ILLUSTRATIONS AND BOOKBINDINGS.*

WE should say that the valuable parts of Mr. Pennell's book were the early chapters, in which an interesting account is given of the history, technical and personal, of modern book- illustration in its passage from one country to another. Mr. Pennell takes ns from Bewick in England to the illustrators and engravers who sprang up in succession to him in France, and then points out how the work done after Meissonier in that country was taken upend outdone in Germany in the engravings after Menzel. Then the running was taken up in England by our Preraphaelite school. Then came photography and pro- cess to alter methods of reproduction. America becomes con- spicuous, and so the flux and reflux of manners and methods goes on to our own day. All this is developed in chaps. 1 and 2. In the chapter on English illustration, Mr. Pennell throws a generous warmth into his account of the admirable work done from 1860 onwards in books and magazines by . (1.) Media tesfrati On. By Joseph Pennell. (Es Libris Series.) London : Ge rge 1301 and Sons —(2.) Booktri,,dings Old and sew. By Brander Matthews. Same series and publishers — 3,) English Bookbindings in the Briti.h Museum. Sixty-three Examples selected by William Younger Fle-cber, F.S.A., Assistant Ke per of Printed Books. Plates by W. Griggs. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.

such artists as Rossetti, Sandys, Boyd Houghton, Arthur Hughes. We single out these parts, but there is much in- teresting information to be found in other parts of the book. The account, however, of modern illustration in this and other countries suffers from the attempt to mention all conspicuous illustrators, and the examples given are affected by some want of discrimination. The number of really considerable

talents that has been employed in illustration is not very great, and if no distinction is drawn between these and others we are reduced to a catalogue not at all raisonntS. When Mr. Pennell turns from the technical history of illustration to general ideas, his writing is disfigured by a curious petu-

lance and carelessness. Thus the book begins:-

" Illustration is not only the oldest, but the only form of artistic expression which graphic artists have ever been able to employ. For that matter, every expression of the artist, whether conveyed by means of monochrome or colour, even the -work of the plastic artist, is but an illustration. For an illustration is the recording, by means of some artistic medium, either of something seen by the artist which he wishes to convey to- that is, illustrate for— others ; or else the direct interpretation by some artistic means of a written description, or the chronicling of an historical event ; or it is a composition which has been suggested to him by some oc..urrence in nature ; or, again, his impression of some phase of nature or life. Therefore all art is illustration, though it rather seems to follow that all illustration is not art."

This is a curious tangle surely. The last statement is true enough, but a non sequitur from Mr. Pennell's premisses.

Those premiases are wrong, because illustration need not be artistic at all, nor " recorded by an artistic medium." Photo- graphs and explanatory diagrams, maps and plans, are illus- trations, but are frequently in no way artistic. In the third

place, all art is not illustration in the sense in which Mr. Pennell has put the word on the back of his book and uses it throughout. Illustration is short for book-illustration, and book-illustration does not even mean any picture appearing in a book, but a picture that illustrates a text, represents

something also described in words. We of course find our author gaily using the word in the ordinary sense on the next page. Having told us that all the great painters of the past were illustrators, he modestly turns his back on this bright birth of his fancy and runs on,—" Two things become evident_ First, that the great artists of the past did not illustrate." The whole thing is a misplaced ingenuity which confuses the opening of his book. Again, to say that " landscape paint- ing, a modern invention, is only more or less glorified topo- graphy," is not only odd history, but very strained thought.

It would be just as luminous to describe painting as glorified canvas.

We may quote another passage from the preface as an example of how not to write so as to engage the respect and sympathy of readers:— "Still I have not allowed their decision to influence me" (the decision of a paper not to lend examples to this book), " nor yet the refusal of one or two artists, who evidently prefer the adver- tisement of the vulgar type of weekly to being included with their equals or masters. No doubt these confessions will be greeted with applause, especially in that paper whose boast it was once to be written by gentlemen for gentlemen.' No doubt I shall be censured for leaving out the work of every man who ever happened to make an illustration or even a sketch, especially if it was privately published. No doubt the omission of Miss Alexander and other Ruskin-boomed amateurs will be noted, but I have no collection of their works which I should like to unload on the dear public."

It is surely still open to an artist, even in these times of free- dom, to refuse, if he pleases, to lend his work to a mis-

cellaneous collection, and the author's magnanimity in not abusing the work in consequence is rather discounted by this outburst. The work of Miss Alexander would have been very dangerous company for a number of illustrations actually given. "Booming" does not fit the motives or manner of Mr. Ruskin's appreciation, and Mr. Pennell forgets himself too far in this wild spattering with mercenary aims of those whose taste is different from his own. An air of grievance against one's audience and hints of differences behind

the scenes with various people with whom the audience is not concerned would be a bad manner for a lecturer. Manner is not quite so personal an affair in a writer,

but it counts for a great deal. Mr. Pennell, one would think, has knowledge enough to make his task agreeable to himself (and there is no obligation to write if it is not). Why not address an audience, for the most part innocent of preju- dice, so as to conciliate them ? He would have a better chance of persuading. We note these irritating features of a book containing much interesting information in the hope that when its author next takes the pen in hand he will con- sider it worth while to meet us in a less hasty temper.

Another volume of the same series is devoted to bookbind- ings, and its peculiarity is that not only is the familiar ground of the art of the bookbinder and decorator in leather gone over, but chapters are given to bindings in cloth and }caper. The last chapter is an account of the Grozier Club in New York. Mr. Brander Matthews's knowledge of his subject is not very exhaustive, nor his discrimination very keen, but as an easy gossip giving some notion of the extent of the subject, and, by illustration, of the different types of design that have flourished, he will interest the general reader.

A book of a different type is Mr. Fletcher's selection of English bookbindings in the British Museum. The bindings are excellently reproduced by coloured lithography, so that one possesses something very like the book itself. The selection illustrates admirably the character of successive schools, and Mr. Fletcher's notes on the authorship of the bindings are the work of an authority in these matters.