emptor_ indeed.

The most surprising pains are undertaken by certain persons to mislead
the collector who is not very much indeed on his guard, and who yearns
for the possession of some current prize. A case lately occurred in
which the well-known copy of the scarce portrait of Milton, with the
famous verses beneath it, attached to the first edition of the _Poems_
in 1645, had been actually split and laid down on old paper to make it
resemble the original print, and in the same way a plate belonging to
Lovelace's _Lucasta_, 1649, representing Lucy Sacheverell, being
frequently deficient, and making a good deal of the value of the book,
has been ere this soaked off from the modern reproduction in Singer's
_Select Poets_, and "lined" to communicate to it the aspect of a
genuine impression mounted.

Other forms of deception and danger lie in the exact reproduction of
ancient or early books, not always with any mischievous or fraudulent
intention. Such a piece of _supercherie_ as the _History of Prince
Radamanthus_, professedly re-printed from a unique copy by Wynkyn de
Worde, or the _Life and Death of Mother Shipton_, dated 1687, and
actually issued in the latter half of the last century, are scarcely
apt to impose on any but the most unobservant. It stands differently,
however, with the _Declaratioun of the Kings maiesties intention and
meaning toward the lait acts of parliament_, 1585, republished in 1646
in facsimile: with Marlowe's _Ovid_, originally printed in 1596, and
repeatedly brought out without any change in the text down to 1630:
with Sir John Hayward's _Life of Henry IV._, 1599, similarly
reproduced, and (in French literature) with the eighteenth-century
edition of the works of Rabelais, purporting to have come from the
Lyons press in 1558. These difficulties require on the part of buyers
one of two things: an experienced eye or a trustworthy counsellor. The
version of Ovid's _Elegies_ by Marlowe in a re-issue of no value is
constantly sold for the right one, suppressed by authority, although
Dyce, in his edition of the poet, 1850, points out the differences.
One has to study not merely the external characteristics of an old
book, but the paper, water-mark, type. It is scarcely conceivable that
the reprint by Pepys of the _Order of the Hospital of St.
Bartholomew_, 1557, could be mistaken for the genuine impression; the
paper and type alike betray it.

A curious and long-lived misapprehension prevails respe