seem a severe test, but it is one which all the real illustrators
come through. To take a few examples. The etchings of
Cruikshank are in perfect harmony with the literary idiom
of Dickens; Millais and Trollope match each other in an
exquisite unity; Lewis Carroll's combination of sheer non-
sense and sober story-telling is reflected in Tenniel's
drollery which has the air of reality; and Arthur Hughes
and Christina Rossetti blend in the quintessence of Vic-
torian sentiment, sweet but not cloying. All these partner-
ships were formed in the nineteenth century and all of
them were the fusion of two contemporary minds in books
which were often unpretentious, friendly pocket octavos
with modest little woodcuts or shimmering silvery steel
engravings. To-day, however, there is no longer that marked
identity of aim between authors and illustrators. Our artists
lean to a more stylised idiom which has little of the old vivid
evocative quality, and taking advantage of the many recent
technical developments in printing and colour-work they
give us decoration rather than illustration. Illustrated
fiction, once a source of rivalry between all the great
publishing houses and the illustrator's main occupation,
has now given way to screen fiction loaded with all the
overtones of photographic naturalism. There is a tendency,
therefore, to choose familiar texts on which the publisher
and the professional typographer will build a book in
which pride of place is given to the illustrations. The use
of the finest craftsmanship and the best materials in all its
parts makes for a large format more suited to the lap than
the pocket, and so it becomes a picture book to be looked
at rather than read. But picture books have a long and
fine ancestry. There were the richly illuminated missals
and breviaries for lords and abbots; noble library quartos
with engraved plates supporting the elegant types of Caslon
and Baskerville for country gentlemen of the eighteenth
century; the annuals of the eighteen-thirties with their
fashionable steel engravings; the table-books of the mid-
Victorians bright with chromo-lithographs, and the self-
conscious volumes from the private presses of the arts and

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