the extinction of the line. This portion, richly provided with graphic material, is unique. We are enabled by it to sum in a glance, as if it were a panorama, the whole course of the Medici family. We behold them as merchants, warriors, cardinals, or popes, in their actual appearance to the eye; nay, we have one of the cardinals painted while still in his cradle, and the very nurse whose effigy Parïs Bordone preserved on canvas. The successive men of the house are placed rapidly before us in portraiture, from old Cosimo the elder, and his lean-faced early progeny, down to the polished, coddled, feeble, and haughty physiognomies of the latest duke-descendants, who were about to die out. This division contains fac-similes, also, from early Florentine engravings hitherto not generally accessible, which add to it a peculiar worth ; but one may question why M. Yriarte should have chosen the Uffizi portrait of Bianca Capello, when the best is found in the Pitti. An attempt is made to show how it came that Florence was so especially the centre of the Renaissance; for the writer seeks some explanation of her eminence in addition to that based on the influence of the revival of learning, important though that is confessed to be. Such an explanation he finds in “ the peculiar genius of Florence, the national temperament, and circumstances of race and politics.” This, to be sure, is somewhat vague. His reference to early Etruscan art in the same spot, so distinctive, so indicative of a race originally tending to plastic creation, is far more effective ; and there is almost the surprise of a new discovery in the skillful introduction of the fact that Niccolò Pisano, a Tuscan native, revived again the truth and freedom of sculpture only a few miles from Florence, after they had disappeared for fifteen hundred years. It was the study of antique sarcophagi which caused him to shake off the trammels of Byzantine stiffness; and thus the tomb where art apparently lay buried proved to be the cradle of its new birth. M. Yriarte even hints that there is a hidden analogy between Etrurian art and the genius of Donatello, flowering out of the same ground but refined by a new civilization. It is the faculty of independent insight shown in this suggestion, and of giving to facts lying far apart a historic and poetic unity, that makes the author so alluring a guide through the branching thoroughfares and by-ways of his theme. One novel feature of the book is the extensive chapter given to the illustrious men who represent the intellectual movement in the Renaissance at Florence : Dante, Passavante, Petrarch, Sacchetti, and twenty others, — some less generally known, — an impressive host in the

background of the scene, indicating what forces the Medici had to work with or against in the making of this wonderful city. Their portraits, too, are given, and sometimes the works of art with which they are associated ; perhaps the tombs which were placed over them. It is in these pages, by the way, that we find reproduced, for the first time in a work on Florence, certain monuments in Santa Croce, San Miniato, and Santa Maria del Fiore which are of much interest. The remaining sections are given to churches, palaces, and to painting and sculpture. Leonardo is granted small space, because of his departure into another school; and Raphael necessarily meets with similar treatment; whereas Niccolò Pisano, although not born in Florence, has to be included ; and so with the Siennese Jacopo della Quercia, whose stately Porta dei Servi in the cathedral is given on a page by itself. In general the author has wisely chosen the less well-known productions of the masters for representation; although in the case of Raphael, the Madonna della Seggiola appears, unhappily, in a very poor process-plate. To offset this we are treated to some charming pieces by Filippo Lippi and a curious but not very characteristic Botticelli. The serious and sweet Florentine Maiden of Granacci is a most acceptable contribution, deserving of study. M. Yriarte does good service in bringing forward the less vaunted artists whose work has of late more and more been recognized as constituting the true Florence, quite as much as that of the more famous. A large number of the illustrations are not cuts, but the result of various processes now in use, some of which simulate engraving. The best are those having the effect of heliogravure and occupying large space; such as Orgagna’s Golden Tabernacle (page 220). It is worth while to note that the reproduction of Michael Angelo’s Fates, though not fine, has one uncommon merit: Clotho, who in all the best extant engravings is depicted with a visage of horror, is here correctly interpreted as merely chanting her neutral song of destiny. Lachesis, however, in turning to the sister with the shears, hardly shows that exquisite expression of dumb appeal which belongs to the original. A curious sketch of Angelo from life, by Francis of Holland, is included ; and there are small portraits of all the artists mentioned. These, carefully collected from many sources, have a certain historical value, but they are monotonous in manner and rough without being strong. The illustrations, in fact, so far as they stand for engraving, fall much below the American mark; nor would the various pictures always give to the uninitiated a full sense of the beauty and strength in the originals. But their usefulness, and it is a very high one, consists in their great range and completeness, taken together. It is not only Florence in name or mere outline that is set before us, but concrete, visible Florence, with all its spiritual and material meaning, so far as these can be obtained with actual presence and much study. That a field of lilies should have given place to the City of Flowers and all which it has produced is one of the marvels of terrestrial development. That we should be able by aid of the printing-press to gather in a later harvest the essence of this human growth is another marvel almost as great.