The Complete Collection of Pictures and Songs
9781465640215
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The first two of the children’s books here reproduced were published in 1878; the last two in 1885, only a few weeks before Mr. Caldecott’s premature death. He had not intended to make any further additions to their number, and the series is consequently complete. Into what new domain his still-creative genius would have wandered,—for he was well on the hither side of the period fixed by tradition for the decline of human invention, and in spite of ill-health, was gifted with a rare buoyancy and elasticity of temperament,—it is idle to conjecture. But his gradual development from the tentative sketches of his early days into the purely individual manner of his latest work, had been unmistakeable enough to justify the belief that even higher triumphs might have been reserved to his ripened powers. Would he not have gained fresh laurels as a designer in some unfamiliar field?—as a modeller of bas-relief touched with his own distinctive quality?—as a delicate and dexterous water-colour artist? None can answer these questions now. But at least he has left us a definite legacy of accomplished work, for which we can scarcely be too grateful, since it is unique in kind, and certain to be enduring in charm. Of this legacy, the two volumes of “Old Christmas” and “Bracebridge Hall,” and the present collection of picture-books are surely the most memorable. In decorating the gentle and kindly pages of Goldsmith’s American disciple, Mr.Caldecott seems for the first time to have discovered a fitting outlet of his cherished memories of the country-side where he was bred, and of the picturesque old town where he was born;—for those loving studies of animal life which had delighted him as a boy;—for that feeling for the old-world in costume and accessory which was a native impulse in his talent. No books of this century have been so genially, so loyally, so sympathetically illustrated. And yet these Irving volumes, however excellent, were but the stepping stones to the artist’s more signal successes in nursery literature. “John Gilpin” and “The Mad Dog” are illustrated books; but they are illustrated books “with a difference.”
