Referring to the “Fireside Scene,” he says: “The plate was used in 1838, when the work reappeared in three volumes, in lieu of the preceding (‘Rose Maylie and Oliver at Agnes’s Tomb’), which was thought by the publisher to be of too melancholy a nature for the conclusion of the story.” From which any casual reader would be {46} led to the conclusion that “Rose Maylie and Oliver at the Tomb” was the suppressed plate, and that the “Fireside Scene” was substituted for it, whereas exactly the opposite was the case. The novel was ready for publication complete in three volumes in the autumn of 1838. The illustrations for the last volume had been somewhat hastily executed “in a lump.” And Dickens, who always was most solicitous about the work of his collaborating artists, did not set eyes upon them until the eve of publication. One of them, “The Fireside Scene,” he so strongly objected to that it had to be cancelled, and he wrote to the artist asking him to design “the plate afresh and to do so _at once_, in order that as few impressions as possible of the present one may go forth.”[13] The publication of the book, however, could not be delayed, and thus we have it that the earliest issue of the first edition of _Oliver Twist_ in book-form contains the “Fireside Scene” opposite p. 313, vol. iii., which it is the desire of every Dickens collector to possess, while the later issue of the latter part of the novel in _Bentley’s Miscellany_ {47} contains that which Cruikshank substituted for it at the novelist’s request. [13] _Vide_ Forster, _Life of Charles Dickens_, vol. i. p. 101. (Library Edition.) Both the plates are here reproduced for the convenience of the owner of this or that edition. But this is not all that has to be said upon the subject of the “Rose and Oliver” plates, and again I claim to be the purveyor of a little exclusive information.[14] It has generally been supposed that Cruikshank, although naturally put about by Dickens’s disapproval, did immediately proceed to carry out his author’s suggestion. For example, we find Mr. Francis Phillimore, in his introduction to the _Dickens Memento_, published by Messrs. Field and Tuer, saying: “The author was so disgusted with the last plate that he politely but forcibly asked Cruikshank to etch another. This was done at once.” I am, however, in a position to prove that this was emphatically not the case. And it is what one would naturally expect, for George was the last person in the world to acquiesce calmly and unhesitatingly in the condemnation of work which he had himself deemed sufficiently good. {48} [14] I first alluded to this in _Temple Bar_ for September 1892.