For them I'd climb, 'most all the Time And never tear no Clothes!
ILLUSTRATION FROM "RED APPLE AND SILVER BELLS." BY ALICE B. WOODWARD. (BLACKIE AND SON. 1897)]
The amazing number of Mr. Gordon Browne's illustrations leaves a would-be iconographer appalled. So many thousand designs--and all so good--deserve a lengthened and exhaustive eulogy. But space absolutely forbids it, and as a large number cater for older children than most of the books here noticed, on that ground one may be forgiven the inadequate notice. If an illustrator deserved to attract the attention of collectors it is surely this one, and so fertile has he been that a complete set of all his work would take no little time to get together. Here are the titles of a few jotted at random: "Bonnie Prince Charlie," "For Freedom's Cause," "St. George for England," "Orange and Green," "With Clive in India," "With Wolfe in Canada," "True to the Old Flag," "By Sheer Pluck," "Held Fast for England," "For Name and Fame," "With Lee in Virginia," "Facing Death," "Devon Boys," "Nat the Naturalist," "Bunyip Land," "The Lion of St. Mark," "Under Drake's Flag," "The Golden Magnet," "The Log of the Flying Fish," "In the King's Name," "Margery Merton's Girlhood," "Down the Snow Stairs," "Stories of Old Renown," "Seven Wise Scholars," "Chirp and Chatter," "Gulliver's Travels," "Robinson Crusoe," "Hetty Gray," "A Golden Age," "Muir Fenwick's Failure," "Winnie's Secret" (all so far are published by Blackie and Son). "National Nursery Rhymes," "Fairy Tales from Grimm," "Sintram, and Undine," "Sweetheart Travellers," "Five, Ten and Fifteen," "Gilly Flower," "Prince Boohoo," "A Sister's Bye-hours," "Jim," and "A Flock of Four," are all published by Gardner, Darton & Co., and "Effie," by Griffith & Farran. When one realises that not a few of these books contain a hundred illustrations, and that the list is almost entirely from two publishers' catalogues, some idea of the fecundity of Mr. Gordon Browne's output is gained. But only a vague idea, as his "Shakespeare," with hundreds of drawings and a whole host of other books, cannot be even mentioned. It is sufficient to name but one--say the example from "Robinson Crusoe" (Blackie), reproduced on page 32--to realise Mr. Gordon Browne's vivid and picturesque interpretation of fact, or "Down the Snow Stairs" (Blackie), also illustrated, with a grotesque owl-like creature, to find that in pure fantasy his exuberant imagination is no less equal to the task. In "Chirp and Chatter" (Blackie), fifty-four illustrations of animals masquerading as human show delicious humour. At times his technique appears somewhat hasty, but, as a rule, the method he adopts is as good as the composition he depicts. He is in his own way the leader of juvenile illustration of the non-Dürer school.