Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/157

 world of beautiful forms he has left will last as long as paper and ink and binding hold their component parts together. To those who love to search through the byeways of Victorian illustrated magazines, there are to be found many beautiful wood-*engravings either signed in full or with the magic initials A.B.H., which will amply reward them for the tribute their industry pays to the memory of this artist.

In the illustration here reproduced from the "Arabian Nights," entitled The Dervise plucks the hairs out of the cat's tail, there is something essentially new in English illustration. The strength of the line and the force of the imaginative design at once stamp Boyd Houghton as worthy of studious appreciation. The enlargement of a portion of this (opposite p. 40) shows the wonderful skill of Dalziel the engraver. In another illustration from the Sunday Magazine of 1871, entitled The Withered Flower, we do not ask what story is told in thin, early-Victorian verse. The design at once arrests us. The free use of white line, particularly in the canopy for the elephant and the filmy veil of the lady "sad-eyed and consumed with grief," cannot all have been the craftsman's touch of Dalziel. We prefer to believe that the design on the block indicated this treatment, and that Boyd Houghton more than many of his fellow-artists had realised to the full the technique of the wood-engraver. (Facing p. 106).

In "Ballad Stories of the Affections, from the Scandinavian" (Routledge), by Robert Buchanan, Boyd Houghton is marvellous. Pinwell, W. Small,