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process, and the author in his eagerness writes :—“‘ What a rich 
inheritance might have descended to us if the old masters had 
possessed this art. The rapid effusions of the imagination, the 
spirited sketches and brilliant first thoughts, never perhaps 
realised even in the finished painting might have been given to 
the world with unlimited liberality. Whatever the poet has 
effected by means of the press, the painter would have achieved 
with the same facility. How many works of topographical 
description or discovery in natural history have been imperfectly 
illustrated for want of drawings which this art might have 
afforded at an expense no longer an objection.” The specimen 
drawings given are not signed or initialed, but in style they 
closely resemble that of Mr. T, Barker. One, an old woman 
seated and wearing a large slouched hat, is almost the same 
figure as one by him. This pamphlet has another interest as it 
tells us that this process was first called Lithography at Bath ; 
in fact the title page gives the first example of the use of that 
mame. On page 8 the author says, “I have taken the liberty to 
change the name to Lithography with a view to confine the 
invention to drawing as strictly the first branch of the Fine Arts. 
It never can equal an engraving on copper or indeed answer any 
purpose to which the graver is appendix. It has a higher 
destination from which it ought never to be diverted.” The 
author also says that the stones of Polyautography had passed 
into his possession and that he proposed to republish in parts, 
but this does not appear to have been done, or it would have 
further connected Bath with that publication. 
Mr. T. Barker was early busy with the new art, and besides 
some single impressions, in this year, 1813, he published a folio 
volume at “the flattering solicitation of friends” which is the 
first private venture in England; Polyautography being a 
trader’s issue and more of the nature of an advertisement. The 
work is entitled :— 
Forty Lithographic impressions from drawings by Thomas 
