justice to him as it did to Phil May. He writes that his design "fell before the graver of Swain." But Keene is admittedly the finest master of the art of drawing on wood with pen and ink we have ever had. His use of lines of different thickness to give the illusion of texture, colour, or even weather was profound.
Rossetti writes in 1857 of his blocks for Moxon's Tennyson: "It is a thankless task. After a fortnight's work my block goes to the engraver, like Agag delicately, and is hewn in pieces." He bitterly complains of the "cutting and maiming" his work has undergone in Dalziel's workshop. There are various indications like these to show that the shops of engravers established by the Dalziels and by Swain did not always work in harmony with the designer.
In dealing with this period between the late fifties and the seventies it should be borne in mind that it is possible to look at it in two ways. Men who afterwards became great Academicians drew for the wood engravers, and have left scores of illustrations of exceptional merit. The period may be regarded as the golden decade in which singular work was produced by a band of great artists. The designs afford unlimited pleasure. It is a source of pride to be able to point to such a masterly effort, but—from the point of view of the wood engraver it is quite another story.
In collecting specimens of this period considerable stress is laid on the design which overshadows the masterly, if somewhat misguided, work of the wood engraver in facsimile. Poor Fred Walker used to
