And then there follows anxious discussion and careful examination. The head of A. burnished out here can be re-engraved in the similitude of B. {196} C. will stand as he is and do duty, with a new index number and altered footnote, for D. Here an inappropriate object can be replaced by a panel of appropriate verse. The inscriptions on the banderoles issuing from the characters’ mouths must be altered. And, hey presto! in the twinkling of a bedpost we have our answer ready for a not too critical public. The original lampooner, who counted on a good month’s start, will be confronted with a retort before he has time to turn round. The whole town will be set buzzing about the successful ruse, and the laugh will be turned upon the aggressor. Of course it would be comparatively rarely that the adapted plate could be wholly _apropos_, but such capital ingenuity was exercised, once the stratagem had been imagined, that the practice was not so uncommon nor so unsuccessful as might be naturally expected. In this chapter I am only treating of those dealing with one particular episode, but I have in my possession at least thirty of these remarkable productions. From them we find that it was not always the engraver of a plate who re-adjusted his own {197} handiwork, but piratical hands were sometimes laid upon the work of a master by mere journeymen engravers who did not scruple to leave the original artist’s name for the better selling of the plate, although it had ceased to represent even in the remotest degree his sentiments or intentions. Indeed, I could tell of at least one remarkable plate originally prepared in honour of a certain great personage, which, being thievishly appropriated by his opponents, was by them so judiciously metamorphosed as to cover him with as much confusion as it had originally panoplied him with honour.[38] [38] Mozley, in his entertaining _Reminiscences_, tells the following story of the latter days of the Oxford Movement, which is somewhat parallel: “Isaac Williams published a volume of poetry called _The Baptistry_, upon a series of curious and very beautiful engravings, by Boetius a Bolswert, in an old Latin work, entitled _Via Vitæ Æternæ_. In these pictures, besides other things peculiar to the Roman Church, there frequently occurs the figure of the Virgin Mother, crowned and in glory, the object of worship, and distributing the gifts of Heaven. For this figure Williams substituted the Church, and thereby incurred a protest from Newman for adopting a Roman Catholic work just so far as suited his own purpose, without caring for the further responsibilities.”