tly conceived by the same spirit and published also by
Cundall--"Gammer Gurton's Garland," by Ambrose Merton, with
illustrations by T. Webster and others. This was also issued as a series
of sixpenny books, of which Mr. Elkin Mathews owns a nearly complete
set, in their original covers of gold and coloured paper.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "A WONDER BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS."

BY WALTER CRANE (OSGOOD, MCILVAINE AND CO. 1892)]

It would be very easy to over-estimate the intrinsic merit of these
books, but when you consider them as pioneers it would be hard to
over-rate the importance of the new departure. To enlist the talent of
the most popular artists of the period, and produce volumes printed in
the best style of the Chiswick Press, with bindings and end-papers
specially designed, and the whole "get up" of the book carefully
considered, was certainly a bold innovation in the early forties. That
it failed to be a profitable venture one may deduce from the fact that
the "Felix Summerley" series did not run to many volumes, and that the
firm who published them, after several changes, seems to have expired,
or more possibly was incorporated with some other venture. The books
themselves are forgotten by most booksellers to-day, as I have
discovered from many fruitless demands for copies.

The little square pamphlets by F. H. Bayley, to which allusion has
already been made, include "Blue Beard;" "Robinson Crusoe," and "Red
Riding Hood," all published about 1845-6.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE QUEEN OF THE PIRATE ISLE." BY KATE
GREENAWAY (EDMUND EVANS. 1887)]

Whether "The Sleeping Beauty," then announced as in preparation, was
published, I do not know. Their rhyming chronicle in the style of the
"Ingoldsby Legends" is neatly turned, and the topical allusions,
although out of date now, are not sufficiently frequent to make it
unintelligible. The pictures (possibly by Alfred Crowquill) are
conceived in a spirit of burlesque, and are full of ingenious conceits
and no little grim vigour. The design of Robinson Crusoe roosting in a
tree--

And so he climbs up a very tall tree,
And fixes himself to his comfort and glee,
Hung up from the end of a branch by his breech,
Quite out of all mischievous quadrupeds' reach.
A position not perfectly easy 't is true,
But yet at the same time consoling and new--

reproduced on p. 13, shows the wilder humour