Tennyson and his pre-Raphaelite illustrators. A book about a book

ClB

TENNYSON AND HIS PRE-RAPHAELITE
ILLUSTRATORS.

With Lord Rosebery, I think the thesis— that life can be
reduced to a Blue-Book and a Biscuit— is one which does
not stand the test of time and experience*

TENNYSON READING "MAUD," 1855.

From the copy of the thumb-nail sketch by Rossetti, in the possession of
Mr. William Sharp.

Frontispiece.}

•e
u

Tennyson and his
Pre- Raphaelite Illustrators.

BOOK ABOUT A BOOK.

BY

GEORGE SOMES LAYARD,

A uthor of
' Life and Letters of Charles Keene, of " Punch" '' etc.) etc.

SEVERAL ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
BOSTON: COPELAND AND DAY, 69 CORNHILL.

1894.

NINA FRANCES LAYARD

' AS IN WATER FACE ANSWERETH TO FACE,
SO THE HEART OF MAN TO MAN.'

P RE FA CE

^T^HIS volume contains nothing more than an in-
^ adequate tribute from a bookish person to a
book of outstanding merit, and the author ventures upon
its publication for the sake of indicating the methods
by which a book may be made to yield discursive and
innumerable delights beyond and above those which are
at first apparent.

To Miss Christina Rossetti, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Mr.
Holman Hunt, Mr. William Sharp, and Messrs. Mac-
millan and Co. he would here take the opportunity of
tendering his most grateful thanks for enabling him to
present to his readers the illustrations which form this
little volume's chief attraction.

Those after water-colour drawings by Mrs. Dante
Gabriel Rossetti have been inserted because of the

viii Preface

peculiar interest which attaches to them, though with
full recognition that they are not strictly germane to the
subject in hand.

Oxford and Cambridge Club,
Fall Mall, S. W.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY - . j

II. AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE ' P. R. B.' - 12

III. MILLAIS - 1 8

IV. HOLMAN HUNT - - - 34
V. ROSSETTI - 49

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

IN 1827, as all the world knows, Tennyson's first
published work appeared in the little duodecimo
volume entitled Poems by Two Brothers, but it
is not so well known that just thirty years were
to pass before the pencil of the book-illustrator
was to mete out to the splendid efforts of his
genius due and adequate pictorial treatment, and
that it was to the enterprise of Edward Moxon
that the world is indebted for one of the most
enchanting volumes it has ever been privileged to
possess.

Let it, however, be understood that it is of pur-
pose that I do not say that the quarto of 1857
is among the best illustrated books the world has
seen. It is far from being this, as will appear ;
but that it is among the most interesting will,
I think, as surely be granted. The mere mention
of the names of the artists who were called upon
to collaborate in this most intrinsically valuable
of all Tennysonian volumes is enough to excite
the appetite of the picture-lover to the ravenous

i

Early Writings of Tennyson

point. This he may be sure will be no merely
illusive joy, no Barmecide's feast.

First we have good solid stuff from Rossetti,
Woolner, Millais and Holman Hunt. And then we
have rechauffes from Mulready, perhaps a trifle too
familiar ; fricassees from Maclise, just a shade too
dry, and needing a good enough digestion; kick-
shaws from Creswick, just a thought too sweet ;
clean and wholesome legumes picked from Stanfield's
own garden ; and quite innocuous etceteras from the
painter of The Pride of the Village, but yet in all
a square-meal of quite delightful variety, such as we
do not have the chance of sitting down to every day.

When we come to take our artists one by one,
Woolner for a moment claims our attention, rightly
included amongst the book-illustrators of Tenny-
son, not by virtue of the portrait of his friend by
which he is here represented, but by virtue of the
exquisite statue of Guinevere, which, by the poet's
special request — he said of it, ' That is the stateliest
figure I have ever seen ' — was engraved and pub-
lished in the 1888 edition of The Idylls of the
King.

It is, however, the work of the three more pro-
minent members of the ' P. R. B.,' as such, that gives
the real emphasis to this edition, and, before pro-
ceeding to deal with their respective contributions at
some length, I would ask my readers to consider care-
fully what Ruskin says about the attitude of mind with
which the volume should be approached. 'Observe/
he says, * respecting these woodcuts, that, if you
have been in the habit of looking at much spurious
work, in which sentiment, action, and style are bor-
rowed or artificial, you will assuredly be offended at
first by all genuine work which is intense in feeling.

Introductory

Genuine art, which is merely art, such as Veronese's
or Titian's, may not offend you, though the chances
are that you will not care about it ; but genuine
works of feeling, such as Maud or Aurora Leigh
in poetry, or the grand pre - Raphaelite designs in
painting, are sure to offend you ; and if you cease
to work' hard, and persist in looking at vicious and
false art, they will continue to offend you.' That
is what Ruskin most wisely says, and, with his
words in our ears, let us proceed with what is, at
least to me, a delightful task. I only hope my
readers will find it the same.

Here we have in a nutshell, so to speak, charac-
teristic and typical work by three of the most in-
teresting artistic personalities of our generation
brought into closest juxtaposition, and challenging
the comparison of which every picture-lover must
recognise the interest and importance. In these
pages we have side by side the direct, single-minded,
forcible simplicity of Millais' Mariana and Edward
Gray rubbing shoulders with the extremes of spiri-
tuality and sensuousness which we find in Rossetti's
Palace of Art, with its curious sadness born of the
transience of things. We have Holman Hunt's digni-
fied, solitary Lady ofShalott, more than half sick of the
shadows of a world seen in a glass darkly, not a touch
of harshness, not a note that is not beautiful in its
composition — showing that, where he distresses us,
Mr. Hunt does so of malice prepense — an exquisite
woman yearning for what she cannot tell, impatient
of what she hardly knows, less than half conscious
of the possibilities of her womanhood, which are so
manifest to us who look on — we have this exquisite
introduction to the mystic poem giving place to
Rossetti's crowded little block — literally factus ad

Early Writings of Tennyson

unguent — which forms a fitting conclusion to the
mournful dirge, the whole world of Camelot hurry-
ing and scurrying out into the night to see a wonder,
and such a wonder — the dead pale corpse of the
' fairy Lady of Shalott.' And it was for this that she
had turned her back upon righteousness, for this that
she had listened to the ' Tirra lirra ' by the river, for
this — to have Sir Lancelot muse a little space :

* He said, " She has a lovely face " :
God in His mercy lend her grace ' ;

and to be a vulgar nine days' wonder to the ' knights
and burghers, lords and dames.' Not for her was even
the one perfect kiss for which Lancelot was himself
to give ' all other bliss and all his worldly worth.'

She had turned her back on the good, and found
only hopeless Death.

Holman Hunt always speaks hope, Rossetti always
hopelessness ; and it was, as will be seen, not a high
sense of fitness, but the very happiest of chances, that
brought about the appropriation for pictorial repre-
sentation of the opening passages of the poem to
the former, whilst to the latter was allotted the task
of picturing the unutterable sadness of the vanity of
things with nothing beyond which marks its con-
clusion.

And here I cannot do better than give the in-
teresting particulars, which I have from Mr. W. M.
Rossetti, of some of the circumstances under which
the volume was constructed. As far as his recollec-
tion goes, the project for an illustrated edition of the
* Poems ' was first settled in a general way between the
poet and the publisher, before any details as to the
artists to be invited were considered. In the choice
of collaborators Moxon was mainly the moving
spirit, although it is more than probable that, in

Introductory

pitching upon the three pre-Raphaelites, Tennyson
himself may have taken the initiative.*

Beyond, however, suggesting their names, it would
appear that there was no further action taken by
hirn. The selection of subjects was no doubt dis-
cussed and settled between the artists and the pub-
lisher. The treatment was left to the artists them-
selves. The designs were never seen by the poet
until in a completed state — some of them, indeed,
not until they had been already cut upon the wood.

It should be mentioned that Rossetti, through his
customary dilatoriness, found himself, as he imagined,
left out in the cold, and complained that all the good
subjects had been already appropriated when he was
prepared to set to work. Indeed, when he found
that Mr. Holman Hunt had chosen the Lady
of Skalott, he said that that was the very subject
upon which he had particularly set his heart. But,
in addition to having made a pictorial study in
illustration of the poem some years before, Mr. Hunt
had already made considerable progress with the
design which figures at its head in this volume, and,
fortunately for the result, — for we could ill have
spared this exquisite picture — could not see his way
to yielding up the subject altogether. He, however,
met his friend half-way by relinquishing the treat-
ment of the latter half of the poem, whence, by a
fortunate chance, we get the happy contrast which
has been alluded to above.

That Rossetti was well suited, too, in his other
subjects, and had no real cause to grumble, will, I
think, be readily apparent when we come to the con-
sideration of his designs in these pages.

* Mr. Holman Hunt tells me that probably Tennyson also suggested

Maclise.

Early Writings of Tennyson

Writing on the subject of this edition to me,
Mr. Horsley, R.A., gives the following additional
particulars : ' I well remember,' he says, ' that, at the
end of 1855, or early in 1856, I had a long visit from
Tennyson, who was accompanied by his publisher,
Moxon, when I undertook to make the illustrations
which ultimately appeared in the edition of 1857.
I never saw the great poet again, but had the gratifi-
cation of hearing that he had expressed much con-
tentment with my work in illustration of his lovely
themes. It was no little pleasure also for me to hear
from a mutual friend of Tennyson's and my own —
Arthur Coleridge — that when the latter was staying
during the autumn of '91 in the Isle of Wight with
the poet, and enjoying the infinite privilege of long
walks and talks with him, he spoke much and most
kindly of me and my work, making many inquiries
respecting me. ... I do not remember the exact
way in which the subjects were assigned to the
various artists, but have no doubt I named those I
wished to undertake, and that there was no clashing
with the desire of others. I am quite sure I had no
correspondence with Tennyson on this point.'

And this reminds me, in passing, of the curious
indifference which Tennyson seems, as far as can be
judged from his poems and from the few particulars
generally known of him, to have manifested towards
the pictorial and plastic arts. How different, for
example, is this quiet submission to the independent
pictorial treatment of his literary creations, without
hint or interference on his part, to the wild excite-
ments and fevers into which Dickens used to work
himself over the illustrations to his novels ! Of that
to Mrs. Pipchin and Paul, it will be remembered, he
wrote to Forster : ' Good heaven ! in the commonest

ST. AGNES' EVE.

After an unpublished watercolour by Mrs. Dante, Gabriel Kossctti.

i»t!/r (i.)

Introditctory

and most literal construction of the text, it is all
wrong. ... I can't say what pain and vexation it is
to be so utterly misrepresented. I would cheerfully
have given a hundred pounds to have kept this illus-
tration out of the book.' This was but one of many
such outbursts. But how far otherwise it is with
Tennyson ! Any objection that he did make, interest-
ing enough in itself, was of the practically useless
ex post facto kind. Nor was it only in the matter of
illustrations to his own work that he seems to have
been unconcerned and incurious, but he appears to
have through life manifested a general insensibility
to pictorial art which strikes one at first as some-
thing more than remarkable. The story is well
known of Lord John Russell coming up to him, on
his return from Italy, and asking how he had enjoyed
the pictures and works of art in Florence. ' I liked
them very much,' said Tennyson, ' but I was bothered
because I could not get any English tobacco for love
or money. A lady told me that I could smuggle
some from an English ship if I heavily bribed the
Custom-house officers; but I didn't do that, and
came away.'

