[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE NECKLACE OF PRINCESS FIORIMONDE." BY WALTER CRANE (MACMILLAN AND CO. 1880)]
"Some will be new works, some new combinations of old materials, and some reprints carefully cleared of impurities, without deterioration to the points of the story. All will be illustrated, but not after the usual fashion of children's books, in which it seems to be assumed that the lowest kind of art is good enough to give first impressions to a child. In the present series, though the statement may perhaps excite a smile, the illustrations will be selected from the works of Raffaelle, Titian, Hans Holbein, and other old masters. Some of the best modern artists have kindly promised their aid in creating a taste for beauty in little children." Did space permit, a selection from the reviews of the chief literary papers that welcomed the new venture would be instructive. There we should find that even the most cautious critic, always "hedging" and playing for safety, felt compelled to accord a certain amount of praise to the new enterprise.
It is true that "Felix Summerley" created only one type of the modern book. Possibly the "stories turned into satires" to which he alludes are the entirely amusing volumes by F. H. Bayley, the author of "A New Tale of a Tub." As it happened that these volumes were my delight as a small boy, possibly I am unduly fond of them; but it seems to me that their humour--_à la_ Ingoldsby, it is true--and their exuberantly comic drawings, reveal the first glimpses of lighter literature addressed specially to children, that long after found its masterpieces in the "Crane" and "Greenaway" and "Caldecott" Toy Books, in "Alice in Wonderland," and in a dozen other treasured volumes, which are now classics. The chief claim for the Home Treasury series to be considered as the advance guard of our present sumptuous volumes, rests not so much upon the quality of their designs or the brightness of their literature. Their chief importance is that in each of them we find for the first time that the externals of a child's book are most carefully considered. Its type is well chosen, the proportions of its page are evidently studied, its binding, even its end-papers, show that some one person was doing his best to attain perfection. It is this conscious effort, whatever it actually realised, which distinguishes the result from all before.