A DE LA MARE PICTURE BOOK.* ILLUSTRATORS are terribly apt
to emphasize Mr. de la Mare's faults. They choose for illustration poems where the touch has not been so to say, quite firm on the spider's string, or where the horns of elfiand have blown a little flat. If a rather obvious and uncritical archaism has strayed into a poem, if the fairy, all uncompelled by the metre, " dwells " rather than " lives," or uses the second person singular, be sure in some subtle way the illustrator will point it out, just as a musician will unfailingly repeat and stress the one deplorable word.
Miss Lathrop is a pleasant draughtswoman, is never vulgar, and is not often too precise and actual, but she is unfailingly
sweet and pretty.. It was nice and right of her to make unequivocal a happy ending for " Sweet Annie Maroon,"
and she had the root of the matter in her when she drew " The Dwarf." But her Gimmul and Mell are not half wicked enough ; they have not got the poet's "sly and greedy thumbs." The fact is, that in illustrating Mr. de la Mare, as in any other aesthetic enterprise, the artist must have in him an element of severity.
In literature the works of 0. Henry—that ingenious manipu-
lator of the narrative—represent the furthest limits to which an art can be carried without this essential but, apparently, sometimes irrelevant ingredient. Miss Lathrop should re- member that a poem is, among other things, an act of self- restraint, limitation and austerity. The choice of poems in this collection is excellent, and a good many pieces are included which are not to be found in Peacock Pie. May I remind the reader of the amazingly ingenious and intricate rhythms of " The Fairy in Winter "
" There was a fairy—flake of winter—
Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence, Sister crystal to crystal sighing Making of meadow argent palace, Night a star-sown solitude, Cried 'neath her frozen eaves, ' I burn here.'
Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like, Wand within fingers, locks enspangled, Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,
She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow— Green as stalks of weeds in water—
Breathed : stirred."
It would be interesting to know at what age a child would notice the strangeness in the tune.
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