no better. One familiar acquaintance of this
class is the _dictum_ that the copper-plates in Hugh Broughton's
_Concent of Scripture_, 1596, are the earliest of the kind executed in
England, although they had not only been preceded by the prints in
Harington's _Ariosto_, 1591, but by those accompanying the _Birth of
Mankind_ by Roeslin, 1540, and the _Anatomie Delineatio_ of Thomas
Gemini, 1545.

The average collector, who possesses tolerable judgment, and has the
authorities at his elbow, cannot go far astray if he buys what pleases
him among the ordinary books of medium price, and may acquire examples
of every period and place of origin, as opportunities arise. Or he may
limit himself to early German, Dutch, Italian, or French books with
woodcuts, to the French illustrated literature of the eighteenth
century, to volumes with engravings by Bewick, Stothard, or
Bartolozzi, or to modern works with proof-plates, etchings, and other
choice varieties. It is literally impossible to fix any _maximum_ or
_minimum_ of cost in this case; so much depends in graphic
publications on niceties of difference; and a law prevails here
analogous to that which governs the Print, that is to say, that a more
or less slight point of detail vitally affects values. Let us take
such a familiar instance as Lodge's _Portraits of Illustrious
Personages_. One may have a copy in Bohn's Libraries for a dozen
shillings; and one may give seventy or eighty sovereigns for a
large-paper copy with india proofs of the four-volume folio edition of
1821. On the whole, the twelve-volume quarto book is almost
preferable, as in the folio there is the disadvantage of three volumes
having copper-plates and one (the fourth) steel engravings, and the
quarto is obtainable for L20 or L25 in morocco.

Very few of the English portraits in the engraved series antecedent to
Lodge are trustworthy, as this branch of specialism was not properly
studied and understood down to the present century, and even the heads
executed by Houbraken are not unfrequently apocryphal. Such a
criticism applies less to royal personages than to private
individuals, of whom the painted likenesses were apt, after the lapse
of years, to be not so easily identifiable.

We have excellent monographs on Bewick and Bartolozzi by Mr. Hugo and
Mr. Tuer respectively; and there is the delightful biography of
Stothard by Mrs. Bray, 1851, with profuse illustrations of his various
artistic productions and