JOSEPH PENNELL
hensive story of lithography requiring endless research and nice discrimination in the selection of the hundreds of examples given in the pages.
The publication of this work gave a great impetus to the practice of lithography, and enlarged the taste of the public for an art that had fallen into disuse, save for commercial purposes. Pennell gathered around him a few men eager to pursue an attractive method of producing unlimited replicas of their drawings, and he formed the Senefelder Club, and was elected its first president. The artists and art societies and the museums of England and Europe were aroused to the importance of lithography among the fine arts, and Pennell was delighted to find that he could exercise his gifts of organization in developing one of the graphic arts, and in helping the draughtsmen who appealed to him for assistance from Paris, and Rome, and Venice, and Leipzig.
His authority and influence became from that time universal; and it is a remarkable tribute to his power for work that he was able to cope with a correspondence that threatened seriously to interfere with his work as etcher, lithographer, and author. One can only marvel at his powers of endurance; for, in addition to the various tasks of the day, his lavish hospitality and the time he allotted to his friends in the evening are frankly betrayed in Nights, that delightful account by Mrs. Pennell, of the "talk" of friends who gathered around a board whereon the most savoury of provençal dishes were placed by that inimitable cordon bleu, Augustine, for the delectation of Henley, Bobbie Ross, Fisher Unwin, Bob Stevenson, and a host of other literary lights, or darks, as the case might be.
Pennell was now constantly in demand by the Govern-
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