SCRIVEN

2pp., 12mo. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper. Scriven begins: 'I am afraid you will have thought I had forgotten to send the plate of Norfolk: the truth is, I decided on doing a few touches to that hand noticed by you & Mr Lackington; and although it was but a very little, I did not like to trust its going without first seeing a proof, as we can never be quite sure, on at all touching the copper, how it may come afterwards.' He ends by sending his 'best respects to Mr Lackington and the rest of your Gentlemen'.

Paper dimensions 25.5 x 19 cm. Plate dimensions 22 x 16 cm. The head-and-shoulders portrait itself is oval, 7 cm high and 5.5 cm wide, contained in a square 11 x 9.5 cm, and with the caption beneath it. Printed on aged paper, with the image itself and the caption are clean and crisp, but the paper carries a crease to the margin, and there is light staining intruding into the surrounding square. Dibdin gives an account of Miller, whose son was the noted bookseller William Miller of Albemarle Street, in his 'Bibliomania' (1811 ed., pp.630-31).

The word 'Proof' is engraved in the bottom right-hand corner. Dimensions of paper roughly ten inches by seven and a half. Good clean image on lightly aged paper. Head and shoulders portrait, in which a dolorous old biddy in cap stares vacantly at the viewer. Presumably a companion piece to an engraving in the National Portrait Gallery by Isaac W. Slater of a drawing by Scriven of Henrietta Maria Slater, published by Colnaghi in July 1830. This item is not present in the National Portrait Gallery online catalogue.