The prevailing
colours are rich blue and bright scarlet. Perhaps the illuminator would
have been better advised had he neglected some of the harder features of
this kind of work. Not considering that the limits of the glass painter
did not apply to his vellum, he fettered himself unnecessarily, and
instead of a picture he has only succeeded in producing a surface
enamel, or a mere reticulation of surface-patterns. This very defect has
by some writers been held up to admiration as the true perfection of all
illumination. Its flatness was applauded because it had to be shut up in
a book, and was therefore the only appropriate way of making a picture
for such a purpose. But whoever would dream that because a picture,
painted in due perspective and proper light and shade, was to be shut up
in a book that the figures represented in relief would actually be
crushed. Such reasoning is most puerile. The supposed parallel case of a
carpet or hearth-rug representing groups of flowers--even if the latter
ever did deceive the domestic cat--does not in the least affect the most
childish conception of a picture in a book. We see it in a scene in
light and shade, we enjoy and admire its reliefs, but at the same time
we know it is a picture, and that it is quite flat.
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