This only in passing, but it has a not unimportant
bearing upon the subject with which we are dealing,
as showing that Tennyson's illustrators worked abso-
lutely independently of any counsel from their author,
and were confined to their own interpretation of the
poems for the inspiration they were to draw there-
from. And this consideration will be found to be of
particular importance in examining and comparing
the work in the 1857 edition of Rossetti, Millais and
Holman Hunt — Rossetti, without question, as Mr.
Ruskin says, 'the chief intellectual force in the
establishment of the modern romantic school in

8 Early Writings of Tennyson

England,' the poet-painter, mystic, imaginative,
as sensuous at one time as at another he was
spiritual; Millais, the matter-of-fact, simple-
minded, strong common-sensible Englishman, the
Davus to Rossetti's CEdipus, no solver of riddles, but
with a marvellous power of telling the truth ; and
Holman Hunt, the Puritan, the man to whom
Christianity is ' not merely a reality, not merely
the greatest of realities, but the only reality,' and
consequently gives colour to everything he takes in
hand. Had it been that Tennyson had in any way
superintended the efforts of the artists, all would
have been different. We might, indeed, have ob-
tained a more perfect and sympathetic collaboration,
but we should certainly not have got within the
corners of one book so much that is instructive, so
much that is stimulating and of surpassing interest.
Its value does not lie in the fact that it is pre-
eminently a well-ordered monument of poetico-pic-
torial co-operation. It is rather as a bundle of splen-
did incongruities that it appeals to our eclecticism-
In it Millais seems to me to play Icarus to Tenny-
son's Daedalus, and under his personal conduct to
have seen in adventurous flights glorious perspectives
from altitudes to which alone he could never have
attained. His sight was all his own, but his wings
were of Tennyson's devising. Rossetti, for his part,
has stood and seen the bold Athenian's flight. He
knows that he too has pinions to soar skywards on
his own account, and, following the poet's example,
shoots sometimes even higher than his pioneer, and
finds with some dizziness altitudes and wonders of
his own. And Holman Hunt, too, fired with emula-
tion, has essayed aerial navigation unaccompanied,
and, with cooler head and calmer calculation than

Introductory

the last, has seen from his own point of view the
poet's panorama.

Millais' illustrations in this volume are as imme-

4 diately and directly inspired by the poet as Rossetti's
are not. Except in one amusing instance, where the
former has tried to emulate his brother ' P. R.'s,'
Millais and Tennyson have gone hand-in-hand.
Hunt and Rossetti have sometimes sprung ahead ;
sometimes, it is true, they have fallen behind. So
that, judged by the ethics of book -illustrating,
Millais most undoubtedly bears the palm. To put
? it broadly, Millais has realized, Holman Hunt has
\ idealized, and Rossetti has sublimated, or transcen-
dentalized, the subjects which they have respectively
illustrated. The two latter have, in greater or less
degree, introduced subtleties which Tennyson never'
dreamed of. Rossetti, indeed, has done more. He

* has not hesitated to contradict the text. Trollope,
writing upon the illustrations to his novels, has said :
' An artist will frequently dislike to subordinate his
ideas to those of an author.' And I think it will be
evident to the student of these illustrations that
Rossetti's main object has not been to ' promote the
views of the poet, but that he has unhesitatingly

v attempted to overpower the text, and in some cases
successfully, by the brilliancy of his own imagina-
tion. This will not be surprising to those who were
acquainted with the artist's temperament, and, after
all, it is easy to forgive him, in view of the splendid,
albeit unorthodox, achievement. Nor can it be
doubted that the picture-lover pure and simple will
be thrilled to the finest fibre of his nature by Ros-
setti's divergences, rather than by the rhythmic har-
monies of Millais ; but, in the opinion of the well-
balanced mind, that looks for the lawful wedding of

io Early Writings of Tennyson

pen and pencil, the latter unquestionably surpasses
his rivals.

There is, however, one general characteristic com-
mon to the work of this great brotherhood upon
which I should like to dwell for a moment, and
which cannot be, in these days of scamped and
hurried work, running riot under the garb of 'impres-
sionism,' too often and too strongly insisted upon.
I mean the finish, the wealth of detail, the con-
scientious completeness which, although one of them
at least was working for his immediate bread-and-
butter, and one at least was eaten up with the
impatience of genius, distinguish their work.

We shall, I hope, soon have the history of the
' P. R. B.' from the pen of Mr. Holman Hunt him-
self. But, as he but lately said to me, new matter is
always cropping up from occurrences such as the
death of Woolner, which makes it necessary to re-
model in one place and possible to augment in
another. It has, however, as Mr. Quilter says, been
already too long delayed, and, as nothing can be
complete in this world, this would seem to be as good
a time as a few years hence. When it does come,
nothing will appear more remarkable to those who
study the movement than the self-evident nature of
the principles which burst upon that little band of
artists in the light of a revelation. In literature the
.principles had already been recognised, and had
taken deep root. Indeed, Jane Austen had put the
protest that they were formulating into the mouth of
Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. ' I
detest jargon,' she says, ' of every kind, and some-
times I have kept my feelings to myself, because I ,
could find no language to describe them in, but was
worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning/

Introductory 1 1

But pictorial art, except in the case of certain note-
worthy individuals, was far behind when it occurred
to these young men that surely it would be better to
speak to their fellows in the vernacular instead of with
the pedantic altiloquence of the schools. We_da-_.
clare against hyperorthodoxy, they said. We take
our stand upon Nature, as Luther did at Worms on
God's Word. And they called themselves pre-
Raphaelites, when they should have called them-
selves Dissidents, or by some term that the world
would have understood. As it was, the world did not
understand, and called them charlatans, a name
which the world always applies at first to persons
of any real distinction and originality.

CHAPTER II.

AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE ' P. R. B.'

HERE I should like to say a word upon the
inception of the movement which has been
so far-reaching in its results, a word which
I should have hesitated to write were it not that
Mr. Quilter's account of the ' P. R. B.' has been
published, whilst Mr. Hunt's is still on the stocks.

Mr. Quilter has a chapter in his charming book of
Preferences headed, * Ford Madox Brown : the
Teacher of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Holman
Hunt,' and those who read this and the chapters fol-
lowing will go away with the impression that to
Mr. Madox Brown is unquestionably due the credit
for the new direction which the 'P. R. B.' movement
gave to art in the immediate future. Now I do not
presume to say that Mr. Quilter is altogether wrong.
Indeed, I think it will be clear to all that Mr. Madox
Brown was ripe as anyone to grasp the spirit of the
new impulse. But I think that the world should be
reminded that there is a view of the matter which
differs very materially from his, and which is based
upon authority certainly as good as that which Mr.

As to the Origin of the 'P. R. B: 13

Quilter quotes. And to that view, which has been
stated to me directly, I feel it my duty to give a like
prominence, as far as I am able.

Let us see for a moment what Mr. Quilter says as
to the beginning of the T. R. B.'

'Very amusing,' he writes, 'is Brown's account of
the way in which Rossetti's lessons used to be re-
ceived by the pupil, and very characteristic of the
behaviour of Rossetti and the matter-of-fact way in
which his master treated him — setting him down to
still-life groups, in which an old tobacco canister *
figured as one of the chief objects. " Rossetti was
most impatient of this work. He used to clean his
palette on sheets of notepaper, and leave them lying
about on the floor, and they would often stick to my
boots when I came in in the dark !" Here is sans
phrase, the beginning of the pre-Raphaelite brother-
hood,' continues Mr. Quilter, ' and the source of the
inspiration of its chief member, an impatient pupil
fuming at the representation of a tobacco canister,
and littering the studio with palette scrapings, which
stick to his master's boots !'

Yes, the writer may well put a note of admiration
at the end of such an astounding statement. Truly,
to parody Boileau, ' la souris en travail enfante une
montagne.' Put plainly, what we are conjured to do is
to give Mr. Madox Brown the credit for the ' P. R. B.'
movement. Why ? Because, if you please, Rossetti
was driven away by disgust at Mr. Madox Brown's
method of instruction from his studio to that of Mr.
Holman Hunt. Truly, we shall be told next to sing
the praises of Catherine de' Medici as the foundress

* Mr. Hunt, in his article in the Contemporary Review (p. 479),
says it was the ' bottles ' which Rossetti dwelt upon, but that is im-
material.

14 Early Writings of Tennyson

of the Huguenot Society of London. If this is the
method we are to go upon, we shall in good sooth
have to make a clean sweep of the world's Valhalla.

Now, I quite agree with Mr. Quilter that her most
gracious Majesty the Queen might just as well
' shake hands with Madox Brown as with an aged
negress from South Carolina,' and have no doubt
that our august Sovereign would find very great plea-
sure in doing so if occasion presented itself* I am
also prepared to feel indignant because this finest of
living colourists, as Rossetti called him, should be
neglected and forgotten, whilst certain other artists
that shall not be named roll about in their carriages
and live in Queen Anne houses. Why they should
not as long as they can afford to do so I am at a loss
to understand. At the same time, these considera-
tions do not make me any the more willing to give
Mr. Madox Brown more credit than is his due, to
the exclusion of Mr. Hunt, who seems to me to
have much stronger claims upon the gratitude of
those who rejoice in what has been called the
English Art Renaissance. No one, I take it, will
deny that Rossetti became eventually the head and
brain of the movement, but equally, I think, it
cannot be denied that, had it not been for Holman
Hunt, the nineteenth century ran the risk of being
deprived of all the influence which this most remark-
able genius was to bring to bear upon pictorial art,
despairing and dispirited as he was by the unsuitable
tasks to which his first master had set him down.

It is quite true that Rossetti was immensely im-
pressed by Mr. Madox Brown's Westminster frescoes,
but it is equally true that he was immensely dis-

* This was of course written before the lamented death of the eminent
painter.

As to the Origin of the 'P. R. B: 15

gusted with the methods by which his master sought
to lead him on to their emulation. The fact was
that mere drudgery, in which he seemed to get no
forwarder, was impossible to one of his impetuous
and original temperament, and, in despair, he fled to
Holman Hunt and told him that he proposed to
' chuck the whole thing.' With difficulty Hunt dis-
suaded him from doing anything final or rash which
might possibly have pledged him to the exclusive
pursuit of literature, as was the case with his great
namesake, to the regret, no doubt, of those who
loved painting more than poetry, and at last induced
him to fall in with a suggestion, original in idea, and
one which commended itself to Rossetti's ambitious
enthusiasm. He was to pick out one of his favourite
drawings in which he could take some intelligent
interest, and set to work and draw it out to scale,
and space out the figures on a large canvas. He
was then to work all round the figure-spaces at the
still life, doing every atom of this from Nature. One
item was a vine which Hunt packed him off to paint
in a conservatory in the Regent's Park. Then, after
a month or two of such work, when he had painted
up to the outline of his figure-spaces, he was to
attack them, and by the time the faces were reached
he would find that his technical skill had so increased
that he would be able to storm this most difficult part
with some prospect of success. Rossetti enthu-
siastically grasped the idea, and begged hard to be
allowed to share the studio which Hunt was just
then starting. Hunt at first said that it was not
large enough, as he proposed to put up a bed in
it and sleep there. But Rossetti was importunate,
and complained that he could never get on unless
continuously under his friend's guidance and within

1 6 Early Writings of Tennyson

reach of his advice. Finally Hunt gave way, and in
the result found him a most charming and inspirit-
ing companion. And it is not difficult to realize
with what enthusiasm one of Rossetti's impression-
able nature would recognise, for example, the im-
portance of painting a face in the open air, so as to
get the true goose-fleshy appearance that would be
lost in the warmth of the studio. This was the
beginning of the Cleveland Street time, and, I ven-
ture to affirm, was the true origin of the modern
romantic school of painting.

Here, surely, we have a more likely genesis of the
pre-Raphaelite idea than that which Mr. Quilter has
given us. Indeed, I am inclined to think that it
came nearer to being suffocated than being born in
Mr. Quilter's tobacco canister. Not that I would
for a moment wish to seem to support the theory
that any great movement is the outcome of one
original personal impulse alone, and that we can put
our finger down and say this was the hour, without
which it had not been. With Mr. William Sharp, on
this point, I am wholly in accord, and see that Dante,
for example, was ' led up to through generations of
Florentine history.' On the other hand, we are
bound, I think, to give the special credit to those
bold spirits who have not hesitated to

' Take the current when it served,'
v\

and have boldly faced the rocks of criticism and
misrepresentation which awaited them in their
uncharted course. '

Mr. Madox Brown, we all know, or ought to if we
don't, has done what is called pre-Raphaelite work
of the purest and most notable description ; but it
would surprise me to learn that the principles in-

As to the Origin of the ' P. R. B: 17

volved in that term were adopted independently,
and are not distinctly traceable to the period of his
association with these young men.

