THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING. 315 



woodcuts from Tenniel, scarcely make the name of the en- 

 graver known ; and that they never are found side by side with 

 this older and apparently ruder art, in the cabinets of men of 

 real judgment. The reason is precisely the same as in the 

 case of the Tenniel woodcut. This modern line engraving is 

 alloyed gold. Eich in capacity, astonishing in attainment, it 

 nevertheless admits wilful fault, and misses what it ought 

 iirst to have attained. It is therefore, to a certain measure, 

 vile in its perfection ; while the older work is noble even in 

 its failure, and classic no less in what it deliberately refuses, 

 than in what it rationally and rightly prefers and performs. 



125. Here, for instance, I have enlarged the head of one of 

 Durer's Madonnas for you out of one of his most careful 

 plates.* You think it very ugly. Well, so it is. Don't be 

 ,-ifraid to think so, nor to say so. Frightfully ugly ; vulgar 

 also. It is the head, simply, of a fat Dutch girl, with all the 

 pleasantness left out. There is not the least doubt about 

 that. Don't let anybody force Albert Durer down your 

 throats ; nor make you expect pretty things from him. Stot- 

 hard's young girl in the swing, or Sir Joshua's Age of Inno- 

 cence, are in quite angelic spheres of another world, compared 

 to this black domain of poor, laborious Albert. We are not 

 talking of female beauty, so please you, just now, gentlemen, 

 but of engraving. And the merit, the classical, indefeasible, 

 immortal merit of this head of a Dutch girl with all the 

 beauty left out, is in the fact that every line of it, as engrav- 

 ing, is as good as can be ; good, not with the mechanical 

 dexterity of a watchmaker, but with the intellectual effort and 

 sensitiveness of an artist who knows precisely what can be 

 done, and ought to be attempted, with his assigned materials. 

 He works easily, fearlessly, flexibly ; the dots are not all meas- 

 ured in distance ; the lines not all mathematically parallel or 

 divergent. He has- even missed his mark at the mouth in one 

 place, and leaves the mistake, frankly. But there are no pet- 

 rified mistakes ; nor is the eye so accustomed to the look of 



* Plate llth, in the Appendix, taken from the engraving of the Virgin 

 sitting in the fenced garden, with two angels crowning her. 



