Unrest.

If we had to characterize in one word the most prominent feature of the closing years of the century, that word would be unrest. From the widest sphere of international concerns to the most intimate social relationships this unquiet spirit has extended. Oftentimes—in most cases, apparently—the feeling rests upon no rational basis. There is a widespread love of change for its own sake alone, even though it involve disaster. Signs of this tendency are apparent in much of the current English literature and art. The wave seems now to be receding, but during the three or four years of its flow it has cast up much mire and offensive spoil of all kinds. Not content with native « decadents, » publishers have diligently exploited foreign sources. France and Germany have been ransacked for much that is unsavory and corrupt; and the puerilities and ineptitudes of the « stuttering Zola » of the far North have been translated and published, and have figured on the English stage before an astonished public. No considerations of morality have restrained the more advanced revolutionaries, but even they might have been expected to draw the line at insanity. Not so, however, or we should not have had the ravings of the unfortunate Nietsche translated, annotated, and published, and seriously discussed in certain reviews.

Among the so-called Philistine critics who now denounce the movement is Mr. Harry Quilter; but he was certainly one of its pioneers when he brought out that curious medley, the scarlet-clad Universal Review. The Yellow Book, in its earlier issues, afforded a fair example of the current stage of the movement in both departments, but its early eccentricities have since been outdone. In art we have the development of which Beardsley was one of the first apostles—startling designs in broad flat masses of crude color, unlike anything in heaven or earth or sea. Beardsley's ideals—his heavy-lipped and wanton-eyed Cyprians—sufficiently indicated the ethical tendencies of the movement; but where no such objection can be raised, as in such books as the Pageant and the Parade, it has substituted a weird and unnatural form of decoration for the intelligible traditional fashion of illustration. The growing popularity of the nude—partly accounted for, perhaps, by the multiplication of art schools—is shocking to some; but the nude is not necessarily suggestive or objectionable. The new art too often is. In the Sketch some time ago, appeared a page of « grotesques, » remarkable as the work of a girl of fourteen, without any art training. They were clever, but diabolical. Every countenance had the leer of a fiend, and a double entente in one of the sketches was so thinly disguised that it is a marvel that it escaped the editor's eye. It is not a healthy state of things when mere children can rival their elders in such a line as this. For years Britain has led the way in elevating the art of the satiric draftsman. Punch, fifty years ago, was a jester, and little else. Douglas Jerrold, the editor, refused John Gilbert's work, because he « did not want a Michael Angelo on the staff. » Now, the cartoons of Tenniel sometimes reach the sublime, and Punch's caricatures are often the truest portraits. But in other quarters may be found a revival of the savage art of the past. A high-priced and short-lived review, professing to publish « letterpress which is literature and illustrations which are art, » contained a caricature of Mr. Arthur Roberts as hideous and repulsive as the little girl's « grotesques » in the Sketch. Stranger still, in the Christmas number of the Saturday Review, may be found an almost equally offensive work by the same hand. To call such productions « art » is an abuse of language. It would almost seem, when the trail of the serpent is thus to be seen upon the work, not only of mature hands, but of those of children, as if a considerable section of the imaginative art of the day was obsessed by some unclean demon. Looking through some of the more expensive books that have lately issued from the English press, one seems to realize a kind of apotheosis of Catnach, and glorified editions of the literature of the Seven Dials.

The movement has affected, to no small extent, the mechanical art of bookmaking. Following the late William Morris, publishers are introducing heavy-faced romans, of the later fifteenth-century style. Like Morris also, they huddle up headings in irregular and unsightly masses, and confuse the reading by omitting indentions and by setting break-lines in the centre. Leads are abandoned, or used as little as possible; headings, initials, and heavy solid borders are set close to matter; running-heads omitted altogether, or placed at the ends of lines. The special features of the composition are exactly such as have hitherto characterized the productions of careless or ignorant workmen; but by the use of fine paper, the best presswork, and wide margins—sometimes extravagantly wide—these eccentric pages, otherwise intolerable, find acceptance, if not approval. Books, too, are now produced in all manner of unusual shapes and sizes, which may perhaps suit the dilettante, but which are a tribulation to the librarian.

Type-design is not greatly affected at present. There is no very noticeable eccentricity in any of the large family of Jenson faces now in the field. Apart from their historic interest, they have a definite value in certain classes of work. They have probably come to stay, and will doubtless be even better appreciated when used more in accordance with conventional methods. The delirium in type design broke out about twenty years ago, and has now nearly subsided. A few of the earlier cranky faces—the « Harper, » for instance, the first of all—are still to some extent in use; but no founder now would cut, nor do we think any practical printer would buy, such a letter as the « Mikado » of the Cleveland Foundry.

Probably, in another twenty years, public and publishers alike will look on the Evergreens and Savoys of the present decade with a mild contempt such as is now bestowed on the fearful circulars of 1880 adorned with Japanese ornaments in mauve and green; while such Beardsley posters and Beerbohm caricatures as survive will be relegated to their fitting place—a Chamber of Horrors. Yet the revolt against mere conventionalism, and the striving after fuller freedom of design, characteristic of the new movement, are signs of a healthy awakening. The wild extravagances with which it is still associated, some of which are merely ludicrous, and others painful, will pass away. By that time a lasting influence will have been brought to bear on the art of bookmaking, and when the sifting influence of time has operated, the result will be in the direction of real progress.