kind response to various inquiries. Thanks are also due to the many holders of copyrights who have permitted the illustrations to be reproduced. As some blocks have changed hands since they first appeared, the original source given below each picture does not always indicate the owner who has allowed it to be included. The artists' names are printed in many cases without titles bestowed later, as it seemed best to quote them as they stood at the time the drawing was published. Lastly, I have to thank Mr. Temple Scott for his elaborate index, prepared with so much care, which many interested in the subject will find the most useful section of the book.

The claims of wood-engraving versus process have been touched upon here very rarely. If any one doubts that nearly all the drawings of the 'sixties' lost much, and that many were wholly ruined by the engraver, he has but to compare them with reproductions by modern processes from a few originals that escaped destruction at the time. If this be not a sufficient evidence, the British Museum and South Kensington have many examples in their permanent collections which will quickly convince the most stubborn. If some few engravers managed to impart a certain interest at the expense of the original work, which not merely atones for the loss but supplies in its place an intrinsic work of art, such exceptions no way affect the argument. Wood-engraving of the first order is hardly likely to die out. It is true that, as the craft finds fewer recruits, the lessened number of journeymen, experts in technique (whence real artist-engravers may be expected to spring up at intervals), will diminish the supply. Given the artist as craftsman, he may always be trusted to distance his rival, whether it be mechanism or a profit-making corporation which reduces the individuality of its agents to the level of machines. For in art, still more than in commerce, it is the personal equation that finally controls and shapes the project to mastery, and the whole charm of the sixties is the individual charm of each artist. The incompetent draughtsman, then, was no less uninteresting than he is to-day; even the fairly respectable illustrators gain nothing by the accident that they flourished in 'the golden decade.' But the best of the work which has never ceased to delight fellow-workers will, no doubt, maintain its interest in common with good work of all schools and periods. Therefore, this rough attempt at a catalogue of some of its most striking examples, although its publication happens to coincide with a supposed 'boom,' may have more than ephemeral value if it save labour in hunting up commonplace facts to many people now and in the future. This plea is offered in defence of the text of a volume which, although cut down from its intended size, and all too large, is yet but a rough sketch.

Collectors of all sorts know the various stages which their separate hobbies impose on them. First, out of pure love for their subject, they gather together chance specimens almost at haphazard. Then, moved by an ever-growing interest, they take the pursuit more seriously, and, as one by one the worthier objects fall into their hands, they grow still more keen. Later, they discover to their sorrow that a complete collection is, humanly speaking, impossible: certain unique examples are not to be obtained for love or money, or, at all events, for the amount at their personal disposal. At last they realise, perhaps, that after all the cheapest and most easily procured are also the most admirable and delightful. This awakening comes often enough when a catalogue has been prepared, and on looking over it they find that the treasures they valued at one time most highly are only so estimated by fellow-collectors; then they realise that the more common objects which fall within the reach of every one are by far the best worth possessing.

A homely American phrase (and the word homely applies in a double sense) runs: 'He has bitten off more than he can chew.' The truth of the remark is found appropriate as I write these final words. To mark, learn, and inwardly digest the output of ten to fifteen years' illustration must needs be predestined failure, if space and time for its preparation are both limited. The subject has hitherto been almost untouched, and when in certain aspects it has attracted writers, they have approached it almost always from the standpoint of artistic appreciation and criticism. Here, despite certain unintentional lapses into that nobler path, the intention has been to keep strictly to a catalogue of published facts and with a few bibliographical notes added.

Setting out with a magnificent scheme—to present an iconography of the work of every artist of the first rank—the piles of manuscript devoted to this comprehensive task which are at my side prove the impracticability of the enterprise. To annotate the work of Sir John Gilbert or Mr. Birket Foster would require for each a volume the size of this. But as Punch, The Illustrated London News, and the Moxon Tennyson have already been the subject of separate monographs, no doubt in future years each branch of the subject that may be worth treating exhaustively will supply material for other monographs. The chief disappointment in preparing a reference-book of this class belongs to the first compiler only; the rest have the joy of exposing his shortcomings and correcting his errors, combined with the pleasure of indulging in that captious criticism which any overheard dialogue in the streets shows to be the staple of English conversation.

GLEESON WHITE.

10 Theresa Terrace,
Ravenscourt Park, W.,
October 1896.

CONTENTS