owner, Mr. Ernest Brown, I am permitted to reproduce.


By this time his reputation had long been firmly established. To the
Jane Austen volumes succeeded other numbers of the so-called "Cranford"
series, to which, in 1894, Mr. Thomson had already added, under the
title of _Coridon's Song and other Verses_, a fresh ingathering of
old-time minstrelsy from the pages of the _English Illustrated_. Many of
the drawings for these, though of necessity reduced for publication in
book form, are in his most delightful and winning manner,--notably
perhaps (if one must choose!) the martial ballad of that "Captain of
Militia, Sir Bilberry Diddle," who

--dreamt, Fame reports, that he cut all the throats
Of the French as they landed in flat-bottomed boats

--or rather were going to land any time during the Seven Years' War.
Excellent, too, are John Gay's ambling _Journey to Exeter_., the
_Angler's Song_ from Walton (which gives its name to the collection),
and Fielding's rollicking "A-hunting we will go." Other "Cranford"
books, which now followed, were James Lane Allen's _Kentucky Cardinal_,
1901; Fanny Burney's _Evelina_, 1903; Thackeray's _Esmond_, 1905; and
two of George Eliot's novels--_Scenes of Clerical Life_, 1906, and
_Silas Marner_, 1907. In 1899 Mr. Thomson had also undertaken another
book for George Allen, an edition of Reade's _Peg Woffington_,--a task
in which he took the keenest delight, particularly in the burlesque
character of Triplet. These were all in the old pen-work; but some of
the designs for _Silas Marner_ were lightly and tastefully coloured.
This was a plan the author had adopted, with good effect, not only in a
special edition of _Cranford_ (1898), but for some of his original