THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING. 321 



Miller's plate, before instanced, of the Grand Canal, Venice ; 

 and E. Goodall's of the upper fall of the Tees. The men who 

 engraved these plates might have been exquisite artists ; but 

 their patience and enthusiasm were held captive in the false 

 system of lines, and we lost the painters ; while the engrav- 

 ings, wonderful as they are, are neither of them worth a 

 Turner etching, scratched in ten minutes with the point of an 

 old fork ; and the common types of such elaborate engraving 

 are none of them worth a single frog, pig, or puppy, out of 

 the corner of a Bewick vignette. 



136. And now, I think, you cannot fail to understand clearly 

 what you are to look for in engraving, as a separate art from 

 that of painting. Turn back to the ' Astrologia ' as a perfect 

 type of the purest school. She is gazing at stars, and crowned 

 with them. But the stars are black instead of shining ! You 

 cannot have a more decisive and absolute proof that you must 

 not look in engraving for chiaroscuro. 



Nevertheless, her body is half in shade, and her left foot ; 

 and she casts a shadow, and there is a bar of shade behind 

 her. 



All these are merely so much acceptance of shade as may 

 reliev'e the forms, and give value to the linear portions. The 

 face, though turned from the light, is shadowless. 



Again. Every lock of the hair is designed and set in its 

 place with the subtlest care, but there is no lustre attempted, 

 no texture, no mystery. The plumes of the wings are set 

 studiously in their places, they, also, lustreless. That even 

 their filaments are not drawn, and that the broad curve em- 

 bracing them ignores the anatomy of a bird's wing, are con- 

 ditions of design, not execution. Of these in a future lect- 

 ure.* 



137. The 'Poesia,' Plate IV., opposite, is a still more severe, 

 though not so generic, an example ; its decorative foreground 

 reducing it almost to the rank of Goldsmith's ornamentation. 

 I need scarcely point out to you that the flowing water shows* 

 neither lustre nor reflection ; but notice that the observer'^ 

 attention is supposed to be so close to every dark touch of the 



* See Appendix, Article I. 



