In such cases any remedy except the drastic one of punching is of course out of the question. Hence the rarity of a really “desirable” set of the plates,—a rarity which is largely due to the hoarding away of books in glass cases; for books require fresh, dry air, with the rest of God’s creatures. It may not be out of place here, whilst on the subject of foxing, to warn the collector that every plate in a book should be carefully examined before any extravagant price is given for what is called a fine copy. No doubt we are much indebted to the clever “doctors” of prints who punch the fatal spots out and pulp them in, who fill up the worm-holes and vamp up the cleaned prints with green-wood smoke and coffee infusions to a respectable appearance of age. At the same time we must never allow ourselves to forget that there are such occupations as vamping and “improving,” and that it is not for vamped and improved copies that we should pay excessive prices. {59} CHAPTER V ON SOME FURTHER SUPPRESSED PLATES, ETCHINGS, AND WOOD ENGRAVINGS BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK In Chapter III. we have incidentally considered the suppressed grotesque border to the etching of “The Last Song” by George Cruikshank in the _Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi_. In this chapter we shall treat of certain other suppressions to which the “inimitable” George’s work was subjected. The first to which I shall direct your attention has a curious and romantic history attaching to it, instinct with the rough and brutal methods of our immediate ancestors. It is a highly-coloured etched broadside published in 1815, the very year of the tragic death of the gifted and ill-fated Gillray, whose mantle, as political caricaturist, was now fallen upon his brilliant young contemporary. {60} These were the days of hard hitting, of reckless charges, of imprisonment for libel, of dramatic political episodes, and the wonder is that George Cruikshank escaped the fates of the Burdetts, the Hones, and the Hobhouses of the period. The fact is that George was a very shrewd young man and had a very shrewd idea of how far it was safe to go. Indeed, in this partially suppressed cartoon we find him upon the very verge of recklessness and only drawing back from danger just in the nick of time. I have spoken of the _partial_ suppression of this broadside, and in this _partial_ cancellation it is differentiated from all others with which we have hitherto dealt. Brutal enough as is the satire as we see it, there is a brutality curiously hidden within, which, unsuspected by the uninitiated, proves to what astounding lengths satire of that period was sometimes ready to go. Before dealing in detail with this “Financial Survey of Cumberland or the Beggar’s Petition” it will be as well to relate the circumstances which led up to its perpetration.