30. A History of the New Plot. (First state) [▶] … 249
31. A History of the New Plot. (Second state) [▶] … 249
SUPPRESSED PLATES, ETC.
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY
NO one who has the itch for book-collecting will deny that suppressed book illustrations are, what the forbidden fruit was to our mother Eve, irresistible. Whether such appetite represents the very proper ambition to have at his elbow the earliest states of beautiful or interesting books, of which the subsequently suppressed plate or wood engraving is in general a sort of guarantee, or the less defensible desire to possess what our neighbour does not, must be settled by the conscience of each. The fact remains that such rarities are peculiarly alluring to those whom Wotton calls “the lickerish chapmen of all such ware.” {2}
There are, of course, ridiculous[1] people who value such books as the first issue of the first edition of Dickens’s American Notes just because there is a mistake in the pagination; or a first edition of Disraeli’s Lothair because the prototype of “Monsignor Catesby” is divulged by misprinting the name “Capel”; or Poems by Robert Burns, first Edinburgh Edition, because in the list of subscribers “The Duke of Roxborough” appears as “The Duke of Boxborough”; or Barker’s “Breeches” Bible of 1594, because on the title-page of the New Testament the figures are transposed to 1495; or the first edition in French of Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, because the translator, maltreating the author’s name, has declared the book to be “traduit de l’Anglais de M. Irwin Washington,” and in the dedication has labelled Sir Walter Scott, Barronnet; or indeed a book of my own, in which I described as “since dead” a gifted and genial gentleman who I am glad to think still gives the lie to my inexcusable carelessness. {3}
But it is not because of such errors that a true book-lover desires to own editiones principes of famous works. That ambition is legitimate enough, but its legitimate reason is otherwhere to seek.
In the case of such a book as Rogers’s Italy, with the Turner engravings, the matter is very different. Here the fact that the plates on pp. 88 and 91 are transposed is a guarantee that the impressions of the extraordinarily delicate engravings are of the utmost brilliancy, for the error was discovered before many impressions had been taken. The same applies, though in lesser degree, to such a book as Mr. Austin Dobson’s Ballad of Beau Brocade, illustrated by Mr. Hugh Thomson, in the earliest edition of which certain of the illustrations are also misplaced.[2] There is reason in wishing to possess these. See what Ruskin himself has said of the omission of the two engravings which had appeared in the first edition of The Two Paths. He writes in the preface to the 1878 reissue:
[1] I am quite aware that “ridiculous” is a dangerous stone to throw, when one lives in a glass house oneself.
[2] Compare also the early issues of the first edition of Ainsworth’s Tower of London, in which the plates at pp. 28 and 45 vary from those in the later issues.