Among the books dated 1860, or issued in the autumn of that year, are more elaborately illustrated editions of popular poets--all, as a rule, in the conventional quarto, or in what a layman might be forgiven for describing as 'quarto,' even if an expert preferred to call it octavo. Of these Tennyson's _The Princess_, with twenty-six drawings by Maclise, may be placed first, on account of the position held by author and artist. All the same, it belongs essentially to the fifties or earlier, both in spirit and in style. A more ample quarto, _Poems_ by James Montgomery (Routledge, 1860), (not the Montgomery castigated by Lord Macaulay), 'selected and edited by Robert Aris Wilmott (Routledge), with one hundred designs by John Gilbert, Birket Foster, F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., J. Wolf, Harrison Weir, E. Duncan, and W. Harvey, is perhaps slightly more in touch with the newer school. Its engravings by the brothers Dalziel are admirable. _The Clouds athwart the Sky_ (p. 23), by John Gilbert, and other landscapes by the same hand, may hold their own even by the side of those in the Moxon _Tennyson_, or in Wilmott's earlier anthology. Of quite different calibre is Moore's _Lalla Rookh_, with its sixty-nine drawings by Tenniel, engraved by the Dalziels (Longmans, 1861). If to-day you hardly feel inclined to indorse the verdict of the _Times_ critic, who declared it to be 'the greatest illustrative achievement by any single hand,' it shows nevertheless not a few of those qualities which have won well-merited fame for our oldest cartoonist, even if it shows also the limitations which just alienate one's complete sympathy. Yet those who saw an exhibition of Sir John Tenniel's drawings at the Fine Art Society's galleries will be less ready to blame the published designs for a certain hardness of style, due in great part (one fancies) to their engraver. [Illustration: H. H. ARMSTEAD WILLMOTT'S 'ENGLISH SACRED POETRY' 1862, p. 49 A DREAM] [Illustration: FREDERICK WALKER WILLMOTT'S 'SACRED POETRY,' 1862 THE NURSERY FRIEND] [Illustration: FREDERICK WALKER WILLMOTT'S 'SACRED POETRY,' 1862 A CHILD IN PRAYER]