So much for this divagation, which the importance
and interest of the subject will, I hope, be held to
justify. Now for the more immediate consideration
of the ' P. R. B.'s ' as illustrators of Tennyson.

CHAPTER III.

MILLAIS.

OF the three pre-Raphaelites, Millais claims our
first consideration, with his exquisite draw-
ing of Mariana in the Moated Grange, and it
is a happy chance that gives the foremost position
to one who, whatever may be the limits of his
original imagination, undoubtedly holds highest rank
amongst the illustrators of other men's fancies. And,
when we talk about illustrating, what is it exactly
that we mean ? We use the word in its primary
sense, as Chapman does in the line :

' Here, when the moon illustrates all the sky.'

Literally, to illustrate means to elucidate, although
of course to many an illustrated book is merely
tantamount to a book with pictures. We shall find
that this distinction assists us in properly appre-
ciating the difference between the work of Millais
and that of Rossetti in this volume. The value
of the former we shall discover is intrinsic. The
value of the latter is extraneous. Millais's moon
' illustrates ' Tennyson's sky, and belongs to it.

Millais 1 9

Rossetti adds another heaven, or perhaps, rather,
another earth.

Nothing is more wonderful to me in the whole
history of art -collaboration than Millais's exu-
berant sympathy with those men of letters with
whom he has been called upon to join forces.
Shoulder to shoulder he has fought with them,
never overpowering their text with the splendour of
his achievements, but loyally confining himself to
the accomplishment of their purposes rather than
his own. His instinct rarely seems to be at fault in
catching the exact meaning of words ; his know-
ledge, once he has grasped the thought how to
translate it graphically, never. Every time I set
myself down to look at his book-illustrations, I am
the more astonished at the apparently inexhaustible
depths of the knowledge of things he possesses.

It is a far cry from Anthony Trollope's novels to
Alfred Tennyson's poems, and yet he handles the
one as easily and unpedantically as the other. Of
the former, I have had many occasions to speak. To
the latter, the aim of this book confines us.

We know how some people's thoughts naturally
clothe themselves in appropriate language, and we
marvel how gracefully and with what propriety the
beauty of form is suggested by the exquisite gar-
ment; but, still, we are conscious that at best more is
concealed than divulged. As a vehicle for convey-
ing an idea from one man's mind to another's, lan-
guage is comparatively slow-paced and leisurely. It
can never at a flash present a story, a character, an
inspiration. It seems at times to go near doing so,
but sound is a sluggard by the side of light. It is
only given to the pictorial artist to impart an idea
with anything approaching what we call * the swift-

2O Early Writings of Tennyson

ness of thought.' And I know of no man who has
a greater power of recognising, as if by inspiration,
the essential pictorial requirements of an idea than
the great artist of whom I am now treating. It may
be true that at Sir John Millais's birth there were
only twelve golden plates, and that the cross-
tempered fairy was not invited. It may be that,
when nearly every wonderful gift had been showered
upon him by the fairy godmothers, the cross-
grained old harridan came hobbling in at the last
v moment and deprived him of Imagination, by which
all was spoiled. But if this was the case, then, I am
sure, when all was sorrow and despair, it was sud-
denly found that the twelfth fairy had not yet made
her gift, and that she came forward and said in her
gentle voice : ' Although I cannot take away the evil,
I can soften it. He shall have such a quick artistic
sympathy that, so long as he is content to draw his
inspiration from others, his lack of Imagination
shall hardly be perceptible.' And it is this quick
artistic sympathy, combined with extraordinary
technical skill, that makes him stand out as the
greatest book-illustrator we have seen. Probably,
indeed, this is because of his lack of originality,
rather than in spite of it.

I cannot do better than quote here what Mr.
Quilter says of these Tennyson illustrations of his :

'All are delightful, all are beautiful, with truth
of keen visual perception, artistic spirit and know-
ledge ; but the imaginative quality is hardly to
be found in a single instance. Yet these designs
are, if we accept Ruskin's definition, the most defi-
nitely and essentially pre-Raphaelite compositions
which any member of the brotherhood or sym-
pathizer with the school has produced. They do

Millais 2 1

one and all present their subjects with the sim-
plicity and reality which were the distinguishing
qualities of early Italian art. Also in this presenta-
tion there is to be found nothing strained or morbid,
as in Rossetti ; nothing harsh or disagreeable, as
was too often the case with Holman Hunt ; nothing
bizarre or awkward, as occurs in several of Madox
Brown's pictures. They have Ruskin's idea of pre-
Raphaelitism, but no mannerisms derived from the
study of mediaeval art, and are clearly unaffectedly
modern ; failing no whit in truth, they fail as little
in beauty. It was my good-fortune when quite a
lad to stay in a house where on the. drawing-room
table (as was the custom in those days) there lay
some large gift-books, and amongst them a folio
volume entitled The, Cornhill Gallery, which con-
tained careful reprints of these drawings, and I
think it was to this fact that I owed the sympathy and
admiration I have ever since felt for Millais's genius,
and for that view of art which was inculcated by
him ; a view in which pictorial beauty appeared to
be considered in terms of truth and simplicity, to
depend ultimately on its correspondence with facts
of nature and life, and to be absolutely superior in
the attainment of these objects to any possible short-
coming in the character of its subject-matter, or to
almost any breach of the conventional rules of
art.

* How it is that, with all our talk about art — some
of which must be sincere — no one cares to-day to
think about this grand collection of drawings, or
hold them up as models for our young painters, is
to me inexplicable. From the point of view of craft -
manship alone the work is a model of excellence,
both Rossetti's and Millais's pen and pencil work

22 Early Writings of Tennyson

being even in their youth entirely admirable, and
beyond all comparison superior to any of which we
can boast in England to-day.'

So writes Mr. Quilter, and I think all who have
studied the art of book-illustrating will have come to
the conclusion that Millais's consummate technique
is only equalled by his consummate understanding.
Nor is this extraordinary capacity of assimilation
only evident where his collaborator is of a subtler
imagination than his own. As we find him elevated
here by association with the poet into the empyrean
of Tennyson's genius, so we find him dragged down
by the ugly purport of Miss Martineau's novels, with
vvhich he was oppressed in the last days of his con-
nection with Once, a Week*

Mr. Holman Hunt has himself said to me that
both he and Rossetti in the days of the ' P. R. B.'
congratulated themselves that their clever brother
had found himself, and it was not till long after,
when each had gone his own way, that they were
able to realize that he had been feeding upon the
fancies which surged around him.

Chameleon-like, Millais is able to draw his colour
from his immediate surroundings, and with such an
absolute mastery that not only do we assent to him
as relevant, but he compels our belief in him as com-
ponent and essential.

It may be too much to declare that the best of
these pen-and-ink drawings kiss these poems into a
fuller and completer life, as Carlyle said Browning's
love did for Elizabeth Barrett ; but at least we may
say that, once we have seen them together, we cannot
bear to think of them divorced.

* Vide my article in Good Worth for August, 1891, on Millais and
Once a Week.

LADY CLARE.

After an unpublished watercolour by Mrs. Dante- Gabriel Rossetti.

( To face

Millais

And here I should like to say a few words as
to the methods by which the drawings in this
book have been reproduced. As I have pointed
out elsewhere, it was only at the beginning of
the decade in which the quarto Tennyson was
published that wood - engraving was recognised
as a fitting means for the multiplication of designs
in facsimile ; that is, as nearly as possible as
they left the hands of the artist. In the history of
wood-engraving the publication of Once a Week
marks the inauguration of this all-important era.
Up to the point of time when it was started, with
the exception, perhaps, of Mr. George Thomas's
work in the Illustrated London News, the xylo-
grapher's was the only hand which was recognisable
upon the wood-block. All that was to be recognised
of the artist was the composition and invention.
There was not necessarily a line in the reproduction
that corresponded to his pen-and-ink drawing. So
we see in many illustrated books of the period the
name of the engraver upon the title-page, with no
mention of the designer. Nor did the former give
up his position of honour without a struggle. Up
till now he had got most, if not all, credit for the
result, poor as it almost invariably was ; but in the
end Millais, Fred Walker, and their colleagues came
off victorious, and insisted upon drawing directly
upon the block and having every line faithfully left as
they had drawn it. And this was first recognised as
an almost invariable rule in the pages of Once a
Week. True, it has not proved an unmixed blessing.
The result is that whereas, up to the middle of the
century, drawings were chiefly done on paper and
translated by the wood-engraver in his own way on
to the block, from the moment when artists them-

24 Early Writings of Tennyson

selves began to draw on the block the drawings, as
such, were cut away and destroyed for ever. In the
former period, therefore, the original work still
exists on paper, but in the latter it is irrevocably
lost. However, in 1872, a method discovered a few
years previously was for the first time put syste-
matically into practice, by which a drawing on
paper could be photographed on to the block.
Hence wood-engraving is not now of necessity the
destructive process that it formerly was.

Thus we see that the impressions from the wood-
blocks in Once a Week are as nearly reproductions in
facsimile as the wood-engraver and the printer were
able to make them, and Mr. Pennell is wrong in his
book on Pen - Drawing and Pen - Draughtsmen
when he says of them : ' We have neither the draw-
ings nor their facsimile reproductions, but a transla-
tion according to the wood-engraver.' This em-
phatically does not apply to the work in Once a
Week, however true it may be, and is, of xylography
before that period. It must of course be remem-
bered that, in his delightful book, Mr. Pennell is
holding a brief for modern mechanical processes,
and is thus tempted to protest too much. There is
much to say, no doubt, in favour of these new
developments, but nothing will convince me that the
best style of wood-engraving of a drawing best
adapted to that method will not hold its own against
the best process-plate in the world.

Who, indeed, that has ever studied Bewick's ex-
quisite wood-blocks regrets that the pen-and-ink
drawings were not made on paper and reproduced by
process ? We are always knocking our heads against
metaphors, to the damage of both. Indeed, I am free
to confess I have knocked mine in the past against

Millais 2 5

this very same analogy, but I here deny that fac-
simile wood-engraving is a translation into another
language. I say, on the contrary, it is but a repeti-
tion of the same words in a different voice. True,
the voice has a less delicate tone, but every word
and every sentence is there and distinguishable.

Let us take the first drawing by Millais in Once a
Week, vol. i., p. n, to Tom Taylor's poem, Magenta.
Dalziel is the engraver, and a terribly difficult block
it must have been to cut. Can anyone say that
there is more here of the hand of the xylographer
than of the artist ? I know that it is not a perfect
piece of work. Who can expect such elaborate
operations to be perfect in the hurry of a weekly
publication ? But this I do say, that there is an
effect of the light airiness of muslin skirt in the
dusk which shows the master-hand at work, and is
as surely the artist's as the type of the poem which
it illustrates is not the handwriting of Tom Taylor.
Far be it from me to say that the reproduction is
equal to the original pen-and-ink drawing. No one
who has seen the master's original work would dare
to say this. But that it is a satisfactory popular-
ization of it, at which there need be no carping, I
confidently assert. So I wrote in Good Words, and
so I maintain still.

Coleridge has said ' Imitation is the mesothesis
of Likeness and Difference. The difference is as
essential to it as the likeness ; for without the
difference it would be Copy or Facsimile.' So we
may say wood-engraving (old style) is the meso-
thesis of the original drawing of the artist and the
engraver's untrammelled treatment of the subject.
The engraver's treatment is as essential to it as the
original drawing of the artist, for without the

26 Early Writings of Tennyson

engraver's treatment it would be a Copy or Facsimile.
Under the new system the engraver's treatment
vanished, and he became to all intents and purposes
a Copyist.

In the quarto Tennyson we find the engraver acting
in both capacities. In the Mariana of Millais, for ex-
ample, the Dalziel Brothers are Facsimilists. In the
Morte d' Arthur of Maclise, on p. 199, the same en-
gravers are Imitators, and who, comparing the two,
can doubt for a moment which is the most successful,
notwithstanding such a protest as that which has
been raised by Mr. W. J. Linton in his splendid
work on wood-engraving ? We can, of course, all
sympathize with one who finds himself amongst the
last of the great engravers who looked, and rightly
looked, upon xylography as a great original art, and,
when opportunity offered, prosecuted it as such ;
but at the same time it must, I think, be confessed
that wood-engraving has done more for art as its
handmaid than as its mistress.

