the launching of the wallpaper venture. Kirlcall is mentioned as follows (pp. 



25-26) : 



... I shall give a brief account of the State of Cutting on Wood in England for 

 the type Press before he [Jackson] went to France La 1725. In the beginning of this 

 Century a remarkable Blow was given to all Cutters on Wood, by an invention of 

 engraving on the same sort of Metal which types are cast with. The celebrated Mr. 

 Kirl{hal, an able Engraver on Copper, is said to be the first who performed a 

 Relievo Work to answer the use of Cutting on Wood. This could be dispatched 

 much sooner, and consequently answered the purpose of Book-sellers and Printers, 

 who purchased these sort of Works at a much chaper [sic] Rate than could be 

 expected from an Engraver on Wood . . . 



It does not seem reasonable that Jackson would learn the art of woodcutting 

 from Kirkall and then refer to him as a famous engraver on copper and type 

 metal. It is just as difficult to believe that Kirkall taught Jackson to work on metal, 

 not wood. 



The "EK" who engraved the blocks for Mattaire's Latin Classics might very 

 well have been Kirkall, whose style also might have had something in common 

 with Jackson's early work. But this would not necessarily indicate a definite influ- 

 ence. English pictorial reUef prints for book illustration in the first decades of the 

 1 8th century had one characteristic in common; they were almost all done with 

 the engraver's burin on type metal or end-grain boxwood. They therefore showed 

 elements of a "white-line" style as opposed to the black-line or knife-cut method 

 commonly used in other countries. While it is likely that Jackson was an exception 

 to the general rule in England (we have his word for it in the Enquiry, as we shall 

 see), he was also deeply influenced by the prevailing English style of burin work 

 on wood or type metal. If Papillon saw a similarity between Jackson's cuts and 

 those in the Latin Classics, it might have been because he was unfamiliar with other 

 examples of EngUsh work and did not recognize a national style. 



The initials "J. B. I." appear on a small cut in the 1717 edition of Dryden's 

 plays, also published by Tonson. If this is an early piece by Jackson it would indi- 

 cate that he might have been born earlier than 1701, although it is conceivable that 

 he could have made it when he was sixteen. 



This is the extent of the evidence, or rather lack of evidence, of Jackson's 

 early years in England. Nothing is certain except that woodblock work was at a 



15 



