'Bardic Scholars'

Hand-colored, aquatint plate features an illustration (by Samuel Rush Meyrick and Charles Hamilton Smith) that depicts a pair of Bardic Scholars, early 19th century. It originally appeared in the book 'The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands, from the Earliest Periods to the Sixth Century, to which is added that of the Gothic Nations on the Western Coasts of the Baltic, the Ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes' (1815, published by R Havel) and was later republished, in 1828 and with slightly differently colored illustrations, as 'The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands, and Adjacent Coasts of the Baltic, including the Ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes, from the Earliest Periods to the Sixth Century.' (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)