DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRA VING. 265 



higher group. I can now proceed securely to separate the 

 third school, that of Delineation, from both ; and to examine 

 its special qualities. 



It begins, (see Inaugural Lectures, 137,) in the primitive 

 work of races insensible alike to shade and to colour, and 

 nearly devoid of thought and of sentiment, but gradually de- 

 veloping into both. 



Now as the design is primitive, so are the means likely to 

 be primitive. A line is the simplest work of art you can pro- 

 duce. What are the simplest means you can produce it 

 with ? 



A Cumberland lead pencil is a work of art in itself, quite a 

 nineteenth-century machine. Pen and ink are complex and 

 scholarly ; and even chalk or charcoal not always handy. 



But the primitive line, the first and last, generally the best 

 of lines, is that which you have elementary faculty of at your 

 fingers' ends, and which kittens can draw as well as you the 

 scratch. 



The first, I say, and the last of lines. Permanent exceed- 

 ingly, even in flesh, or on mahogany tables, often more per- 

 manent than we desire. But when studiously and honourably 

 made, divinely permanent, or delightfully as on the venerable 

 desks of our public schools, most of them, now, specimens of 

 wood engraving dear to the heart of England. 



34. Engraving, then, is in brief terms, the Art of Scratch. 

 It is essentially the cutting into a solid substance for the sake 

 of making your ideas as permanent as possible, graven with 

 an iron pen in the Rock for ever. Permanence, you observe, 

 is the object, not multiplicability ; that is quite an accidental, 

 sometimes not even a desirable, attribute of engraving. Du- 

 ration of your work fame, and the undeceived vision of all 

 men, on the pane of glass of the window on a wet day, or on 

 the pillars of the castle of Chillon, or on the walls of the 

 pyramids ; a primitive art, yet first and last with us. 



Since then engraving, we say, is essentially cutting into the 

 surface of any solid ; as the primitive design is in lines or 

 dots, the primitive cutting of such design is a scratch or a 

 hole ; and scratchable solids being essentially three stone, 



