However, it cannot any longer be said that the illustrator's life is not reasonably successful. The Paris Exhibition of 1889 brought the gold medal, to which I have referred, to Vierge for these very drawings, and the French nation has since decorated him, and in his case it certainly was a reward for merit and nothing else. Then, also, in illustrating a book like _Pablo_, of course a certain amount of latitude was allowable. The artist could pick and choose his architecture in the most picturesque spots of Spain, and produce a harmonious whole. Nor did he have to consider Quevedo's personal whims; in this case the author, being dead, could not demand that the artist should illustrate exactly those portions of his work which are not illustratable, or which do not appeal to him. He could work away at just the time when he wished to; having no _Salon_ to get ready for, he could make his drawings in whatever fashion he chose, trying all kinds of methods and experiments, with no hanging committee to reject him because his originality would cast their own productions into the shade; he could then have his drawings joyfully accepted by a publisher, and work sympathetically with the engraver and printer. But it was just when he thought success within his grasp, and the book was almost finished, that he was paralysed. Vierge's case, so far as the first edition of _Pablo_ is concerned, is one of the most cruel. The relations of artists and publishers that is, publishers who understand the production of fine books--have usually been happy. But there are exceptions.
I cannot point out whether these drawings, from the author's point of view, illustrate the text. I have never read the whole book. But I only care to consider the illustrations as the most remarkable series of little pictures in black and white that have been produced. That this will be admitted I do not believe for a minute. More probably Dürer or Botticelli will be cited, and the nobility of their composition extolled, and the purity of their ideals dilated upon, while the meanness of Vierge's imagination, and the baseness of his ideals, are exhibited as a painful contrast. I find, however, Vierge's true and brilliant realism much more interesting than the conventional idealism of the past. The man who can interest and delight you by the way he draws an old shoe, or a broken pot, as Vierge has done, is quite as great as he who must take a heavenly host to produce the same impression.