adding accessories that bring it down to the present moment.
Santa Claus was developed by Nast from the Pelze -Nicol, “ the fat, fur-clad, bearded old fellow " of his childhood, and “ the world has accepted [it ] as the popular portrayal of its favorite saint.” 74 But he now arrives by searchlight instead of by moon
light, he is called up by telephone, and his reindeer have in recent years been transformed into an automobile and still more recently into an aeroplane.
The illustrator may be limited by the psychological conditions of those for whom he illustrates when he understands that their thoughts have not kept pace with modern invention . If the
majority of persons can not think of a battle without smoke or of military heroes without a uniform , the artist feels compelled to draw battles showing smoke, although smokeless powder has been used , and to depict soldiers in gay uniform , although uni
forms have become sombre and inconspicuous, and soldiers may fight stripped to the waist .75 The illustration , obviously incorrect in itself as regards the actual condition illustrated , may be an
interesting record of the successful effort of the artist to adapt his work to themental condition of those for whom he illustrates. The historian is much less interested in the sketch of the battle
as such than he is in the condition that makes it necessary to convey a true impression of an event through a false representa
tion of it. However exaggerated and however untrue in them
selves the details may be, there may be no question that the picture is true in essentials . In this aspect, the illustration shows its affinity on one side with poetry , since this demands illusion rather than scientific fact, - fact often dispels the illusion and thereby destroys poetry , as J . L . Lowes has so convincingly shown in Convention and Revolt in Poetry . The illustration , however, is of two varieties, one leads to concrete, scientific, absolute fact, while the other
leads to illusion that is equally true but is reached by a different route . It is at times a troublesome problem for the historian 74 A . B . Paine, Th. Nast and his Friends, pp. 6 , 96 . 75 This has been suggested by Burges Johnson from the experiences of Lester Ralph , who was illustrating the Boer War for the Illustrated London
News. — " Impression and Expression,” The Well of English and the Bucket, pp . 73 - 74 .
