[Illustration: "CRUSOE AND XURY ESCAPING" FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK]
Perhaps there is no pleasure the modern "grown-up" person envies the youngsters of the hour as he envies them the shoals of delightful books which publishers prepare for the Christmas tables of lucky children. If he be old enough to remember Mrs. Trimmer's "History of the Robins," "The Fairchild Family," or that Poly-technically inspired romance, the "Swiss Family Robinson," he feels that a certain half-hearted approval of more dreary volumes is possibly due to the glamour which middle age casts upon the past. It is said that even Barbauld's "Evenings at Home" and "Sandford and Merton" (the anecdotes only, I imagine) have been found toothsome dainties by unjaded youthful appetites; but when he compares these with the books of the last twenty years, he wishes he could become a child again to enjoy their sweets to the full.
[Illustration: _"CRUSOE SETS SAIL ON HIS EVENTFUL VOYAGE" FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK_]
Now nine-tenths of this improvement is due to artist and publisher; although it is obvious that illustrations imply something to illustrate, and, as a rule (not by any means without exception), the better the text the better the pictures. Years before good picture-books there were good stories, and these, whether they be the classics of the nursery, the laureates of its rhyme, the unknown author of its sagas, the born story-tellers--whether they date from prehistoric cave-dwellers, or are of our own age, like Charles Kingsley or Lewis Carroll--supply the text to spur on the artist to his best achievements.
[Illustration: "THE TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD." FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK]
It is mainly a labour of love to infuse pictures intended for childish eyes with qualities that pertain to art. We like to believe that Walter Crane, Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and the rest receive ample appreciation from the small people. That they do in some cases is certain; but it is also quite as evident that the veriest daub, if its subject be attractive, is enjoyed no less thoroughly. There are prigs of course, the children of the "prignorant," who babble of Botticelli, and profess to disdain any picture not conceived with "high art" mannerism. Yet even these will forget their pretence, and roar over a _Comic Cuts_ found on the seat of a railway carriage, or stand delighted before some unspeakable poster of a melodrama. It is well to face the plain fact that the most popular illustrated books which please the children are not always those which satisfy the critical adult. As a rule it is the "grown-ups" who buy; therefore with no wish to be-little the advance in nursery taste, one must own that at present its improvement is chiefly owing to the active energies of those who give, and is only passively tolerated by those who accept. Children awaking to the marvel that recreates a familiar object by a few lines and blotches on a piece of paper, are not unduly exigent. Their own primitive diagrams, like a badly drawn Euclidean problem, satisfy their idea of studies from the life. Their schemes of colour are limited to harmonies in crimson lake, cobalt and gamboge, their skies are very blue, their grass arsenically green, and their perspective as erratic as that of the Chinese.