312 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



out the work, the engraver has to decide with what quantity 

 and kind of line he will produce it. Exactly the same quan- 

 tity of black, and therefore the same depth of tint in general 

 effect, may be given with six thick lines ; or with twelve, of 

 half their thickness ; or with eighteen, of a third of the thick- 

 r/ess. The second six, second twelve, or second eighteen, may 

 cross the first six, first twelve, or first eighteen, or go between 

 them ; and they may cross at any angle. And then the third 

 six may be put between the first six, or between the second 

 six, or across both, and at any angle. In the net- work thus 

 produced, any kind of dots may be put in the severally shaped 

 interstices. And for any of the series of superadded lines, 

 dots, of equivalent value in shade, may be substituted. (Some 

 engravings are wrought in dots altogether.) Choice infinite, 

 with multiplication of infinity, is, at all events, to be made, 

 for every minute space, from one side of the plate to the other. 



121. The excellence of a beautiful engraving is primarily in 

 the use of these resources to exhibit the qualities of the orig- 

 inal picture, with delight to the eye in the method of transla- 

 tion ; and the language of engraving, when once you begin to 

 understand it, is, in these respects, so fertile, so ingenious, so 

 ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar, that you may quite 

 easily make it the subject of your life's investigation, as you 

 would the scholarship of a lovely literature. 



But in doing this, you would withdraw, and necessarily 

 withdraw, your attention from the higher qualities of art, 

 precisely as a grammarian, who is that, and nothing more, 

 loses command of the matter and substance of thought. And 

 the exquisitely mysterious mechanisms of the engraver's 

 method have, in fact, thus entangled the intelligence of the 

 careful draughtsmen of Europe ; so that since the final per- 

 fection of this translator's power, all the men of finest patience 

 and finest hand have stayed content with it ; the subtlest 

 draughtsmanship has perished from the canvas, * and sought 



* An effort lias lately been made in France, by Meissonier, Geroine, 

 and their school, to recover it, with marvellous collateral skill of en- 

 gravers. The etching of G-erome s Louis XVI. and Moliore is one of the 

 completest pieces of skilful mechanism ever put on metal. 