It is a terrible thing to realize that many of the
exquisite drawings in this volume were drawn straight
on to the wood, and that no photographic copy was
kept. For, however skilled the hand of the engraver,
their counterparts were bound to prove more or less
faulty.

In some cases, happily, we shall find that the draw-
ings were first made on paper, and then redrawn on
the block, often with slight alterations, and in one
instance at least a sun-picture was taken of the
drawing on the wood before it was cut away by the
burin. It cannot but be a source of regret that all
the artists did not see the necessity of at least
calling in the cheap aid of photography for this
purpose; but probably they looked upon this work

Millais 2 7

as only sublimated pot-boiling, and little realized
of what surpassing interest it would be to another
generation.

Messrs. Macmillan and Co. are republishing the
quarto Tennyson, of which they now hold the copy-
right, and it is a matter, I think, for regret, that in
doing so they do not see their way to have some of
the designs re-engraved.

Mr. Ruskin, writing of them in an appendix to the
Elements of Drawing, says: 'An edition of Tennyson,
lately published, contains woodcuts from drawings
by Rossetti and other pre-Raphaelite masters. They
are terribly spoiled in the cutting, and generally the
best part, the expression of feature, entirely lost.
This is specially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti's
first illustration to The Palace of Art, which would
have been the best in the book had it been well
engraved . . . still, they are full of instruction, and
cannot be studied too closely.'

I could have wished that Messrs. Macmillan had
laid this well to heart, and if they could have
omitted a few of the less successful non-pre-
Raphaelite designs, the loss would not have been
severely felt, and the gain in balance would have
been more than considerable. Would that we could
have had for these drawings such an engraver as
Holbein had for The Dance of Death, or such a
master as Kretzschmar, without whom the public
would have little idea of the glory of Menzel's pen-
work.

Now, it is not my purpose here to discuss these
illustrations one by one and in methodical order.
What I want rather to do is to bring my readers
generally into touch with them, to demonstrate the
relative position and attitude of each artist to the

28 Early Writings of Tennyson

poet, and thus to bring them to enjoy the combina-
tion of the two arts in an intelligent and discriminat-
ing manner.

Of Millais's drawings especially it would be super-
fluous to do much more than generalize, since, as
has been shown above, he is in the truest sense an
illustrator, and text and woodcut should be studied
together. It would be no good for me to point out
the beauties of Millais's Mariana, for, if I may be
allowed to invert the order of things, Tennyson's
poem may be said to be a better commentary upon
it than that which anybody else could ever write ;
and so it is with almost all his drawings, whether it
be the extraordinarily successful St. Agnes' Eve, or
the perhaps even more convincing Edward Grey
and Emma Morland. It would be easy enough to
go into rhapsodies over them, but I shall leave my
reader to do so much on his own account ; and it
would be still easier to make such remarks as that
to which Mr. Ruskin gave vent in criticising another
treatment of the Mariana subject which Millais had
painted in 1851. ' This picture/ he wrote many years
later, ' has always been a precious memory to me ;
but if the painter had painted Mariana at work in
an unmoated grange, instead of idle in a moated
one, it had been more to the purpose.' Such ethical
observations would however, I am inclined to think,
be hardly acceptable, and somewhat beside the mark.

It would no doubt have been delightfully funny if
we could have had Tennyson's poems embellished
with woodcuts representing Tennyson's ideas as
they ought to have been, rather than as they were ;
but such treatment would hardly have met with the
wishes of those who demanded an illustrated edition
of the poems.

Mil la is 29

And here I must pause a moment to point out an
exception to the rule of Millais's complete knowledge.
In Mariana, Tennyson writes :

' Hard by a poplar shook alway,

All sil/er-green with gnarled bark :
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.'

Now, if there is one poplar to which this descrip-
tion does not apply, it is assuredly the Lombardy
variety. Tennyson undoubtedly had in his mind
the white or abele poplar, of which Cowper wrote :

'The poplar that with silver lines his leaf,'

which is certainly inapplicable to the tall, straight,
spire-like species which waves outside the window
in Millais's drawing. Leigh Hunt emphasizes the
peculiarity of the Lombardy poplar, which differs in
the plume-like sweep of its whole form from other
trees which wave their branches, in the lines :

' The poplar's shoot,
Which, like a feather, waves /hwz head to foot'

But to proceed — Mr. Theodore Watts has pointed
out how Tennyson's 'artistic instinct was so true
and sure that, in his narratives, he is as careful as
Homer, as careful as Chaucer, never to let the
movement of the reader's imagination be arrested by
the unnecessary obtrusion of landscape, however
beautiful.' Now, I want for an instant to demon-
strate, how one is always finding that any funda-
mental characteristic of Tennyson's poems, such as
this, will be as surely discovered in Sir John Millais's
illustrations to them, from which we recognise that
they are not merely the result of a consummate
technique in superficial contact, but are the outcome
of a profound and sympathetic insight. Look for a

30 Early Writings of Tennyson

moment again at the St. Agnes' Eve, on p. 309.
Read the exquisite poem, and then let the exquisite
picture sink into your mind. Each is most perfect
as each is the last dwelt upon. The chaste severity,

ST. AGNES' EVE.
(By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan &= Co.)

the subdued and lofty passion, are absolutely co-
extensive. The poem, like some perfect plant,
connotes a flower, and suddenly under the artist's
hands it bursts forth into its necessary blossom,

Millais 3 1

fragrant with a mental odour at once subtle and
refined.

The poem of St. Agnes was first published in the
Keepsake for 1837, and here in 1857, Just twenty
years later, it found its true pictorial counterpart in
simple black and white, a so-to-speak journeyman
drawing, printed from a wood-block a few inches
square, and more significant than the largest canvas
that has ever been painted on the subject. The
poem's picturesqueness of description is such that
it is surprising to find that it should not have com-
manded an illustration on its first appearance in
Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley's illustrated annual.

Before leaving Millais, as a Tennyson illustrator,
I should like to say one word as to the illustration X
to The Sisters on p. 109, that superb and much-
discussed pictorial representation of the mournful
and ever-varying refrain : ' The wind is blowing,
howling, roaring, raging, raving, in turret and tree.'
The no less than marvellous sympathy with which
the troubled atmosphere of the poem has been
caught by the artist is worthy of Charlotte Bronte's
splendid 'failure,' as Swinburne calls it, which
' nothing can beat, no one can match,' where ' The
moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale ; as glad as if
she gave herself to its fierce caress with love.'

Like it, this picture seems to me ' the first and last,
absolute and sufficient and triumphant word ' (in
the language of black and white) ' ever to be said on
the subject.' A writer in the Contemporary Review
gives this as an example of Millais's originality, as
opposed to his translatory capacity, and then contra-
dicts himself by saying that ' Tennyson's by-thought
of the storm breaking in on the old murderess's
confession is observed and grandly worked out.'

32 Early Writings of Tennyson

I have remarked elsewhere that we are always
knocking our heads against metaphors, to the
damage of both, and as I have denied that it is
misleading to say that facsimile wood-engraving is
a translation of a pen-and-ink drawing into another
language, so I assert that it is misleading to deny
that this woodcut is a translation of Tennyson's
poem by Millais into another language. I maintain
that in this drawing we have a perfect pictorial
representation of the idea which the poet's words
convey, and that the artist's production neither adds
to nor detracts from but illuminates it — in other
words, makes it possible for our physical eyes to
read in their own language what before was only
known to us in language of the lips.

It is instructive to learn that Millais was especially
pleased with his Cleopatra at the beginning of
A Dream of Fair Women, p. 149, and maintained
to Hunt and Rossetti that it was a highly imagina-
tive piece of work, hinting that it was quite on a
level in this respect with their contributions to the
volume. But when we come to look at it, we find
how strangely bad a judge a man is of his own pro-
ductions. If there is one of Millais's drawings that
verges on failure, surely this it is, not only in that it
is devoid of all imaginative qualities, but because it
is only a swarthy woman pointing at her swarthy
bosom, instead of being the queen who made

' The ever-shifting currents of the blood
According to her humour ebb and flow ' ;

the woman at whose nod

' The Nilus would have risen before his time ' ;

the woman with the piercing orbs which

Millais 33

' Drew into two burning rings
All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts
Of captains and of kings.'

No, if we want to know how Antony's mistress
was capable of treatment, let us take down an old
volume of the Cornhill Magazine and mark how
Frederick Sandys has portrayed for us the woman
of ' the low, large lids.' But that was Swinburne
and Sandys. This is Tennyson and Millais.

CHAPTER IV.

HOLMAN HUNT.

HOLM AN HUNT next, of the pre-Raphaelites,
claims our attention, but before dealing with
him directly, I want to say a word as to the
proper relation of book illustrations to the type with
which they are incorporated, a matter which suggests
itself in the contemplation of his contributions to
the volume under notice.

Everyone who has taken the trouble to think
about the subject is aware that the eye has a range
of vision varying according to the distance at which
it happens to be situated from what we may call
its plane of observation. In other words, that, with
the head held steadfast, the eyes have quite defi-
nitely limited regions over which they can wander,
greater or less according to the remoteness or pro-
pinquity of the ultimate background.

To take a convenient example. Hold this book
touching your nose, and you will see nothing but a
few inches of paper ; hold it at arm's length in your
library, and you will see not only the whole of the
book itself, but also objects on the wall all round it
for the space of several square yards ; stick it up on
the top of your chimney-stack, with the blue sky as

Holman Hunt 35

a background, and you will see, or rather would see,
if your vision were penetrating enough, the best
part of half creation, running to innumerable millions
of square miles.

Now, just as it is with general objects, so it is
with the type in which words are printed. The
extent of the plane of observation varies accord-
ing to the distance at which any given fount of
type can be easily read. Hence it is evident that
the clearer, which practically means the larger, the
type is, the longer is the line of print that can be
read with the head held rigid, and only the eye-
balls allowed to move from side to side. It is
for this reason that a well-printed book should
have larger type, if the lines are printed from
margin to margin, than if the pages are double-
columned. Suppose for a moment that the type
which is suitable to a two-inch line be extended to
a line of four inches, we shall find that either the
head will have to come to the assistance of the
eyeballs, and librate on the neck, wagging from side
to side, as do the heads of spectators at a tennis
match, as they watch the ball fly to and fro across
the net, or else the hand will have to do its part,
and draw the volume see -saw across the face.
Think for a moment of the agony of perusing a
legal script engrossed on parchment a foot or two
broad, and you will realize what I mean. Not that
I would undervalue the muscles of the neck, which
give our heads a limited pivot movement, nor do I
undervalue the muscles of the legs and thighs ; but
that is no reason why we should print our type
all round a column or inside a hollow cylinder,
so as to bring into play bodily movements which
are wholly unnecessary. Indeed, I am inclined to

36 Early Writings of Tennyson

think that the modern impressionist school will
almost find some fault with me for going so far
as to allow the use of the muscles of the eyes even,
for it seems to me that they have developed in
themselves a basilisk gaze, with which they can only
see one central point quite clearly.

But I digress. To proceed, it is, I think, quite
evident, from what has been said above, that every
fount of type connotes a certain proper length of
line, which can be computed to a nicety, and is
dependent upon the distance at which it can be
most easily read by a person of good average sight.

Thus, then, can be readily understood the rela-
tionship that should exist between the page and the
type used on it. So far so good ; but now we come
to a further principle, which I fear is borne in mind
by few if any of what we may call the architects of
books. Mr. Hamerton in The Graphic Arts tells us
much that is of interest about the harmony, the
artistic qualities, and the excellent family likeness
to be found in the letters of the best-designed
alphabets. But I doubt whether even he, with his
ready eye for accord and conformity, has ever gone
so far as to consider the proper correlation of type
and typo-blocks. What I am about to maintain is
this — that, as every fount of type connotes its proper
linear length, so every fount also connotes a certain
proper quality in the woodcut or process-block
which is incorporated with it. And let it be under-
stood that here I am talking primarily of the blocks,
wood or otherwise, which are used to illustrate the
text, and are printed at one and the same moment
as the type itself. In the case of full-page illustra-
tions the matter is not of such importance.

