386 ARIADNE FLORENT1NA. 



subtly prevented from looking, in the original, for the quali- 

 ties which engraving could never render. Further, it con- 

 tinually happens that the very best colour-compositions en- 

 grave worst ; for they often extend colours over great spaces 

 at equal pitch, and the green is as dark as the red, and the 

 blue as tne brown ; so that the engraver can only distinguish 

 them by lines in different directions, and his plate becomes a 

 vague and dead mass of neutral tint ; but a bad and forced 

 piece of colour, or a piece of work of the Bolognese school, 

 which is everywhere black in the shadows, and colourless in 

 the lights, will engrave with great ease, and appear spirited 

 and forcible. Hence engravers, as a rule, are interested in 

 reproducing the work of the worst schools of painting. 



Also, the idea that the merit of an engraving consisted in 

 light and shade, has prevented the modern masters from even 

 attempting to render works dependent mainly on outline and 

 expression ; like the early frescoes, which should indeed have 

 been the objects of their most attentive and continual skill : 

 for outline and expression are entirely within the scope of en- 

 graving ; and the scripture histories of an aisle of a cloister 

 might have been engraved to perfection, with little more pains 

 than are given by ordinary wovkmen to round a lirnb by Cor- 

 reggio, or imitate the texture of a dress by Sir Joshua, and 

 both, at last, inadequately. 



I will not lose more time in asserting or lamenting the mis- 

 chief arising out of the existing system : but will rapidly state 

 what the public should now ask for. 



1. Exquisitely careful engraved outlines of all remaining 

 frescoes of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries 

 in Italy, with so much pale tinting as may be explanatory of 

 their main masses ; and with the local darks and local lights 

 brilliantly relieved. The Arundel Society have published 

 some meritorious plates of this kind from Angelico, not, 

 however, paying respect enough to the local colours, but con- 

 ventionalizing the whole too much into outline. 



2. Finished small plates for book illustration. The cheap 

 woodcutting and etching of popular illustrated books have 

 been endlessly mischievous to public taste : they first obtained 



