Page:MU KPB 016 Arthur Rackham's Book of Pictures.pdf/45

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child. Ah! quel drôle de nez! In the growth and removal of a long nose consists all the plot of Madame Leprince de Beaumont’s Le Prince Désir, a little classic which Andrew Lang thought worthy of a place in The Blue Fairy Book, his first and best. And were we not all thrilled, once on a time, by the elongation of Alice’s neck, as portrayed by Tenniel in Alice in Wonderland? You will be suggesting next that Bluebeard might as well be Greybeard!” . . . No, children do not look for fun in these abnormalities, but take them rather with a deep seriousness; and in his pawky seriousness lies something of Mr. Rackham’s secret as an illustrator of fairyland. Consider it in No. 32, Mother Goose. We know, and Mr. Rackham knows, that when the snow falls it is shed by the old lady aloft plucking geese. But observe the effect

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