What, then, is the proper tie by which type and

Holman Hiint 37

block should be joined together ? We have realized
above that the length of a line of type depends upon
the distance at which that type can be most clearly
read. In the same way, there is in every picture an
inherent quality that requires an eye which is of
good average power to be at a certain distance from
it. If the eye is too near or too far off, the effect
will be ill-defined, confused and blurred. From
which it is evident that, where we have letterpress
and picture on the same page, we should have the
former, as the more adaptable, so chosen that each
shall be most clearly visible from one and the same
point. In other words, that it should be no more
necessary to move the page nearer to or further
from the eye, as we wish to glance from illustration
to letterpress, than it should be to turn the head or
move a book from side to side in reading.

It is clear that Rossetti himself had some such
idea when he wrote, in reply to a proposal that an
inscription should be added upon the frame of his
Sibylla Palmifera, ' An inscription is much more
difficult to do properly than a picture. If it is a bit
too large or too black, the picture goes to the devil ;
and if you have not some one to do it who has an
elective affinity for commas and pauses, I will ask
you to spare my poor sonnet.'

Let us see if we cannot find in this quarto
Tennyson with which we are dealing, examples in
this respect of well-constructed and ill-constructed
pages. And that we are the more likely to do so in
a book illustrated by various hands, than in one
illustrated throughout by one and the same, is, I
think, sufficiently obvious to justify the bare state-
ment. The want of balance in such a case is of
course almost inevitable.

38 Early Writings of Tennyson

This, then, brings us back to the consideration of
the part which Mr. Holman Hunt plays in the
illustrating of this book. Turn as we will to his
designs, we find that the type here used harmonizes
almost invariably with them, whereas it is far from
doing so with the majority of the others. Take for
example The Lady of Shalott on p. 67, where

' Out flew the web and floated wide,
The mirror cracked from side to side,'

and then turn from it to the tailpiece by Rossetti on
p. 75, and you will see what I mean. After read-
ing the last verse of the poem, you will find that, to
get a clear view of Lancelot musing on her lovely
face, the book must be drawn some six inches nearer
to your eyes. Indeed, you will find that this want
of harmony — of course, not in any way to be laid at
the door of the artist — is almost as invariable where
Rossetti's is the pencil employed, as it is the reverse
where it is Holman Hunt's.

It will, of course, be objected by the practical
person that such considerations are frivolous, that
none but an intellectual sybarite could demand such
an undoubling of rose-leaves, and that only a Ripaille
publisher could be expected to take such matters
into consideration ; but I confess to being one of
those who love perfection just because it is unattain-
able, and who find greater satisfaction in the assur-
ance that the proposition, that the angles of a
triangle are equal to two right angles, has never
been proved, and never can be proved, than in all
the finality of Euclid's Q.E.D's.

It is very tempting to go farther and point out
that the length of every picture connotes its breadth,
and vice versa, since the eyes, placed as they are side

THE LADY OF SHALOTT.
From the drawing as it appeared on the woodblock before cutting.

38.

Holman Hunt 39

by side, command a larger field laterally than they
do vertically. Mr. Jacomb Hood tells me that
to these very considerations we owe the undeviating
proportions of Mr. Brett's pictures, which have long
been painted on canvases cut according to a hard
and fast scale.

So much, then, for the general harmony of type
with illustration, as they apply to Holman Hunt's
designs in the quarto. In dealing with these specifi-
cally, I do not intend to describe each, but shall
confine myself to those about which I have in-
formation that seems to be of general interest.

The Lady of Shalott having already been men-
tioned more than once, I shall conclude such
remarks as I have to make upon it first.

Some years before the publisher, Moxon, projected
this volume, Holman Hunt, as I have said, had made
a pictorial study in illustration of this poem.* It
differed from that which finally appeared in the
quarto, particularly in respect of the ' shadows of
the world '

' Moving through a mirror clear,
That hangs before her all the year.'

In this first conception of the poem, he had sacri-
ficed fidelity to the original for the sake of making
the design more comprehensive, and had drawn a
series of small mirrors round the large one, in which
the successive magic sights of Camelot were by an
artistic license made to appear simultaneously.

Now, it will be clear to everyone, I think, that
this would inevitably result in a weakening of the
motive of the poem, and was really an unwarrant-

* Further interesting particulars of this design may be found in
Mr. Hunt's articles on ' The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,' published in
vol. xlix. of the Contemporary Review.

4O Early Writings of Tennyson

able liberty to take. The feeling that it was the
successiveness of the sights, and of the persons who
went by 'to tower'd Camelot,' that proved too much
temptation for the Lady, is an essential element in
the poem that would necessarily thereby be sacri-
ficed. The sense of a gradual weakening of the
will by, first, the lovely reflection of the river-eddy,
then of the surly village churls, then the red cloaks
of the market girls, then the troop of damsels glad,
then the abbot on his ambling pad, then the curly
shepherd lad, and the long-haired page in crimson
clad, then the knights riding two and two, until
there comes the crowning fascination of all, Sir
Lancelot with the brazen greaves, when at last
the unholy desire to look down to Camelot could
be restrained no longer, must be lessened by any
such collocation of the passing shadows. It was
therefore with a true sense of artistic fitness that
this mode of treatment was subsequently aban-
doned.

Now, it is one thing for an illustrator to come into
direct collision with his author. This, I take it, is
absolutely contrary to all the ethics of collaboration.
It is quite another thing for the artist to import into
his work particulars that have been ignored in, but
are not inconsistent, with the author's production.
Indeed, when we consider the matter closely, it is
inevitable throughout that this should be the case.
To take an obvious example, Tennyson does not
even mention the Lady of Shalott's hair ; but that
would hardly preclude Mr. Hunt from representing
her other than bald. Nor will anyone find fault with
the artist for going so far as to render her tresses
becomingly crimped. Indeed, it is one of his
principal duties to decide what additional particulars

Holman Himt 41

are necessary to a satisfactory pictorial representa-
tion of the literary subject, and may be made
without interfering with the literary motive.

' My dear Hunt,' said Tennyson, when he first
saw this illustration, ' I never said that the young
woman's hair was flying all over the shop.'

' No,' said Hunt ; 'but you never said it wasn't,'
and after a little the poet came to be wholly recon-
ciled to it.

Not so easily did he allow himself to be pacified,
however, when he saw the long flight of steps which
King Cophetua descends to meet and greet the
Beggar Maid, on p. 359.

' I never said,' he complained, ' that there were a
lot of steps ; I only meant one or two.'

' But,' said Hunt, ' the old ballad says there was a
flight of them/

' I dare say it does,' remonstrated Tennyson ; ' but
I never said I got it from the old ballad.'

' Well, but,' retorted Hunt, ' the flight of steps
doesn't contradict your account; you merely say:
" In robe and crown the king stept down."

But Tennyson would not be appeased, and kept
on declaring that he never meant more than two
steps at the outside.

Whilst, however, to return to The Lady of Shalott,
Tennyson was finding fault with the dishevelled
appearance of the Lady's hair, it is curious that he
should not have remarked upon a far more patent
interpolation on the part of the artist. Whether or
not it will be admitted that it was legitimate for
Holman Hunt in his capacity of book-illustrator to
present the Saviour of mankind nailed to the cross
on one side of the fatal mirror, when there is no hint
of any specific creed throughout the poem, will

42 Early Writings of Tennyson

probably depend upon the individual interpretation
of the critic. Tennyson's poems have been appro-
priated by many schools and many religions. So
Holman Hunt naturally found in the fundamental
truth of this ballad what was to him, as Ruskin says,
not ' merely a Reality, not merely the greatest of
Realities, but the only Reality;' and he ear-marked
the poet's meaning accordingly.

Not long ago, in a board school, a boy was asked,
was his father a Christian, a Jew, or a Catholic. The
lad said he was none of these, but was a lamplighter.
I am inclined to think that this was about what
Tennyson was ; but Holman Hunt came along and
labelled him a Christian one. Rossetti labelled him
otherwise. And what else could be expected ?
Hunt never forgot that the human body masked an
immortal soul. Rossetti rarely remembered, if
indeed he believed, that the soul is undying. Hunt
has faith, and perceives everything with an eye on
the future. Rossetti is only really conscious of the
present and the past.

Mr. Hamerton, writing in 1862 of ' word-painting
and colour-painting/ says of Tennyson, he ' seems to
me to understand the limitations of word-painting
better than any other man. There is not the
slightest straining after unattainable fidelities in any
of his descriptions. They go no farther than the
limits of the art allow ; and they are always exquisite
as far as they go. This is the highest praise that
can be given to any artist, because it implies his
perfect conception of the boundaries of his art, and
his mastery over all that lies within those boun-
daries.' These words apply alike to illustrator and
poet, and it appears to me open to question whether
Mi. Hunt has not, in this particular instance, in

Holman Hunt 43

some measure failed to appreciate the strictest
limitations set by the ethics of book-illustrating.
When, however, so much is said, all is said, for, in
the great canvas upon which Mr. Hunt has been for
some time engaged, which I have been privileged to
see in its unfinished state, and which is an enlarge-
ment of this design, there is evidence that the artist
has come to a like conclusion, for I find the panel in
which the Christ appeared is now occupied by a
wholly different subject. When I saw this canvas
in April, the figure of the Lady was nude, and I
could not but tell the artist that it seemed to me
almost sacrilege to drape so fair and exquisite a
conception, which taught the lesson at one flash that
modesty has no need of a cloak. This lovely figure
bore no evidence ' of having been servilely copied
from a stripped model, who had been distorted by
the modistes art.' It did not suggest unclothedness,
for the simple reason that it gave no impression that
it knew the meaning of clothes at all.

I must not forget, whilst on the subject of The
Lady ofShalott design, to notice that of it Mr. Quilter
writes :* ' Look ... at the drawing by Mr. Holman
Hunt in illustration of The Lady of Shalott. Why,
this is a Rossetti in all its main points. Face and
figure, and arrangement of drapery and pose, all are /
due to the influence of the last-mentioned painter.'
That there is some truth in this, as there is some
truth in most of what Mr. Quilter writes, will, I
think, be admitted ; but no one can read his history
of the pre-Raphaelite movement without being
struck by the scant justice done to Mr. Holman
Hunt throughout. Mr. Hunt does not need, and
certainly has never sought, my poor advocacy. At

* ' Preferences in Art, Life, and Literature,' p. 82.

44 Early Writings of Tennyson

the same time it would, I think, be improper not to
point out that Mr. Quilter seems all through pre-
possessed in favour of Madox Brown and Rossetti,
and not to realize that the strength of pre-
Raphaelitism lay rather in the various great
qualities of several individuals, than in the extra-
ordinary personal influence of one or other of their
number.

Admitted that in this picture there are Rossetti-
like points, is not the drawing all Hunt's, is not
the super-sensuousness all his, is not the spiritual
exaltation as un-Rossetti-like as Rossetti's own
Girlhood of Mary Virgin ? Look at the firm bones
beneath the skin, look at the firm flesh beneath the
dress, and say if these are more characteristic of
Rossetti than Hunt. Surely we have only to
consider the drawings of the two men in this
volume to recognise the strong idiocratic qualities
of each. And as if to accentuate this cavalier treat-
ment of the great artist who is still with us, we find,
for example, on the same page of Mr. Quilter's book
from which we have just quoted, so grudging an
acknowledgment as the following, still further
cheapened by being thrown into a footnote : ' I am
bound to add (the italics are mine) — / am bound to
add that Holman Hunt's influence is also strongly
perceptible in some of Millais's work.' If this influ-
ence is so strongly perceptible, in the name of
common justice, why was all mention of it rele-
gated to the obscurity of an addendum, whilst
Rossetti's influence flames out in italics on the mid
page?

