[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE RED FAIRY BOOK." BY LANCELOT SPEED (LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.)]
Another artist whose work bulks large in our subject--Arthur Boyd Houghton--soon appears in sight, and whether he depicted babies at play as in "Home Thoughts and Home Scenes," a book of thirty-five pictures of little people, or imagined the scenes of stories dear to them in "The Arabian Nights," or books like "Ernie Elton" or "The Boy Pilgrims," written especially for them, in each he succeeded in winning their hearts, as every one must admit who chanced in childhood to possess his work. So much has been printed lately of the artist and his work, that here a bare reference will suffice.
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE RED FAIRY BOOK." BY LANCELOT SPEED (LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.)]
Arthur Hughes, whose work belongs to many of the periods touched upon in this rambling chronicle, may be called _the_ children's "black-and-white" artist of the "sixties" (taking the date broadly as comprising the earlier "seventies" also), even as Walter Crane is their "limner in colours." His work is evidently conceived with the serious make-believe that is the very essence of a child's imagination. He seems to put down on paper the very spirit of fancy. Whether as an artist he is fully entitled to the rank some of his admirers (of whom I am one) would claim, is a question not worth raising here--the future will settle that for us. But as a children's illustrator he is surely illustrator-in-chief to the Queen of the Fairies, and to a whole generation of readers of "Tom Brown's Schooldays" also. His contributions to "Good Words for the Young" would alone entitle him to high eminence. In addition to these, which include many stories perhaps better known in book form, such as: "The Boy in Grey" (H. Kingsley), George Macdonald's "At the Back of the North Wind," "The Princess and the Goblin," "Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood," "Gutta-Percha Willie" (these four were published by Strahan, and now may be obtained in reprints issued by Messrs. Blackie), and "Lilliput Lectures" (a book of essays for children by Matthew Browne), we find him as sole illustrator of Christina Rossetti's "Sing Song," "Five Days' Entertainment at Wentworth Grange," "Dealings with the Fairies," by George Macdonald (a very scarce volume nowadays), and the chief contributor to the first illustrated edition of "Tom Brown's Schooldays." In Novello's "National Nursery Rhymes" are also several of his designs.