I give one of the Rossetti designs, "Sir Galahad"; the "S. Cecilia" and the "Morte d'Arthur" were engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, the "Sir Galahad" by Mr. W. J. Linton. It seems to me that the last gives the spirit and feeling of Rossetti, as well as his peculiar touch, far more successfully. These designs, in their poetic imagination, their richness of detail, sense of colour, passionate, mystic, and romantic feeling, and earnestness of expression mark a new epoch. They are decorative in themselves, and, though quite distinct in feeling, and original, they are more akin to the work of the Mediæval miniaturist than anything that had been seen since his days. Even here, however, there is no attempt to consider the page or to make the type harmonize with the picture, or to connect it by any bordering or device with the book as a whole, and being sandwiched with drawings of a very different tendency, their effect is much spoiled. In one or two other instances where Rossetti lent his hand to book illustration, however, he is fully mindful of the decorative effect of the page. I remember a title page to a book of poems by Miss Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market," which emphatically showed this. The title-page designed for his "Early Italian Poets" (given here), and his sonnet on the sonnet too, in which the design encloses the text of the poem, written out by himself, are other instances.
Some of the designs made for a later work (Dalziel's Bible Gallery, about 1865-70) also show the effect of the pre-Raphaelite influence, as well as, in the case of the designs of Sir Frederic Leighton and Mr. Poynter, the influence of Continental ideas and training. I saw some of these drawings on the wood at the time, I remember. For study and research, and richness of resource in archæological detail, as well as firmness of drawing, I thought Mr. Poynter's designs were perhaps the most remarkable. A strikingly realized picture, and a bright and successful wood-engraving, is Ford Madox Brown's design of "Elijah and the Widow's Son." There is a dramatic intensity of expression about his other one also, "The Death of Eglon." Still, at best, we find that these are but carefully studied pictures rendered on the wood. The pre-Raphaelite designs show the most decorative sense, but they are now issued quite distinct from the page, whatever was the original intention, and while they may, as to scale and treatment, be justly considered as book illustrations, and as examples of our more important efforts in that direction at that time, they are not page decorations.