At the time Hunt was asked to collaborate in the
production of the Tennyson quarto, he was in the
Holy Land, and was no doubt prevailed upon by the

Holman Hitnt 45

fact that he had expended all available moneys on
his journeys, to undertake work which was not
what, under other and brighter circumstances, he
would have chosen. He had painted pictures there
which he could not sell, and it was necessary to get
bread-and-butter where the opportunity presented
itself. Let those who have never realized the straits
to which he and his associates were driven, turn to
the pages of the Contemporary Review, in which Mr.
Hunt has told us something of them. However, we
could ill have spared these illustrations, and the ill
wind that forced Hunt to what he considered pot-
boiling, blew an undying advantage to the lovers of
Tennyson's poetry.

It was, of course, from studies made in Palestine,
where, as has been said, Hunt was at the time of
receiving the commission, that we get the local
colour in the designs done in the quart© for the
poem Recollections of the Arabian Nights.

There are in this volume at least three portraits
which lend it extrinsic interest The first is in the
illustration to the exquisite ballad on p. 51, in which
(i. e., in the picture, not in the poem) Oriana ties her
kerchief round the wings of her lover's helmet,
whilst he strings his bow for luck against her foot —
that bow which, before it is again unstrung, shall
wing the ' false false arrow/ the ' damned arrow,' and
pierce 'thy heart, my life, my love, my bride,' aimed
though it was against the ' foeman tall, atween me
and the castle wall.'

And here I pause for a moment to point out an
addition (in this case it seems to me a perfectly
warrantable one) made by the illustrator to the
sentiment of the poem. It is a subtle, wholly
poetical touch, as fine as anything in the poem

Early Writings of Tennyson

itself, and, at the same time, is interesting as
evidencing how the * only Reality ' is here as ever at
the back of the artist's pencil. ' It is a heathenish
poem,' the artist would seem to say ; ' let me enter a

OK I AN A.

(By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan &" Co.)

protest against the want of recognition of an over-
ruling but inscrutable Providence.' And so he
accentuates the tragic horror by putting the lover
down on his idolatrous knees to her, and stringing
his bow 'for luck' against her foot, whilst she 'for

Holman Hunt 47

luck ' ties her kerchief about his crest. ' Here/
seems to say the artist who believes in God above
all things, ' here is an opportunity to strike a blow
against Mumbo-Jumbo charms, amulets, abraca-
dabra, and to give at the same time additional force
to the tragedy. Down on your knees to God would
have been the thing ; but kneeling to your mistress,
your bow cursed as it were by her presumptuous
blessing, your helmet crowned with her scarf, instead
of putting on for an helmet the hope of salvation,
you shall find that your "lucky" bow-string shall
speed an arrow to the charmer's heart, and that her
talisman shall bewitch your hand and eye instead of
nerving them.'

Not that the artist, as in the case of the crucified
Christ in the picture to The Lady of Shalott referred
to above, forces his opinions willy nilly upon the
reader, but, with a more admirable reticence, con-
fines himself to strategic accentuation of pagan
performances, and leaves the poem itself to be its
own most convincing commentary.

The exquisite grace and beauty of Oriana in this
picture must strike everyone, and all who go with
eyes into Mr. Hunt's drawing-room will recognize
in the portrait of his first wife, which hangs there,
the source of his inspiration. As for Mr. Hunt
himself, his face is now bearded, and it is hard to
make up one's. mind about his mouth and chin ; but
if I am not very much mistaken, he sat to himself

> for King Cophetua, on p. 359, in these early days
when the hire of models was an expense not lightly
to be incurred.

The third portrait is that of Miss Christina
Rossetti, in the picture of Uther's wounded son on

* p. 119. She is the 'weeping queen' whose cross-set

48 Early Writings of Tennyson

crown is directly below the little building on the
surf-beat promontory. Seven or eight years before,
the painter's sister had sat for the title role in The
Girlhood of Mary Virgin,' of whose face Mr. Sharp
writes : ' It is pale and ascetic, exactly such a Mary
as Renan imagines, full of dreams and visions ; it is
quite unlike the painter's best-known type, uniting
as it does the simplicity of refined girlhood with
the individuality of approaching womanhood.' In
this Tennyson picture we find the womanhood
attained.*

It may be interesting here to note how fond
Rossetti was of using his relations as models. His
mother appears as the St. Anna in The Girlhood of
Mary Virgin. His wife lives in Beata Beatrix. ' This
picture,' says Mr. William Rossetti, ' was painted
some while after the death of my brother's wife,
probably beginning in 1863, with portraiture so faith-
fully reminiscent that one might almost say she sat
in spirit and to the mind's eye for the face.' The
heavenly visitant in The Annunciation was to have
borne the likeness of his brother, for he writes
humorously, complaining that he had given up the
angel's head as a bad job, owing to Williams malevo-
lent expression.

So much for the portraits, and, with the mention
of Rossetti's presentment of his sister, we pass
from Mr. Holman Hunt to the consideration of the
pre-Raphaelite indeed.

* A wood engraving, after the chalk drawing by Rossetti of his
sister, made in 1866, is given in Mr. Edmund Gosse's delightful article
on the poetess in The Century for June, 1893, an^ is worth comparing
with the Tennyson block.

CHAPTER V.

ROSSETTI.

IT was, as we have seen, through dilatoriness on
Rossetti's part that his limited choice of sub-
jects to illustrate in this volume was due ; and
even when they were chosen we find him writing on
August 2, 1856, that he was 'at the last gasp of
time ' with the designs which he had undertaken to
produce. This we learn from Mr. W. M. Rossetti's
notes on his brother's work, and he goes on to say :
' I judge that he received £30 per design, as I
find in one of his letters the phrase, " Moxon owes
me £30, as I have done the King Arthur block."
He preferred Linton as a wood engraver to the
Dalziels, and was particularly pleased with his
second proof of the Mariana subject. Another
letter — addressed this time to Mr. Moxon — sets
forth that the design for The Lady of Shalott, though
delayed for a week, would be soon ready. " I have
drawn it twice over, for the sake of an alteration, so
you see I do not spare trouble." He speaks also of
the block for Sir Galahad, and of a second ' Sir
Galahad,' which he intended to do without delay.

4

50 Early Writings of Tennyson

This intention, it appears, must have miscarried,
for there is not in the Tennyson volume any second
illustration to the poem in question.

* Another project, equally abortive, was that of
doing a design for The Two Voices. "Nothing
would please me better," he adds, " than that Mr.
Madox Brown should do The Vision of Sin, as I hear
Hunt proposed to you. His name ought by all means
to be in the work." And so it ought, but it is not ;
more's the pity — for Moxon's illustrated Tennyson.
Mr. Moxon did, in fact, apply to Mr. Brown to take
up the various subjects which Rossetti had at first
intended to design, but had, for one reason or
another, omitted. But at that late date Brown was
unwilling to entertain any such proposal, and it
came to nought

' All this matter of designs and blocks, I well
remember, became a sore subject between Moxon
and Rossetti. Moxon used to write or call fre-
quently, and considered himself aggrieved because
the blocks, when he expected or required to have
them ready, were still uncompleted. He suffered
much worry and disappointment, and I have even
heard it said — but I suppose this is only to be con-
strued as a grim joke, not as a sober and grievous
reality — that " Rossetti killed Moxon." It is true
that the publisher did not long survive the issue of
the illustrated Tennyson.

'On the other hand, my brother, besides being very
fastidious, and therefore somewhat dilatory, over his
own share in these designs, found constant reason
to be doubly fastidious over the guise which his
work assumed at the hands of the wood engravers.
He corrected, altered, protested, and sent back
blocks to be amended. My brother was, no doubt,

Rossetti 5 1

a difficult man with whom to carry on work in
co-operation, having his own ideas, from which he
was not to be moved ; his own habits, from which
he was not to be jogged ; his own notions of busi-
ness, from which he was not to be diverted. Co-
operators, I can easily think, railed at him, and yet
they liked him too. He assumed the easy attitude
of one born to dominate — to know his own place,
and to set others in theirs. When once this relation
between the parties was established, things went
well ; for my brother was a genial despot, good-
naturedly hearty and unassuming in manner, and
only tenacious upon the question at issue. To play
the first fiddle, and have the lion's share — surely
that is, as Burns says, " a sma' request " for a man
conscious of genius.'

This note by the artist's brother throws a light
on book - production which cannot fail to be of
great interest. Before passing from it I may men-
tion that, through the kindness of Mr. Fairfax
Murray, the well-known possessor of so much of
Rossetti's work, I have had the privilege of seeing
three of the original drawings for these wood-
blocks.* It will be remembered that the artist
speaks above of alterations made in The Lady of
Shalott design. This I also find applies to the St.
Cecily, which is amongst Mr. Murray's treasures.
In this drawing the shaggy-headed angel is not
kissing the woman, as Rossetti finally drew on the
wood-block. The woman's face, too, is far more
beautiful in the drawing, and the difference in tex-
ture of the man's hair from the woman's is far more
strongly marked than in the woodcut ; but this is

* These may be now seen at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the
New Gallery.

\

52 Early Writings of Tennyson

probably due to the limitations of the engraver's
skill. On the other hand, it must be added, the
face of the soldier eating the apple in the left corner
is better in the woodcut. These drawings are, I
believe, to be published in facsimile by Mr. Murray,
with some fifty of the original Rossettis now in his
possession.

With reference to the proposed employment of
Mr. Ford Madox Brown mentioned in the above
quotation, Mr. Brown himself told me shortly before
his death that he had some recollection of a gentle-
man calling on him about the matter, but how it
was the commission went to some one else he never
knew. That it should have done so all true lovers
of art will, I am sure, regret.

One word, too, as to what Mr. W. M. Rossetti
designates his brother's fastidiousness about the
manner in which his drawings were cut upon the
wood. Personally I think an artist cannot be too
nice in such a matter, and it is interesting to note
how consistent Rossetti was in his determination
that bad reproduction of his work should not get
abroad. His constant practice in later years was to
reserve all copyright in the pictures that he sold,
although no doubt their prices were thereby
diminished, ' not really for the purpose of prevent-
ing the purchaser from getting the work engraved,
were he so minded, but in order to provide against
any mischance of a bad engraving, apart from the
painter's own control.'*

As I have said above, though not in so many
words, Rossetti, even when illustrating, must not be
taken seriously as an illustrator. He is not one,
and, in consequence, his designs in this Tennyson,

* ' Dante Gabriel Rossetti,' by his brother, p. 94.

Rossetti 53

and in the few other books in which his work
appears, are apt to receive but scant acknowledg-
ment from those who do not understand the position.
If I may be allowed to use a sporting metaphor, the
reading public is only a gazehound, and, seeing a
picture stuck over a poem having all the outward
characteristics of an illustration, it goes for it as such,
without questioning the nature of the quarry. But
when it comes to close quarters, and finds that it is
not a pictorial presentment of the letterpress, it,
not being a smell-hound and trained to scent an
artist whatever his surroundings, passes it by and
thinks it of no account. And, from the purely literary
point of view, this is natural enough. On the other
hand, those who love a picture for itself, apart from
any literary meaning, are thankful, and recognise the
artist pure and simple wherever found.

In his notorious Fleshly School of Painting, Mr.
Robert Buchanan, trying to write down Rossetti as
a poet, in his intemperate way said that he possessed
' great powers of assimilation and some faculty for
concealing the nutriment on which he fed,' and that
he had ' the painter's imitative power developed in
proportion to his lack of the poet's conceiving imagi-
nation.' Now, I maintain that no greater nonsense
was ever talked, except perhaps in other parts of
Mr. Buchanan's noisome article. I am glad to know
that Mr. Buchanan, years afterwards, retracted much
that he there wrote ; but mud not only sticks but
stains, and abjuration is but an ineffectual detergent.

