THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING. 307 



to do anything of the kind themselves. And yet, when you 

 see in the shop windows a line engraving like this,* or this,* 

 either of which contains, alone, as much work as fifty pages 

 of the manuscript book, or fifty such drawings as mine, you 

 look upon its effect as quite a matter of course, you never 

 say ' how wonderful ' that is, nor consider how you would like 

 to have to live, by producing anything of the same kind your- 

 selves. 



115. Yet you cannot suppose it is in reality easier to draw 

 a line with a cutting point, not seeing the effect at all, or, if 

 any effect, seeing a gleam of light instead of darkness, than 

 to draw your black line at once on the white paper ? You 

 cannot really think f that there is something complacent, 

 sympathetic, and helpful in the nature of steel ; so that while 

 a pen-and-ink sketch may always be considered an achieve- 

 ment proving cleverness in the sketcher, a sketch on steel 

 comes out by a mere favour of the indulgent metal ; or that 

 the plate is woven like a piece of pattern silk, and the pattern 

 is developed by pasteboard cards punched full of holes? Not 

 so. Look close at this engraving, or take a smaller and simpler 

 one, Turner's Mercury and Argus, imagine it to be a draw- 

 ing in pen and ink, and yourself required similarly to produce 

 its parallel ! True, the steel point has the one advantage of 

 not blotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in 

 that you cannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and 

 laborious way, nor play with it, nor even see what you are 

 doing with it at the moment, far less the effect that is to be. 

 You must feel what you are doing with it, and know precisely 

 what you have got to do ; how deep, how broad, how far apart 

 your lines must be, etc. and etc., (a couple of lines of etceteras 

 would not be enough to imply all you must know). But sup- 

 pose the plate were only a pen drawing : take your pen your 



* Miller's large plate of the Grand Canal, Venice, after Turner ; and 

 Goodall's, of Tivoli, after Turner. The other examples referred to are 

 left in the University Galleries. 



f This paragraph was not read at the lecture, time not allowing : it 

 is part of what I wrote on engraving some years ago, in the papers for 

 the Art Journal, called the Cestus of Aglaia. 



