From The Academy: “The ‘Pageant’.” Rev. of The Pageant, vol. 1

THE Pageant, which Messrs. Henry & Co. have just issued, proves a remarkable gift-book, charged, it may be, a little too much with the spirit of pre-Raphaelite art, yet by no means exclusively pre-Raphaelite, either in its illustration or in the tendency of its literature.

We will take the literature first, for its merit is conspicuous although unequal, and several charming little contributions are either massed together or distributed among papers, some of which may certainly be too long. The collection is miscellaneous enough to recall the old-fashioned Annual, an order of publication which there can be no harm in reviving. It consists of play, story, poetry, and essay; nor does the enumeration of these altogether exhaust the departments of writing that find representation between the pretty chocolate and gold covers of this artistic little volume.

The Pageant opens appropriately with some verse by Mr. Swinburne, and later on there is an admirable contribution from the pen of his eminent critic friend, Mr. Theodore Watts. By Mr. Robert Bridges, some lines of exquisitely delicate fancy chronicle the passage of the South Wind, when

“The warm breath of the western sea,
Circling, wrapped the isle in his cloak of cloud.”

Mr. Henley has some pretty verses; and as we have said “pretty,” it may be imagined that they are not at all reminiscent of his hospital poems. By M. Maeterlinck there is a short contribution in French, and what is, on the whole, an adequate translation of his weird yet tender drama, “La Mort de Tintagiles.” Then Mr. Frederick Wedmore having apparently no story to send, breaks fresh ground by contributing finished paragraph-studies of scenery and character—“Provence: Morning,” “Provence: Evening,” “Mildred,” and “A Death.” There is a clever story by Mr. Lionel Johnson, and a strongly written critical essay by Prof. York Powell.

It is in the department of illustration that the pre-Raphaelite flavour is most apparent, though even here Sir Edward Burne Jones and Rossetti find themselves side by side with the mature or more Venetian art of Mr. G. F. Watts and with two contributions by Mr. Whistler, one of them an original lithograph—a portrait of “My Brother”; the other a dainty reproduction of the more attractive “Symphony in White.” Mr. C. H. Shannon’s “Romantic Landscape” is imaginative, and the sensitiveness of Mr. Ricketts’s art is made manifest in more than one example that accompanies Mr. Gleeson White’s thoughtful criticism. Mr. Selwyn Image contributes a notable title-page.

That the Pageant realises the expectations formed of it hardly needs to be expressly said; but another year, if it is repeated, it should be issued on rather thicker paper, which would be more manageable, yet the volume kept within proper limits by the exclusion of all lengthy and unprofitable contributions. As economy of line is the characteristic of the artist if he is a draughtsman, so brevity is his characteristic if he is a writer. Prolixity is the note of work that is either “popular” or amateurish.