Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/246

 inner circle which have kept the sacred flame alight has been transmitted to posterity. "Truth will prevail" applies with fearful significance to art.

To come back to "states." The novice need not be faint-hearted because there is much haggling in the market place over these matters of sordid monetary value. The lover of prints must at once and for ever disassociate himself from the mere bargainer and huckster of graver's work. These are the moneychangers who have polluted the outer courts of the temple.

The difference in price between rare states and first states, and the slight variations and engravers' afterthoughts do not warrant the wide difference existing between the prices obtaining for the one and the other. There is no great gulf between prints from the same graver's hand. Second thoughts are not always best. Many of the world's most skilful artists have been consumed with an itch for alteration. Tennyson was always adding and subtracting from his first editions, nor are his subsequent variations always an improvement. In the world of prints the same caprice follows the engraver. The mere ordinary mortal, not solicitous of following every whim of the engraver, will content himself with a fine print of his favourite master, and delight himself in its possession, and, if he be a poor man, be thankful for what he has secured. It is another matter with copper-plates that have fallen among thieves who have practised all kinds of diablerie and palmed them off as the work of the original engraver. Long after his death other men have worked over his