on the printed page. The late Lord Tennyson and other poets
have been content for years to sell their song by the line, little
heeding, apparently, in what guise it was given to the world.

In these days the monotony of uniformity seems to pervade the pages,
alike of great and small, and a letter from a friend is now often
printed by a machine!

[Illustration]

[Illustration: No. XL.

"SCARLET POPPIES." (W. J. MUCKLEY.)

This beautiful piece of pen work by Mr. Muckley (from his picture in
the Royal Academy, 1885) was too delicate in the finer passages to
reproduce well by any relief process (the pale lines having come out
black); but as an example of breadth, and indication of surfaces in
pen and ink, it could hardly be surpassed.]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] I mention this school as a representative one; there are many
others where design and wood engraving are studied under the same
roof with success in 1894.

[23] Mr. Cobden Sanderson's lecture on BOOKBINDING, read before the
"Arts and Crafts Society," is well worth the attention of book
lovers.

CHAPTER VII.

AUTHOR, ILLUSTRATOR, AND PUBLISHER.

Let us now consider shortly the Author, the Illustrator, and the
Publisher, and their influence on the appearance and production of a
book. If it be impossible in these days (and, in spite of the efforts of
Mr. William Morris and others, it seems to be impossible) to produce a
genuine book in all its details, it seems worth considering in what way
the author can stamp it with his own individuality; also to what extent
he is justified in making use of modern appliances.

How far, then, may the author be said to be responsible for the state of
things just quoted? Theoretically, he is the man of taste and culture
_par excellence_; he is, or should be, in most cases, the arbiter, the
dictator to his publisher, the chooser of style. The book is his, and it
is his business to decide in what form his ideas should become
concrete; the publisher aiding his judgment with experience, governing
the finance, and carrying out details. How comes it then that, with the
present facilities for reproducing anything that the hand can put upon
paper, the latter-day nineteenth-century author is so much in the hands
of others as to the appearance of his book? It is because the so-called
educated man has not been taught to use his hands as the missal-writers
and authors of mediaeval times taught