line drawing with the printed letters is
interesting and instructive. (_See Appendix._)

It is in the production of the decorative page that wood engraving
asserts its supremacy still in some quarters, as may be seen in the
beautiful books produced in England during the past few years by Mr.
William Morris, where artist, wood engraver, typefounder, papermaker,
printer, and bookbinder work under the guiding spirit (when not the
actual handwork) of the author. They are interesting to us rather as
exotics; an attempt to reproduce the exact work of the past under modern
conditions, conditions which render the price within reach only of a
few, but they are at least a protest against the modern shams with which
we are all familiar.

The nineteenth-century author's love for the literature of his past has
led him to imitate not only the style, but the outward aspect of old
books; and by a series of frauds (to which his publisher has lent
himself only too readily) to produce something which appears to be what
it is not.

The genuine outcome of mediaeval thought and style--of patience and
leisure--seems to be treated at the end of the nineteenth century as a
fashion to be imitated in books, such as are to be seen under glass
cases in the British Museum. It is to be feared that the
twentieth-century reader, looking back, will see few traces worth
preserving, either of originality or of individuality in the work of the
present.

What are the facts? The typefounder of to-day takes down a Venetian
writing-master's copybook of the fifteenth century, and, imitating
exactly the thick downward strokes of the reed pen, forms a set of
movable type, called in printer's language "old face"; a style of letter
much in vogue in 1894, but the style and character of which belongs
altogether to the past. Thus, with such aids, the man of letters of
to-day--living in a whirl of movement and discovery--clothes himself in
the handwriting of the Venetian scholar as deliberately as the
Norwegian dons a bear-skin.

[Illustration: No. XXXIX.

DESIGN FOR THE TITLE PAGE OF THE "HOBBY-HORSE." (SELWYN IMAGE.)

(_This is a reduction by process from a large quarto wood
engraving_.)]

The next step is to present in his book a series of so-called
"engravings," which are not engravings but reproductions by process of
old prints. The "advance of science" in producing photo-relief blocks
from steel and other _intaglio_ plates for the type printing