Just as well might Shakspere be accused of want
of originality, because he founded his plays on
Boccaccio and history, or Tennyson because he went
to the old chronicles and romances for the founda-
tions of his stories, as Rossetti be accused of being

54 Early Writings of Tennyson

an imitator on this gentleman's facts. I wonder did
Mr. Buchanan ever take the trouble to look at the
Tennyson quarto ? If he did not and will, I chal-
lenge him to show me a trace of imitation of the
Tennyson poems in any of 'Rossetti's designs. In-
deed, the very obvious fault that is to be found with
them is the negligence of their prototypes. It was
no doubt the artist's duty to have subserved the
poet, and, surely, had thinly-disguised paraphrase
been as characteristic of his work as Mr. Buchanan
would have us believe, he would most certainly have
shown some trace of it on an occasion when that
was just the very thing he was employed to do.

Take, for example, the ' weary, wasting, yet
exquisite sensuality,' the heavily - laden, stifling
atmosphere of these drawingsr^n3^conFrast them
with the comparatively cold intellectuality, the airy
salubrity of the poems. Indeed, it is quite astonish-
ing how completely the artist has succeeded in
ignoring the idealism of the poet. It reminds us of
the first four lines of the sonnet embodying the pre-
Raphaelite principle that appeared on the front page
of The Germ :

' When whoso merely hath a little thought

Will plainly think the thought that is in him,
Not imaging another's bright or dim,
Not mangling with new words what others taught.'

And it emphasizes the fact that the ' P. R. B.' was
rather a bundle of incongruities than a corporation
with definite aims, when we find between the covers
of the same book such different courses adopted by
its three most important members. Indeed, book-
illustrating, in its strictest sense, was about the
most un-pre-Raphaelite occupation that could well |
be imagined. Rossetti seems to me clearly to have

Rossetti 55

recognised this, and to have deliberately ignored the
allegiance which, as illustrator, he owed to the text.
Whether he was justified, with the principles he
held, in undertaking the task, is, I think, open to
question, but no one who loves good pictures apart
from ethics will regret his acceptance of the com-
mission.

It is interesting to find him complaining, some
fifteen years later, of a treatment of his pictures
curiously analogous to that he here metes out to the
Tennyson poems. Mr. Rae, a large collector of his
works, had a catalogue of his possessions drawn up,
about the year 1872, inserting in it several quotations
from the poems of Mr. William Morris. Rossetti, on
seeing it, wrote : ' The quotations from Morris
should have been left out, as the poems were the
result of the pictures, but don't at all tally to any
purpose with them, though beautiful in themselves.'*
Exactly the same might be said of Tennyson's poems
and Rossetti's illustrations.

The mere fact that a man's drawings are repro-
duced in a book, and labelled with the names of the
literary productions that find place in that book, is
not enough in itself to constitute that artist an illus-
trator in the truest sense of the term. As we have
seen, Rossetti, even when professing to be so
occupied, gave freest reins to his imagination.
His art was to Millais's what an independently con-
stituted tandem leader is to a well-conducted shaft
horse. His Pegasus would go well enough as long
as his own masterful imagination held the ribbons,
but when another's fancy essayed to handle them
there was no making anything of him at all — he

* ' Dante Gabriel Rossetti,' by his brother, p. 44.

56 Early Writings of Tennyson

simply kicked himself free, and did the journey his
own way.

Let us take, for example, the 'St. Cecily' on p. 113.
Who but an artist of the utmost originality could
have begotten a design of such apparently alien sig-
nificance upon the four lines describing the tapestry
on which

' In a clear- walled city on the sea,
Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair
Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily ;
An angel look'd at her ' ?

Nay, more, who but an artist absolutely regardless
of the whole spirit of The Palace of Art could have
made, to mention but one of the picture's departures,
the angel, who, the saint told her husband Valerian,
' whether she was awake or asleep was ever beside
her,' a great, voluptuous human being, not merely
kissing (a sufficient incongruity in itself), but seem-
ingly munching the fair face of the lovely martyr.*
Is it not possible that the whole thing is a subtle pro-
/ test by Rossetti against the super-sensuousness of the
exquisite poem, with which his own more voluptuous
nature was far from being in sympathy ? And I am
strengthened in this view of the matter by a feature
in the picture which has puzzled all whose attention
has been drawn to it. The explanation I am about
to give runs the risk, I am aware, of evoking hostile
criticism, charging Rossetti as it does with a sort of
grim joke, involving something very like the betrayal
of a literary trust. At the same time I claim to be

* Mr. Fairfax Murray, who, I need hardly say, totally dissents from
my theory regarding this picture, believes that the wide-openness of the
angel's mouth is due to a mistake on the part of the engraver ; and,
further, believes that the hands of the angel are wrapped in the cloak
by way of emphasizing his reverence for the saintly lady. He also
believes that a serious attempt has been made by the artist to realize
the style of wings adopted by many of the early masters of painting.

Rossetti

57

giving a possible solution of what is as puzzling as
the curious fish-like ' rebus ' in the great Holbein in
the National Gallery, and one that must serve until
a better is found.

ST. CECILY.
(By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.)

The first to draw my attention to the feature to
which I allude was Mr. Holman Hunt, who, talking
the matter over in his studio, said, ' What do you
make of the wing-like somethings that rise behind
the angel's head ?' The picture was not before us

58 Early Writings of Tennyson

at the time, and I confessed I had never given any
special consideration to the matter. When I got
home, however, and inspected it with particularity,
I was in turn as puzzled as Mr. Hunt himself, and,
writing a few days later to Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
asked for an explanation. His reply runs thus, ' In the
design of "St. Cecilia" " the wing-like somethings
behind the head of the angel" appear to me to be
wings ; although until I now inspected the drawing
for the purpose of answering your inquiry, I don't
know that I had ever paid detailed attention to this
point. I must say that, regarded as wings, they are
not very elegantly realized ; but I see no reason to
doubt that wings they are.'

Now, everyone who looks at the woodcut will un-
doubtedly agree with Mr. Rossetti, where he says the
wings are not very elegantly realized. But can any-
one for one moment believe that such a master of
design as Dante Rossetti was capable of deliberately
drawing such apologies for wings, had he intended
to represent real ones ? I, for one, cannot ; and I
suggest that the explanation of the whole matter lies
in the fact that, in the figure who bears them, the
artist's intention is to draw, not an angel at all, but
a man masquerading as an angel. May it not be that
the whole thing is meant to be a sort of travesty of
the story of St. Cecily, and that some lover, en-
amoured of the lovely saint, has seen, in her belief of
an ever-present guardian angel, opportunity to seek
her presence ? Further, it would seem that the
clumsiness of the wings is accentuated for the pur-
pose of making this more apparent, that the great
cloak in which the angel is enveloped is another
indication that the whole thing is a deception, and
that the soldier eating the apple in the left-hand
corner is meant to further materialize the situation.

Rossetti 59

If a better explanation of the enigma is forthcom-
ing, I shall gladly welcome it. At the same time, I
confess that, reading through the poem again and
looking again at the so-called illustration, this gloss,
extravagant though, I am aware, it must appear at
first sight, seems to me more and more reasonable,
and if it is the true one, it does, I submit, throw
an interesting light on the attitude that Rossetti
assumed towards the text.

So much for Rossetti's impatience of the restraint
to which an illustrator7TF he istobe worthy of the
name, must submit. Here I have only taken one
picture at random, but let Mr. Buchanan, or anyone
else, inspect these lovely designs and then say
whether the inspiration has come from without or
within, and whether in any true sense Rossetti can
be said to be an imitator ' with great powers of
assimilation, and some faculty for concealing the
nutriment on which he fed.' We shall all agree
with Mr. Quilter's verdict that in this picture the
artist has pierced to the heart of deep emotions, but
to this must be added that the deep emotions to
which they have pierced are rather those of the
earthly ideal of Rossetti than the spiritual ideal of
Tennyson.

Being upon the ' St. Cecily ' picture, with all its
fascinating detail and elaboration, which, to those
only superficially acquainted with the art movement
with which we are concerned, are enough to label it
pre-Raphaelite, I should like to take the oppor-
tunity of unearthing from the pages of the Contem-
porary Review a paragraph of Mr. Hunt's which is too
illuminating to be hidden away in the bound volumes
of a periodical, and would beg all those who wish to
read the history of the ' P. R. B.' aright to keep it
well and constantly in their minds.

60 Early Writings of Tennyson

After instancing Poelemburg as an exemplary
artificer, who, from the very fact that he was a
mere imitator, made God's sky look hideous, and
repudiating the label of ' realists ' for himself and his
companions, Mr. Hunt proceeds :

' On one other point there has been misapprehen-
sion, which it is now time to correct. In agreeing
to use the utmost elaboration in painting our first
pictures, we never meant more than that the practice
was essential for training the eye and the hand of
the young artist : we should never have admitted
that the relinquishment of this habit of work by a
matured painter would make him less of a pre-
Raphaelite. I can say this the better now because,
although it is not true, as is often said, that my
detail is microscopic, I have retained later than
either of my companions the pencilling of a student.
When I take to large brushes, and enrich my
canvases with impasto, it will imply that the
remnant of my life would not suffice to enable me
to express my thoughts in other fashion, and that I
have, in my own opinion, obtained enough from
severe discipline to trust myself again to the self-
confident handling of my youth to which I have
already referred.'

I have heard Mr. Hunt so express himself by word
of mouth, but I prefer to set it down here as written
in cold ink with due deliberation and weighing of
words.

Mr. William Sharp, in his Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
a Record and a Study, has written of these
engravings on wood, after the artist-poet's designs,
so much that is pertinent to the subject of this book,
that, with his consent, I shall here, in running rapidly
through them, make his text the basis of my descrip-

I

STUDY FOR " MARIANA IN THE SOUTH.
BY D. G. ROSSETTI.

Rossetti 6 1

tion, only adding those particulars which further
examination has rendered apparent.* The first of
these designs is founded on the last two verses of
The Lady of Shalott on p. 75. In the immediate
foreground is the boat bearing its dead burthen, over
whose head an arched covering supports burning
candles, how there, and how lighted, known only to
the designer. Indeed, it is amusing to compare
Rossetti's independence in his treatment of the
subject with the imitation of his idea by others who
have followed him and pictured the same poem.
For example, take Mr. J. W. Waterhouse's in other
respects strikingly original conception, in which
not only do three of Rossetti's candles appear, but
also Mr. Holman Hunt's ' one great Reality ' finds
its place in the crucifix, above which they flare and
gutter. One and all seem to forget that ' heavily
the low sky ' was ' raining.'t

But to return to Rossetti's rendering. The boat
is moored to the oaken stairway of the palace in
Camelot, and the light of the torch held by some
servitor gleams on the pale, silent face of her who
lies so still and quiet, as well as on the face of
Lancelot as he stoops above her, musing on her
possible story. Beyond are swans on the river,
startled by the sudden commotion, and, farther off,
hurrying figures attracted from revelry or service by
the strange spectacle. The most satisfactory draw-

* I have not put all Mr. Sharp's words I quote in inverted commas,
as, with the constant interpolations I have found necessary, the reader's
eyes would be unduly harassed.

t Since writing the above I have received a letter from Mr. Water-
house, in which he says : ' With respect to the lighted candles in my
picture, I made use of them merely as a means of completing the com-
position, my excuse being that lighted candles might have been used by
the Lady of Shalott as a kind of devotional office before her death.
I remember seeing in an engraving from a mediaeval manuscript a bier
covered with candles.'

62 Early Writings of Tennyson

ing in this design is that of Lancelot, whose figure
is finely foreshortened as he bends from the stairway
over the barge ; while the half-jesting, half- real
curiosity of the courtier behind him is well rendered.

The succeeding illustration is to the ballad, Mariana
in the South, p. 82, its motif being the third verse.
Mariana has cast herself down before a crucifix, and
is kissing the feet of the body of Christ with ' melan-
choly eyes divine, the home of woe without a tear.'
In her hands she holds old letters written to her by
her lover who never comes, and others have fallen
from their fastenings below her knees and over the
couch on which she rests ; and behind her is the
mirror in antique wooden frame which had reflected
' the clear perfection of her face, that won his praises
night and morn,' but which now apparently is meant
only to reflect the back of her cloaked and forlorn
figure, although this particular detail is so unsuc-
cessfully drawn that the intention is open to doubt.

