made. From the reproaches I received when the matter was discovered, I refused, 

 naturally, to employ him further. Then he went the rounds of the printing houses 

 in Paris, and was forced to offer his work ready-made and without order, almost 

 for nothing, and many printers, profiting by his distress, supplied themselves amply 

 with his cuts. He had acquired a certain insipid and limited taste, little above the 

 mosaics on snuffboxes, similar to other mediocre engravers, with which he sur- 

 charged his works. His mosaics, however delicately engraved, are always lacking 

 in effect, and show the engraver's patience and not his talent; for the remainder of 

 the cut has only delicate lines without tints or gradations of light and shade, and 

 lack the contrast necessary to make a striking effect. Engravings of this sort, how- 

 ever deficient in this regard, are admired by printers of vulgar taste who foolishly 

 believe that they closely resemble copper plate engraving, and that they give better 

 impressions than those of a picturesque type having a greater variety of tints. 



Jackson, having been forced by poverty to leave Paris, where he could find 

 nothing further to do, traveled in France; then, disgusted witli his art, he followed 

 a painter to Rome, after which he went to Venice, where, I am told, he married, 

 and then returned to England, his native country. 



Whether or not Jackson was unethical he was certainly an active competitor 

 and many printers "supplied themselves amply with his cuts." He must have pro- 

 duced an enormous amount of work during his five years in Paris because John 

 Smith, in his Printers Grammar,^" says that Jackson's cuts were used so widely and 

 for so many years in Paris that they replaced the fashion of using "flowers," or 

 typographical ornaments, and that this style did not come into vogue again until 

 the cuts were completely worn down through use. 



This statement is not entirely true, but it is probable that Jackson's woodcuts, 

 more broadly executed than the typical French products, outlasted all others of 

 the 1725-30 period. They were consistently re-used, and appeared, as far as they 

 can be traced, well into the 1780's." 



Elsewhere in the Traite, however, Papillon has a good word for Jackson's 

 abilities : '" 



Jackson, of whom I have already spoken, also engraved in chiaroscuro; I have 

 a little landscape by him which is very nicely done. 



''Smith, 1755, p. 136. 



'*See cuts in Dissertatiumeula quodlibetariis disputatlonibus of C. L. BerthoUet, Paris, 1780, and 

 Voyage liiteraire de la Grece, of de Guys, 1783. 



-" P. 415. This may be the print formerly in Dresden but lost during the war. 



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