In estimating the errors which are certain to have crept into this record of a few thousand facts selected from many thousands, the author is obviously the last person to have any idea of their number; for did he suspect their existence, they would be corrected before the work appeared. Yet all the same, despite his own efforts and those of kindly hands who have re-collated the references in the majority of cases, he cannot flatter himself he has altogether escaped the most insidious danger that besets a compilation of this kind, namely, overlooking some patently obvious facts which are as familiar to him as to any candid critic who is sure to discover their absence. The choice of representative illustrations has been most perplexing. Some twenty years' intimacy with most of the books and magazines mentioned herein made it still less easy to decide upon their abstract merits. Personal prejudice--unconscious, and therefore the more subtle--is sure to have influenced the selection; sometimes, perhaps, by choosing old favourites which others regard as second-rate, and again by too reticent approval of those most appreciated personally, from a fear lest the partiality should be sentimental rather than critical. But, and it is as well to make the confession at once, many have been excluded for matters quite unconnected with their art. Judging from the comments of the average person who is mildly interested in the English illustrations of the past, his sympathy vanishes at once if the costumes depicted are 'old-fashioned.' Whilst I have been working on these books, if a visitor called, and turned over their pages, unless he chanced to be an artist by profession as well as by temperament, the spoon-bill bonnet and the male 'turban' of the 'sixties' merely provoked ridicule. As my object is to reawaken interest in work familiar enough to artists, but neglected at present by very many people, it seems wiser not to set things before them which would only irritate. Again, it is difficult to be impartial concerning the beauty of old favourites; whether your mother or sister happen to be handsome is hardly a point of which you are a trustworthy judge. Other omissions are due to the right, incontestable if annoying, every other person possesses in common with oneself, 'to do what he likes with his own'; and certain publishers, acting on this principle, prefer that half-forgotten engravings should remain so.