Another Dickens plate demanding mention is the exceedingly rare etched frontispiece by “Phiz,” to be found in only a few copies of _The Strange {55} Gentleman_, published in 1837 by Messrs. Chapman and Hall. This “Comic Burletta” was founded upon “The Great Winglebury Duel,” in _Sketches by Boz_, and was first performed at the St. James’s Theatre in September 1836. A second edition was {56} published in 1860 with a coloured etching by Mr. F. W. Pailthorpe, the last illustrator to carry on the tradition of Cruikshank and H. K. Browne. The “Phiz” etching is here reproduced. Even the second edition is extremely rare, and readily sells for between two and three pounds. The reason for the disappearance of the “Phiz” plate is not known, and I only give particulars of it here because of its excessive rarity, and because it is constantly referred to as “suppressed,” though with no strict justification. The British Museum copy of the book only contains Mr. Pailthorpe’s frontispiece, but a copy with the “Phiz” plate is to be found in the Forster Library, South Kensington. Then, again, we have Dickens’s _Pictures from Italy_, published by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans in 1846, with the beautiful “vignette illustrations on the wood,” by that master engraver, Samuel Palmer. For some reason or other that representing “The Street of the Tombs, Pompeii,” on the title-page, disappears after the exhaustion of the first and second editions, both published in the same year. It reappears, however, in the late {57} reprint of 1888, and is also only here alluded to because sometimes referred to as “suppressed.” [Illustration: The suppressed plate from “Sketches by Boz”] The last of the Dickens illustrations germane to our subject is that much-desired etching of “The Free and Easy,” which should be found opposite page 29 of the “second series” of _Sketches by Boz_. Both the first and second series were originally published in 1836. In 1839 another edition appeared with all the etchings to the original edition enlarged (except “The Free and Easy,” which was cancelled), and with thirteen additional plates. An edition on the lines of the first issue of the second series, only with the illustrations in lithography, was published in Calcutta in 1837. It is important, in collating the first editions of the _Sketches_, to bear in mind the fact that the first series was in two volumes and the second in one. Otherwise it is impossible to understand why “Vol. III.” is engraved on each of the plates in the second series. As showing how eagerly these volumes in fine condition, and of course uncut and in the original cloth binding, are sought after, it may be mentioned that thirty pounds is by no means an unheard-of price. {58} Unfortunately the plates will in most cases be found to be badly foxed. The tissue of the paper itself has in many cases been attacked by damp and rotted right through.