I offer these suggestions with diffidence, and with no intention to impose my taste upon others
If the Illustrator can get or make something absolutely unique he is a fortunate man. For example, I know one, stigmatized as eccentric, who has illustrated a printed catalogue of his own library with portraits of the authors, copies of prints in the books, and duplicates of engraved title-pages; also one who has illustrated a collection in print or in manuscript of his own poems; also one who has illustrated a Life of Hercules, written by himself, printed by one of his own family, and adorned with prints from antique gems and other subjects; and even a lawyer who has illustrated a law book written by himself, in which he has found place for prints so diverse and apparently out of keeping as Jonah and the whale, John Brown, a man pacing the floor in a nightgown with a crying baby, a “darkey” shot in a melon-patch, an elephant on the rampage, Cupid, Hudibras writing a letter, Joanna Southcote, Launce and his dog, a dog catching a boy going over a wall, Dr. Watts, Robinson Crusoe, Barnum in the form of a hum-bug, Jacob Hall the rope dancer, Lord Mayor’s procession, Raphael discoursing to Adam, gathering sea-weed, Artemus Ward, a whale ashore, a barber-shop, Gilpin’s ride, King Lear, St. Lawrence on his gridiron, Charles Lamb, Terpsichore, and a child tumbling into a well. The owner of such a book may be sure that it is unique, as the man was certain his coat of arms was genuine, because he made it himself
Third: the Illustrator should not be in a hurry.
here are three singular things about the hunt for pictures. One is, the moment you have your book bound, no matter how many years you may have waited, some rare picture you wanted is sure to turn up. Hence the reluctance of the Illustrator to commit himself to binding, a reluctance only paralleled by that of the lover to marry the woman he had courted for ten years, because then he would have no place to spend his evenings. (I have had books “in hand” for twenty years).
nother is, when you have found your rare picture you are pretty certain to find one or two duplicates. Prints, like accidents or crimes, seem to come in cycles and schools. I have known a man to search in vain in thirty print-shops in London, and coming home find what he wanted in a New York print-shop, and two copies at that. The third is, that you are continually coming very near the object without quite attaining it. Thus one may get Lady Godiva alone, and the effigy of Peeping Tom on the corner of an old house at Coventry, but to procure the whole scene is, so far as I know, out of the question. It would seem that Mr. Anthony Comstock has put his ban on it. So one will find it difficult to get “God’s scales,” in which wealth and poverty are weighed against each other, but I have had other scales thrust at me, such as those in which the emblems of love are weighed against those of religion, and a king against a beggar, but even the latter is not the precise thing, for in these days there are poor kings and rich beggars