Page:MU KPB 016 Arthur Rackham's Book of Pictures.pdf/50

 purpose while it gains in beauty. We are now following the wayward visions that tease every true artist’s mind, while he bends over the day’s work. As one who has been doing the day’s work in another form of art, and for more years than he cares to count, I wish it were possible for someone to make for me such a collection of fugitive impressions, hints of beauty, threads caught and followed (often tenaciously) only to be lost in the end; scraps of song; stories that after one bright apparition faded away into limbo. They would make one’s best biography and, apart from the tale of work (such as it is) actually achieved, his only biography worth writing. Mr. Rackham has been more fortunate, and I congratulate him. But let the purchaser who, turning these pages, may happen to wish that they told a connected story, reflect that he