A little blue-grey drawing--an early drawing of Varley’s, which has nothing but the lasting virtues of Economy and Style--was the first artistic thing that ever belonged to me. It came to me--like a prized Morland mezzotint, many years later--from the portfolio of my great-grandfather, who was, as I am told, a friend of Turner’s earliest patron, Dr. Munro. But it is prints, not drawings, that, since I began to collect a little, I have chiefly brought together. In a collection of prints there is something less indefinite, something more systematic, than in a collection of drawings. The things, if they are good, have the advantage of being known, of being more or less recognised--not, indeed, by the large public, but at least by the people with whom, on matters of Art, it is most interesting to come into contact. Prints are classed and catalogued. Each print by a particular master has, in the collector’s mind, a direct bearing on the component parts of that master’s work. Again, fine drawings, although cheap in relation to the prices paid for modern paintings, are dear in comparison with many prints to which the adjective ‘fine’ could scarcely be denied; for, while here and there an ‘Adam and Eve’ of Dürer is sold under the hammer for many hundred pounds, that is the exception absolutely; and while, at Sotheby’s or Christie’s, on eventful sale days, two thousand pounds may be the ransom of a Rembrandt etching, that is not only because it is fine, but because that particular etching--or that particular ‘state’ of it--is excessively rare. It has been chronicled; it has been read of; it has profited by the existence of the accurate catalogue of the work of the Master--it is a certified thing. But, with knowledge gradually acquired, with diligence exercised in the right place, a print extremely fine, extremely desirable, may still be bought for a few pounds. It will be much fuller of Art than any drawing which ordinary good fortune is to enable you to get for the same outlay. And I say this as one who loves drawings--as one who, notwithstanding his theories, even ventures to live with a few of them; but, if I have a preference in the matter of collecting--well, I suppose it is for prints. About a print, every point is interesting. Apart from subject, apart too from technical treatment of the copper, there is the delightful question, How does your own impression compare with other people’s? And, again, the paper. The true print-lover can talk about different papers--old French, old Dutch, old English, Japanese--as the connoisseur of clarets talks of Pontet Canets and Pichon Longuevilles. ... But my Solander-box is all this time unopened!