ustration. The artist begins the article by protesting that of all
subjects in the world it is the one upon which he has the least and
fewest ideas, and that such ideas as he has consist principally of his
admiration for illustrations by others. He separates readers into two
classes--those who visualise what they read with the mind's eye so
satisfactorily that they want the help of no pictures, and those--the
greater number, he thinks--who do not possess this gift, to whom to have
the author's conceptions embodied for them in a concrete form is a boon.
The little figures in the picture are a mild substitute for the actors
at the footlights. The arrested gesture, the expression of face, the
character and costume, may be as true to nature and life as the best
actor can make them. His test of a good illustrator is that the
illustrations continue to haunt the memory when the letterpress is
forgotten. He cites Menzel as the highest example of such performance.
He next refers to the illustrated volume of Poems by Tennyson in 1860,
for which Millais and Rossetti and others designed small woodcuts, the
publishing of which, he says, made an epoch in English book
illustration, importing a new element to which he finds it difficult to
give a name. "I still adore," he says, "the lovely, wild, irresponsible
moon-face of Oriana, with a gigantic mailed archer kneeling at her feet
in the yew-wood, and stringing his fatal bow; the strange beautiful
figure of the Lady of Shalott, when the curse comes over her, and her
splendid hair is floating wide, like the magic web; the warm embrace of
Amy and her cousin (when their spirits rushed together at the touching
of the lips), and the dear little symmetrical wavelets beyond; the queen
sucking the poison out of her husband's arm; the exquisite bride at the
end of the Talking Oak; the sweet little picture of Emma Morland and
Edward Grey, so natural and so modern, with the trousers treated in
quite the proper spirit; the chaste Sir Galahad, slaking his thirst with
holy water, amid all the mystic surroundings; and the delightfully
incomprehensible pictures to the Palace of Art, that gave one a weird
sense of comfort, like the word 'Mesopotamia,' without one's knowing
why."

[Illustration: Illustration for "The Adventures of Harry Richmond"

_The Cornhill_, 1871.]

In the second paper he makes interesting reflections on Thackeray and
Dickens. "When the honour devolved upon me of illustrating _Es