[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "MAKE BELIEVE." BY CHARLES ROBINSON (JOHN LANE. 1896)]
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "JUST FORTY WINKS" BY GERTRUDE M. BRADLEY (BLACKIE AND SON. 1897)]
Certainly it is possible that over-conscious art is too popular to-day. The illustrator when he is at work often thinks more of the art critic who may review his book than the readers who are to enjoy it. Purely conventional groups of figures, whether set in a landscape, or against a decorative background, as a rule fail to retain a child's interest. He wants invention and detail, plenty of incident, melodrama rather than suppressed emotion. Something moving, active, and suggestive pleases him most, something about which a story can be woven not so complex that his sense is puzzled to explain why things are as the artist drew them. It is good to educate children unconsciously, but if we are too careful that all pictures should be devoted to raising their standard of taste, it is possible that we may soon come back to the Miss Pinkerton ideal of amusement blended with instruction. Hence one doubts if the "ultra-precious" school really pleases the child; and if he refuse the jam the powder is obviously refused also. One who makes pictures for children, like one who writes them stories, should have the knack of entertaining them without any appearance of condescension in so doing. They will accept any detail that is related to the incident, but are keenly alive to discrepancies of detail or action that clash with the narrative. As they do not demand fine drawing, so the artist must be careful to offer them very much more than academic accomplishment. Indeed, he (or she) must be in sympathy with childhood, and able to project his vision back to its point of view. And this is just a mood in accord with the feeling of our own time, when men distrust each other and themselves, and keep few ideals free from doubt, except the reverence for the sanctity of childhood. Those who have forsaken beliefs hallowed by centuries, and are the most cynical and worldly-minded, yet often keep faith in one lost Atalantis--the domain of their own childhood and those who still dwell in the happy isle. To have given a happy hour to one of the least of these is peculiarly gratifying to many tired people to-day, those surfeited with success no less than those weary of failure. And such labour is of love all compact; for children are grudging in their praise, and seldom trouble to inquire who wrote their stories or painted their pictures. Consequently those who work for them win neither much gold nor great fame; but they have a most enthusiastic audience all the same. Yet when we remember that the veriest daubs and atrocious drawings are often welcomed as heartily, one is driven to believe that after all the bored people who turn to amuse the children, like others who turn to elevate the masses, are really, if unconsciously, amusing if not elevating themselves. If children's books please older people--and that they do so is unquestionable--it would be well to acknowledge it boldly, and to share the pleasure with the nursery; not to take it surreptitiously under the pretence of raising the taste of little people. Why should not grown-up people avow their pleasure in children's books if they feel it?