Our failure to realise the requirements of Illustrated Books—The French School—La Fontaine's Contes et Nouvelles, 1762—Imperfect conception of what constitutes a thoroughly complete copy—The Crawford copy—Comparative selling values of copies—The Fables of the same author—Dorat—La Borde—Beaumarchais—Contrast between the English and French Schools—Process-printing—The Edition de Luxe—Its proper destination and limit—The Illustrated Copy—Increasing difficulty in forming it—Unsatisfactory character of the majority of specimens—Analogy between the French taste in books and in vertu—Temper of the foreign markets—The Anglo-American collector—The Parisian goût—The famous mud-stained volume of tracts in the British Museum—Foreign translations of early English tracts.

Of the Illustrated Book, the Illustrated Copy, and the Edition de Luxe we have spoken a few words elsewhere.[2] These are three forms of competition, which represent as many sources of danger and disappointment to the inexperienced. When we refer to illustrated books we of course signify books with woodcuts and other graphic embellishments from the earliest period, such as the Block Books, the Game and Play of the Chess, the Caxton Æsop, the Nürnberg Chronicle, 1493, the Poliphilo, 1499, the Ship of Fools, 1497, and the Dance of Death; collections of Portraits and Views; down to the productions of the modern school, and comprising the popular abridgments of Crouch or Burton, of which an idea may be gained from the list printed at the end of Bliss's Reliquiæ Hearnianæ, 1857, and the cheap editions of romances and story-books brought out by sundry stationers at prices ranging from threepence to a penny in the closing years of the seventeenth century. In the English series, independently of the woodcuts which incidentally occur in the books printed by Caxton and his immediate successors and the Emblem series, there are Roeslin's Birth of Mankind, by Raynald, 1540, Braun's Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Gemini's Anatomy, 1545, Godet's Genealogy of all the Kings of England, 1563, Saxton's Maps, Holinshed's Chronicles, 1577, Harington's Ariosto, 1591, Holland's Baziologia, 1618, and Heröologia, 1620, the various works illustrated by Pass, Elstracke, Hollar, Barlow, and others, Vicars's England's Worthies, 1645, Ricraft's Survey of England's Champions, 1647, and other publications by Ricraft with engravings, till we come down to the pictorial histories of England by Bishop White, Kennett, and Rapin and Tindal, Pine's Horace, and Buck's Views. No doubt among these there are interesting specimens for the respective periods. It is noticeable that in the Holinshed of 1577 the illustrations are frequently repeated without regard to the context. The engravings by Hollar and Barlow are the most pleasing. But the Basiliologia, 1618, is the rarest book in the whole range of this class of literature. Pine's Horace, even in the first edition, 1733, with the Post Est reading, is common enough; and it has been found uncut. So far as we are concerned, we should prefer it in the original morocco. As a text it is of no account.

Coming lower down, we may specify or emphasise a few chefs d'œuvre, such as Hogarth's Prints in the first or best states, Turner's Liber Studiorum, Sir Joshua Reynolds' Graphic Works, and Lodge's Portraits. But we are neither so wealthy nor so advanced as our French and German neighbours in this direction, and the former may be affirmed to stand alone in the possession of a class of books with engravings germane to the national genius and to the feeling and spirit of the time which produced such masterpieces in their way. Of works illustrated by copper-plates, that by Roeslin on Midwifery, 1540, above-named, seems to be the first in chronological order; but both this and the Gemini of 1545 probably owed their embellishments to foreign sources.

Our own country is probably weakest in this department; many of the engravings in our early literature are direct copies from the German, Dutch, or French masters; the names of some of our leading artists are those of foreigners; and we have comparatively little to show of strictly original work till the last quarter of the eighteenth century, when we may place our national efforts side by side with uninterrupted Continental series from the middle of the fifteenth. We are also poorly provided with books of reference enabling amateurs to form an idea of the extent of the field and of the relative practicability and costliness of given classes or lines, whereas the foreign collector enjoys the advantage of many excellent and fairly trustworthy manuals. We want a General Guide to English Illustrated Literature, which should exhibit its sources and inspiration, and the epochs and schools into which it is divisible.

Of course, it stands with the present description of literary monuments as it does with the normal book. An enterprise which should aim at being exhaustive would prove excessively serious in point of outlay, and would hardly be so satisfactory as one either on a miscellaneous or a special principle.

Meanwhile, it is desirable that statements offered in catalogues of various kinds should aim at accuracy as far as possible. It is singular what a vitality resides in errors when they have been pointed out by experts, and ought to be recognised. The auctioneers seem to keep the type of certain notes standing, as they are repeated in catalogue after catalogue without any other gain than that of misleading such as know 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 £20 or £25 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 progressive style. Many of the scarcer examples of Bartolozzi have been imitated. To the collector who limits his interest to artists in book-shape, the first editions on large or largest paper of the Birds, Quadrupeds, and Select Fables of Bewick are most familiar and most desirable. Stothard is seen to advantage in the engravings to Ritson's English Songs, 1783. Much of his work lies outside the mere library. For a general view of that branch of the subject, Jackson and Chatto's Treatise on Wood Engraving, 1839, may be recommended, so far as the printed book is concerned.

We do not dwell on the modern illustrated literature, which demands less study, and offers few features of interest, especially that produced at home. Too large a proportion of it, however, whatever may be the origin, is indifferent in quality and permanent worth. Publications are at present, like other commodities, prepared with a main eye to sale; the sense of pride and honour on the part of the producer is dulled; he manufactures in gross. There are the showy volumes of Yriate on Venice, Florence, and other subjects, with letterpress written apparently to accompany blocks and plates in the publisher's warehouse.