will find fresh ways of playing it and others to play it with you. The love of prints is more or less unobtrusively nurtured by public print collections in various parts of the world. The prime object of these is to preserve representative and characteristic specimens of the graphic reproductive arts, illustrating processes as a basis of information, but ultimately and principally illustrating the fact that prints, like any form of art, in their finest flower give finest expression to the fundamental and moving ideals and ideas of given countries and periods, seen through the mind and mood of the artist. That is the prime function and interest of prints. Then, secondarily, but inevitably and logically, enters the subject interest, with its equally inevitable leading to specialities. When one of those is entered into, one is quite naturally drawn, temporarily or even more or less permanently, away from purely æsthetic considerations. In the engrossing field of Americana — which again falls into specialties, such as historical prints, naval pictures, portraits, Washington portraits, bookplates, New York City views, sporting prints, and ever so many more the æsthetic focus is deranged a bit. Comparisons may easily narrow down to those made within the field, so that the very small talent is condoned and the less small takes on importance on the basis of the old saying: "among the blind the one-eyed is king." Joy in the subject may become almost undiluted. Does an old New Yorker who likes his city, and whose sympathetic imagination enables him to reconstruct, with the aid of pictures, the very spirit of the city in the days even antedating his own experience - does he worry all too much about the excellence of the work of draughtsman and engraver? That is, of course, beyond a natural preference for the good job over the poor one. (And, in our present hunting ground of New York City views, there are many good jobs in that long series of pictorial records of the metropolis described in the "Iconography" of I. N. Phelps Stokes.) Will he not have his innocent and legitimate amusement, for instance, over those two proofs of the fact that the freedom of the city was once granted to pigs? (The one a pamphlet with indifferent illustrations issued about 1820, the other a little vignette published in all seriousness in Morse's "Geography," and showing the parade of 1842 celebrating the opening of the Croton Acqueduct, with a pig scampering through City Hall Park at the head of the procession.) It is such considerations, as well as the serious one of historical research (into which, after all, the element of humor should enter to play its part) that form the importance of such a gift as that of the Eno Collection. Any large print department, whether in museum or library, will, at times, step aside from its prime function, to consider and take care of a specialty such as this, particularly if it is one of local interest. Moreover, on such a matter of historical utility, what is true always of print collections becomes truer than ever. That is, the fact once tersely expressed by the late Dr. John S. Billings: A good representative collection of prints is of greatest interest and use to the public and to a majority of those especially interested in prints in particular, if it exists in immediate connection with a large library. In the library it can be closely associated with the literature of art, an association which is absolutely necessary to obtain full benefit of each; and it is also available for the student of social history, of the manners, customs, costumes, etc., of a particular race or person in connection with the literature of these subjects. This means, of course, that prints, in many ways, mirror the mental activity of mankind, of which they form a rich and varied phase. To collect engravings by Duerer, as an example of the highest development of the art in the North in his time, and as a supreme expression of that period which we call the German Renaissance, is one thing. To acquire French engravings of the Eighteenth century, in which the elegance, brilliancy, and luxury of the time are pictured with admirable skill and understanding, or British mezzotints in which the social and political life of Britain, as personified in her great personages in the same century, is preserved with a rich reflection of that time of ruffles and vigor, is the same. Only the scene and its expression change, but the art, the craftsmanship, are there. In the field of Americana, the basis of acquisition is perforce somewhat modified. The struggle, in the earlier days of our country, to foster the finer graces of art amid the struggle to build a nation, is often more to be honored in the intention than in the accomplishment. So much so that not infrequently, even as historical documents, our early prints can be excused, for shortcomings in veracity, only on the plea that they are at least contemporaneous with the event pictured. But they allure, nevertheless. In a large and important collection of New York City views, such as this one formed by Mr. Eno, not only the city in its entirety is pictured, not only particular streets and buildings, but the human element in other days is brought nearer to us. Man's activities, his changing costume, customs and views of life, methods of transportation, the growth of traffic, the life of the street, are illustrated in a profusion of types and incidents, directly or incidentally presented. A veritable pageant of New York City history passes before one in such an array of prints, more pulsatingly alive and convincing than actual parading of humanity on floats in celebration pageants is apt to make it. The mute sheets speak volubly and richly to him who will heed. One may, then, go through such a collection with the point-of-view of the amateur or collector of New York City views, interested in dates, in the development of the pictorial record of the city. So one will pass from the earliest Dutch views of the Seventeenth century, to the Eighteenth century |