It may also be mentioned that high appreciation of his talents has been shown across the Channel by eulogistic articles in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, Les Beaux Arts Illustrés, La Vie Moderne, L’Art, etc., etc.

It is, however, on his work as an etcher that his reputation must chiefly rest, and it would be more than unjust to allow the artist who produced such a tour de force as the great etching of “London from the Greenwich Observatory,” to mention only one of his three hundred and seventy-one works in this medium, to be advertised by an etching, finely conceived it is true, but unsatisfactorily carried to an issue.

Not that these facts will in any way affect the thoroughgoing rarity-hunter in his estimate of the suppressed plate here described. It will be enough for him to know that not more than a quarter of a hundred of his rivals can own a proof of the etching to make him ready to sell his last shirt for its acquisition. He will continue to value a print for its rarity rather than for its beauty, {190} a book for its height in millimetres rather than for its depth in thought.

No doubt these be hard words. Then why, it will be asked, pander to so foolish a passion? Shall I confess? Yes, indeed, and glory in the confession that I, too, am of the gentle brotherhood, that I, too, am a subscriber to The Connoisseur (or “The Connoyzer,” as one of my friends at Mr. W. H. Smith’s bookstall used to call that delightful pub­li­ca­tion), that I, too,—in fine, that I am, by the favour of Fortune, the happy possessor of two proofs of the suppressed etching to the Omar of 1872!

And now just one word with that gentle hunter, Mr. Thomas B. Mosher of Portland, Maine, U.S.A., who did me the honour of transferring a large portion of the above, originally written for The Bookman, to the pages of his beautiful 1902 edition of The Ruba’iyat. Of that I make no complaint, for I think it very probable that he asked and obtained my permission. What I do complain of is that, in a footnote, he falls foul of me for being “ungracious” to Colonel Prideaux in suggesting the date 1871 as the year of pub­li­ca­tion of the {191} third edition, instead of the year 1872, as Colonel Prideaux has it in his most valuable little “Notes for a Bibliography of Edward FitzGerald” 1901. Mr. Mosher says “no manner of doubt exists as to the date.” Let me tell him that I have it on the authority of one who was on intimate terms both with FitzGerald and Edwin Edwards at the time when this third edition was published that, though the book bore the date 1872 on the title, as a matter of fact it was published in the autumn of 1871 and post-dated. If it be “ungracious” to give Colonel Prideaux a piece of information which he had not the opportunity of obtaining for himself, then I sincerely hope that all who read this volume, and find themselves better informed, as well they may, than I am, will be equally “ungracious” to me. La plupart des hommes n’ont pas le courage de corriger les autres, parcequ’ils n’ont pas le courage de souffrir qu’on les corrige.

CHAPTER X ADAPTED OR PALIMPSEST PLATES

“God bless the King, I mean the faith’s defender, God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender. Who that Pretender is, and who is King— God bless us all!—that’s quite another thing.”

SO sang the old Jacobite John Byrom, and, taking my cue from him, I do not propose to enter here into the vexed question of James Francis Edward Stuart’s claim to this or that title.[37] It is merely a happy accident that lends me so picturesque a figure round which to group certain pictorial rarities, germane to our subject, of which little is known, and of which the petit-maître will be therefore grateful for some particulars.

[37] It may be mentioned that Jesse, in his Memoirs of the Pretenders, always calls him James Frederick.

The history of the engraved copperplate is full of that kind of romance which peculiarly {193} commends itself to the lover of what is quaint and curious in the byways of art, and perhaps the most romantic phase of its history is that with which I am about to deal. It is the sort of romance which was inseparable from what may be called the pre-machinery days, and is as foreign to the spirit of this age as are the slashed doublets of our forefathers or the starched irrelevances of their wives.