290 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



by quantity of black. Hence it follows that you must ne*:er 

 put little work on wood. You must not sketch upon it. 

 You may sketch on metal as much as you please. 



78. " Paradox," you will say, as usual. " Are not all our 

 journals, and the best of them, Punch, par excellence, full 

 of the most brilliantty swift and slight sketches, engraved on 

 wood ; while line-engravings take ten years to produce, and 

 cost ten guineas each when they are done ? ' 



Yes, that is so ; but observe, in the first place, what ap- 

 pears to you a sketch on wood is not so at all, but a most la- 

 borious and careful imitation of a sketch on paper ; whereas 

 when you see what appears to be a sketch on metal, it is one. 

 And in the second place, so far as the popular fashion is con- 

 trary to this natural method, so far as we do in reality try 

 to produce effects of sketching in wood, and of finish in 

 metal, our work is wrong. 



Those apparently careless and free sketches on the wood 

 ought to have been stern and deliberate ; those exquisitely 

 toned and finished engravings on metal ought to have looked, 

 instead, like free ink sketches on white paper. That is the 

 theorem which I propose to you for consideration, and which, 

 in the two branches of its assertion, I hope to prove to you ; 

 the first part of it, (that wood-cutting should be careful,) in 

 this present lecture ; the second, (that metal-cutting should 

 be, at least in a far greater degree than it is now, slight, and 

 free,) in the following one. 



79. Next, observe the distinction in respect of thickness, no 

 less than number, of lines which may properly be used in the 

 two methods. 



In metal engraving, it is easier to lay a fine line than a thick 

 one ; and however fine the line may be, it lasts ; but in wood 

 engraving it requires extreme precision and skill to leave a 

 thin dark line, and when left, it will be quickly beaten down 

 by a careless printer. Therefore, the virtue of wood engrav- 

 ing is to exhibit the qualities and power of thick lines ; and of 

 metal engraving, to exhibit the qualities and power of thin 

 ones. 



All thin dark lines, therefore, in wood, broadly speaking, 