On the whole, however, the execution of this
design is good, and the interpretation, perhaps,
somewhat more in sympathy with the poem than
the others. Still, even here we find the illustrator
taking the unwarrantable liberty of not only adding
to, but differing from, his text in the substitution of a
crucifix, whose feet Mariana embraces in mingled
adoration and supplication, for the image of ' Our
Lady ' mentioned in the third verse. This may, as
Mr. Sharp says, be an artistic improvement, but
that is, I think, no valid excuse. The artist is act-
ing ultra vires, and, strictly speaking, the contract
made with him might have been repudiated on far
slighter grounds.

Mr. Sharp then proceeds to describe the ' St.
Cecily ' : ' Quite different from the simplicity of

Rossetti 63

" Mariana," ' he says, ' is the first design for The
Palace of Art already referred to. I have read, or heard
it explained, that the two figures represent the soul
and the body ; the former still in a trance, but being
kissed into the music of life by the desire of the
latter. The illustration, however, is in reality mainly
based on the following verse :

' " Or in a clear-walled city on the sea,

Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair
Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily ;
An angel look'd at her."

The design is a marvellously intricate one, and in
the extreme so-called pre-Raphaelite manner. The
gilded organ-pipes are in centre of the foreground,
and seem to be raised above a dungeon, the inner
darkness and outer bars of which just appear; in
the left corner an armed soldier is eating an apple,
and in the right a dove is winging its flight,
apparently from the dungeon, symbolizing, probably,
a life that has escaped at last the control of any
earthly guard. At the organ kneels St. Cecily, with
nerveless hands laid on the notes, and head and
body inclined backward in the embrace of the very
dishevelled and mortal-like angel. Behind the organ
is a dial ; and beyond, the walls of the great city
mounted with cannon ; beyond again, the quiet sea
thronged with ships from strange waters. Below, in
the centre of the design, is a deep court, with a tree
very much out of perspective, and a man at a draw-
well.* This, as will be apprehended from the fore-
going description, is really an illustration for the
poem, not of any verse therein ; but if it is not an
interpretation, it is a creation, and therefore interest-

* The openings of the organ-pipes, too, are as much out of drawing
as are the extraordinary stairs in Rossetti's Hamlet and Ophelia.

64 Early Writings of Tennyson

ing in its very disassociation from the work of the
poet. . . .

' The companion illustration is much simpler, both
in conception and execution. It represents " mythic
Uther's deeply wounded son " lying dozing in
Avalon, with round him the weeping and watching
queens ; while the strange barque that brought him
there is moored beyond the rocky shore, and what
looks like a small chapel stands on the further deso-
late coast. It is not the Avalon of legend, but the
Avalon of the artist, sad with the gloom of a strange
land and a strange doom. One of the queens is
recognisable as having been modelled on the artist's
sister Christina.

* The last of the designs for this volume, and the
most beautiful, is that illustrative of the third stanza
of Sir Galahad.* The " Maiden Knight " has reached
some lonely sanctuary, having heard afar off in the
wood a noise as of chanted hymns', before the altar
in the sacred shrine, where he has arrived, seeing
neither worshipper nor habitant, the tapers burn,
and in their light the silver sacramental vessels
gleam ; while, standing on rough wooden stairs, he
bows before it, stooping to make the sign of the cross
on his face with the holy water in a vessel suspended
on a beam. In front, between and above him and
the altar, a slanted bell is giving forth its solemn
clang, tolled by (to him) unseen nuns, singing at
intervals strange chants. Beyond, in the forest
darkness, his horse, clad with white banner with a
red cross, and impatiently pawing the ground, awaits
him. The design is simple and impressive to a high
degree, and poet and artist seem natural inter-
preters.'

* P. 305-

Rossetti 65

So writes Mr. Sharp, and I think that every-
one who studies these wood-blocks, together with
the poems, will agree that Rossetti was never
an imitator. At best, he was an interpreter. At
worst, from the book-illustrating point of view, he
was a great artist, with profoundly original con-
ceptions.

In conclusion, there is one word to be said of Ros-
setti as landscapist. In his poems there is to be
found the most exquisite and subtle use of pure,
natural scenes as setting for the human creatures
of his imagination. In his pictures it is far other-
wise. As Ruskin said, somewhat brutally, long ago
in one of his Lectures on the Art of England, during
his second tenure of the Slade Professorship : ' Ros-
setti refused the natural aid of pure landscape and v
sky ; his foliage looked generally fit for nothing but
a fire-screen, and his landscape distances like the
furniture of a Noah's ark from the nearest toy-
shop.'

Here ends my ' appreciation ' of the Tennyson
quarto, in so far as the three great pre-Raphaelite
brethren were concerned in it. Of their collabor-
ators, Creswick, Mulready, Horsley, Stanfield, and
Maclise, opportunity to speak may some day offer
itself, if the reception of this book about a book,
which is something of an experiment, should indi-
cate that there is a public to whom the results of
my studies of all known Tennyson illustrators would
prove acceptable.

INDEX.

Annunciation, 77ie, 48

Arabian Nights, Recollections of
the, 45

Austen, Jane, and the Pre-Raphael-
ite idea, 10

Beata Beatrix, 48

Bewick, his wood blocks, 24

Brett, J., A.R.A., the proportions
of his canvas, 39

Bronte, Charlotte, Swinburne on,

31

Brown, Ford Madox, and Rossetti,
13, 14; Quilter on, 12; his Pre-
Raphaelite work, 1 6

Cleopatra, Millais's design for, 32
Cleveland Street, 16
Contemporary Review, The, on

Millais, 31 ; Holman Hunt on

'P. R. B.' in, 59, 60
Comhill Gallery, The, 21
Cornhill Magazine, The, Sandys

in. 33
Creswick, T., R.A., 2

Dalziel Brothers, 25, 26
Dance of Death, The, 27
Dream of 1* air Woman, A, 32

Edward Gray, 3

English Art Renaissance, 14

Fleshly School of Painting, The, 53

Germ, The, 54

Girlhood of Mary Virgin, The,

44, 48

Good Words, 25
Graphic Arts, The, 36
Guinevere, Woolner's statue of, 2

Hamerton, on type, 36 ; on Tenny-
son, 42

Hood, Jacomb, 39

Horsley, J. C., R.A., and the
Quarto, 6

Hunt, Holman, 34-48 ; his Lady
of Shalott, 3, 38-41, 43, 44, 51,
61 ; compared with Millais and
Rossetti, 7, 8, 9 ; his history of
the 'P. R. B.,' 10 ; and Rossetti,
15 ; harmony of type with his
designs, 38 ; difference of opinion
between him and Tennyson, 40,
41 ; his Christianity, 42, 46 ; his
unfinished picture, 43 ; his in-
fluence on Millais, 44 ; in the
Holy Land, 44 ; his illustrations
to Recollections of the Arabian
Nights, 45 ; portrait of his first
wife, 47 ; on St. Cecily, 57 ; on
the 'P. R. B.' in The Contem-
porary RevieTV, 59

Idylls of the King, The, 2
Illustrated London News, The,

Thomas's work in, 23
Illustrating, Meaning of, 18
Illustrations, Manner of reproducing,

23 ; and type, 34-36

Keepsake, 7 he, 31
Kretzschmar, 27

Linton, W. J.,on wood engraving,
26 ; Rossetti's preference for, 49

Lady of Shalott, The, 3, 38-41, 43,
44, 5i,6i

Maclise, D., R.A., 2 ; his Morte
d' Arthur, 26

Index

67

Macmillan and Co., Messrs., 27

Magenta, 25

Mariana in the Moated Grange ', 3,
1 8, 26, 28, 29

Mariana in the South, 62

Martineau, Harriet, her effect on
Millais, 22

Menzel, 27

Millais, Sir John, R.A., 18-33 J
compared with Holman Hunt
and Rossetti, 7, 8, 9 ; the best
illustrator, 18 ; Quilter's opinion
of, 20-22 ; his power of assimila-
tion, 22 ; his victory over the
engravers, 23 ; his first drawing
in Once a Week, 25 ; his Mariana,
26, 28, 29 ; his sympathetic in-
sight, 29 ; his Cleopatra, 32 ;
Holman Hunt's influence on, 44

Morris, William, and Rossetti, 55

Morte cf Arthur, 26

Moxon, Edward, his enterprise, I ;
his choice of illustrators, 4 ; his
relations with Rossetti, 50 ; and
Madox Brown, 50

Mulready, W., R.A., 2

Murray, Fairfax, 51 ; on St. Cecily,
56 (n.)

Once a Week, Millais's connection
with, 22 ; wood engraving in,
23, 24 ; Millais's first drawing in,

25
Onana, 45-47

Palace of Art, The, 3, 56

Pennell, Joseph, on wood engraving,

24
Photography and wood engraving,

24

Poelemburg, 60
J'oems by Two Brothers, I
Portraits in the Quarto, 45, 47
Pre - Raphaelite Brotherhood, its
history, 10 ; its title, 1 1 ; bundle
of incongruities, 54 ; Holman
Hunt on, in Contemporary Re-
view, 59

Preferences, Harry Quilter's, 12
Pride of the Village, The, 2

Quilter, Harry, on Ford Madox
Brown, 12 ; on origin of ' P. R.B.,'
13 ; on Millais's illustrations, 20 ;

on The Lady of Shalott, 43 ; and
Holman Hunt, 43

Rossetti, Christina, her portrait, 47

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 49-65 ; his
dilatoriness, 5 ; Ruskin's opinion
of, 7 ; compared with Holman
Hunt and Millais, 7, 8, 9 ; and
Madox Brown, 13; head of Art
Renaissance, 14 ; shares Holman
Hunt's studio, 15 ; his impetu-
osity, 15 ; his Sibylla Palmifera,
37 ; his Girlhood of Mary Virgin,
44 ; his models, 48 ; and Moxon,
49, 50 ; and the engravers, 50 ;
likes to play first fiddle, 51 ; no
true illustrator, 52 ; no imitator,
54, 65 ; his St. Cecily, 56-59 ;
William Sharp on his engravings
in the Quarto, 60 ; his Lady of
Shalott, 6 1 ; as landscapist, 65

Rossetti, W. M., on the Quarto,
4 ; on Beata Beatrix, 48 ; on his
brother's work in the Quarto,
49-51 ; on St. Cecily, 58

Ruskin, John, on the Quarto, 2,
27 ; on Rossetti, 7 ; on Mariana,
28 ; on Holman Hunt, 42 ; on
Rossetti's landscapes, 65

Russell, Lord John, and Tennyson,
7

St. Agnes' Eve, 28, 30

St. Cecily, 56-59 ; Ruskin on, 27 ;
original in Fairfax Murray's pos-
session, 51 ; Sharp on, 62, 63

Sandys, Frederick, his Cleopatra,

Sharp, William, on The Girlhood
of Mary Virgin, 48 ; on Rossetti's
illustrations, 60 ; on Mariana in
the South, 62 ; on St. Cecily, 62,
63 ; on Sir Galahad, 64

Sibylla Palmifera, 37

Sir Galahad, 49 ; Sharp on, 64

Sisters, The, 31

Stanfield, C, R.A., 2

Swinburne and Charlotte Bronte's
splendid failure, 31

Taylor, Tom, 25

Tennyson, Lord, his first published
work, I ; and Maclise, 5 ; his in-

68

Index

difference to pictorial art, 6 ; on
Holman Hunt's illustrations to
The Lady of Shalott and King
Cophetua, 41 ; Hamerton on,
42

The Germ, 54

The Vision of Sin, 50

The Two Voices, 50

Thomas, George, his work in The
Illustrated London News, 23

Trollope, Anthony, 19

Type and length of line, 35 ; and
illustrations, 36

Walker, Fred, draws directly on

the block, 23
Waterhouse, J. W., A.R.A., his

Lady of Shalott, 61
Watts, Theodore, on Tennyson's

artistic instinct, 29
Wood engraving, 23-26
Woolner, Thomas, R.A., 2

THE END.

Elliot Stock, Paternoster Rmv, London.

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SUPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

Layard, George Somes

Tennyson and his pre-
Raphaelite illustrators