AN ILLUSTRATED GULLIVER.*
OF course the novelty about this edition is chiefly its illustrations, which are admirable. The elementary difficultyof illustrating Gulli- ver's Travels is, that as drawing can give no idea except of relative magnitude, it is not easy for the artist to indicate the distinction between a human form among a race of giants and a pigmy among a race of men. For example, the admirable picture in which the council of three Brobdinguagians are sitting upon Gulliver, one of them examining him through a magnifying glass, and conclud. ing unanimously "that I was only a relplum scalcath, which issin- terpreted literally, a leans nature," would be supposed to be a very near study of three ordinary old men examining a pigmy, not of three giants examining an ordinary man. The illustration is otherwise exceedingly happy. The wiseacre expression of stupid scientific routine with all its departments ready labelled, and almost angry with any specimen that will not go into any of them except that residuary legatee of puzzled philosophy " the lima nature," is given with true humour and force by Mr. Morten. But the form of Gulliver being in the immediate foreground, and not much taller than one of the Brobdingnagian fingers, while necessarily, from the size of the page, the Brobdingnagian heads are far short of the magnitude often given in engravings to studies from human heads,—the natural impression certainly is in favour of the pigmyhood of Gulliver rather than of the gianthood of his critics. The difficulty is increased by the fact that Swift in- creases or diminishes all natural objects in exact proportion as he increases or diminishes the stature of his men, so that there is no chance of a nature-standard by which to measure the • Galtireee 21.avela into Serval Remote Regions of the World. By Dose Swift A. Now Edition, with Exp'anatory NOW, and a Life of the Author, by John Fronds Wailer, rasp. Illustrated by T. Norton. Lydon e,CussStl, Fetter, mid gigantic or dwarf population. Indeed it is pretty certain that if the earth itself, and all measurable astronomical bodies, and all objects on the earth were simultaneously reduced or increased exactly in the same proportions, nobody could know it. A six-foot man would still be six foot, for the new foot would be just as large a proportion of a degree of the meridian as the old foot, and the man would be just as tall in comparison, and every object he met would bear the same relative proportion to himself as before. For anything we know, such changes may take place every night,— now a multiplication of all linear lengths by 12, superficial areas by 12 times 12, and solid contents by 12 times 12 times 12,—now a diminution of all in the same ratio,—and, if they do, we could not possibly ascertain that any change at all had taken place. Hence, what we could not ascertain if it had really happened, it is not easy for the artist to suggest by his drawing. Still he might do something more than he does per- haps to hint the standard. Thus in the admirable picture of which we have been speaking the gigantic heads must really be supposed at a great distance from the observer's eye, or they would not be so small as they are, but the drawing suggests nearness by the distinctness with which the separate bristles on the chin are seen. Had the same size been preserved with a greater faintness there would, we think, have been a stronger im- pression that the men were giants and Gulliver of ordinary stature. So in the admirable picture in the frontispiece of the Lilli- putian army filing between Gulliver's legs, though Gulliver's waistcoat buttons are so clearly and accurately drawn that he seems to be very near, and therefore not larger than of human stature, the little people near his shoes, and those still nearer in the foreground, are fainter, so as not to give the true idea of their smallness. These notions of distance, however, are very difficult to give in engravings at all, and there would be no other means of helping the true estimate.
In all other respects the illustrations are beyond praise. Gulliver stands in the picture we have last mentioned in that benign atti- tude in which a human being would stand who was reviewing an army ordered to defile between his legs. Condescension and a alight shade of self-congratulation are impressed upon his down- turned face, and he has his hands comfortably in his pockets, as of course a man would have who could stand astride over an army. The shadow of the Lilliputian standard falls upon his white stock- ings,—which is a stroke of humour in itself, and quite in Swift's own mood. Most humorous, too, is the picture of the great plain of bed on which Gulliver is lying when attacked by the two Brobdingnagian rats ! He has taken off his shoes, which lie at a distance on the great white surface, and the rats smell at him with somewhat contemptuous curiosity, as a dog smells at something scarcely worth his notice, only out of scien- tific feeling rather than from any hostile desire. In all the Brob- dingnagian pictures, too, Gulliver is theatrical, as a small man would be who wished to make an adequate impression on a race of giants, while in all the Lilliputian pictures (except that in which he is pierced by the Lilliputian arrows, where he looks as if both his feet had been asleep and were just wakening up to a sense of pins and needles) he is just a little elated, evidently feels huge and a superior being, and looks as if he were anticipating that beautiful sentiment of somebody's in Enfield's Speaker (Dr. Watts?), " These emmets, how little they are in our eyes !"
All the illustrations are really admirable ; we have seldom seen any with more humour,—a quality in which artists do not abound.
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