Art in Engraving on Wood

ENGRAVING on wood, although an art not yet quite a century old, has had a changeful and eventful history. In saying not quite a century old, I must be understood as separating it from the woodcutting of earlier days. That woodcutting, with knives and gouges upon planks, notwithstanding the drawings were by Durer or Holbein, was at its best, even when most skilled and delicate, but the work of mechanics. The art of engraving on wood began with the use of the graver, on the end of the grain so that the tool might cut a clean line in any direction, the wood sawn no longer into planks, but into rounds. The first artists in the new manner were Thomas Bewick and Robert Branston.

Bewick has perhaps been overrated as an engraver. His work is not always distinguishable from that of his pupils, but what seems undoubtedly his own is not remarkable as engraving; that is, in the use and display of lines. As an artist, no man less than Hogarth is his equal. Though he must needs borrow his method from that exercised by copper-engravers, he seemed to scorn their conventionalities, and to care little what lines he used so that they rendered his meaning. So far his work is rude and wanting in delicacy; but at the same time it is wonderfully expressive and effective. And he invented white line: in so doing may be said to have invented engraving on wood, as an art distinct from engraving on copper or steel.

Let it be borne in mind that the printing of wood-engravings is in one respect precisely an opposite process to that of copper-plates. In copper-plate printing, the graved or hollowed lines being filled with ink and the smooth surface of the plate wiped clean, the impression is taken from the ink remaining in the hollows; in printing wood-engravings the surface only takes the ink and gives the impression. White line therefore, though but an adaptation of the ordinary method of copper-engraving, — lines cut in the metal,—is in its effect exactly the reverse of that; the opposite also of what had been previously done on wood. The cutter of Durer’s drawings had only mechanically to outline and clear out the spaces between the lines; patience and care were required for this, but he needed not any understanding whatever of the drawing at which he labored. With the cutting by the artist himself of a line which had not been drawn, which then he first drew with his graver, began the era of art.

Branston (not to be compared with Bewick as an artist) was brought up as an engraver on metal; and when his attention was directed to wood, his early education stood him in good stead, giving him command of his graver, whence power and beauty and regularity of line which Bewick was never able to attain. The bent of education however hindered as well as helped him, making him care too much for the old method, from which Bewick escaped, either from not having had that special training or from an artistic disdain of artificial restrictions. Branston also used white line, but mixed with the black, his engravings being in the style of copper, with the advantage of white line when occasion offered. As engravings, his works are masterly.

So originated two schools of engraving on wood: the school of Bewick, whose pupils were distinguished as artists, notably Luke Clennell the painter, and Charlton Nesbitt, whose work however equaled Branston’s in power of line; and the school of Branston, which excelled in engraving. Branston’s first pupil was, I think, John Thompson, the chief, facile princeps, of wood-engravers; an artist too if not so great as Clennell, but he was on the engravers’ side. And then appeared the draughtsman on wood, — only draughtsman, and not engraver. Bewick drew for himself; Clennell also; William Harvey also, — a younger pupil of Bewick and pupil afterward of Haydon. John Thurston, a copper-engraver, whose artistic perception of the special beauty to be found in well-ordered arrangement of even the least important lines had brought him into requisition to lay the direction of lines for Charles Heath, the famous copper-engraver (a man inferior, though, to his father James), drew the mass of Thompson’s earlier and bestknown work. — drew line for line upon the block, as Durer drew for the plankcutters, or as he himself might have etched upon a plate, only a more regular line with greater certainty of touch. Thompson however did not engrave mechanically even line for line, but regulated, cared for relations, used his own judgment and taste (working with a graver instead of only a knife), became thoroughly accomplished in the theory and practice of line arrangement; knew also — for he was not blind to the worth of Bewick — how to use white line occasionally in advantageous combination, as his master Branston had done, and could cut such line with the energy and expertness, if also some of the conventional manner, of a copper-engraver, whenever he saw it requisite, whether because preferable to the lines drawn for him, or because there were no lines but only a wash of color for his guidance. The very excellence of his work, so perfectly printed at Whittingham’s Chiswick Press that the force and delicacy for which he equally cared had each its full value (perhaps I should also take into account the difficulty felt by less capable men in drawing with the graver, that is, cutting, white line), brought his style into repute. To imitate Thompson’s rendering of Thurston’s drawing was the ultima Thule of an engraver’s ambition. So his great merit but added to the impetus already given in a wrong direction: forgetfulness of purpose in the means, disregard of the higher and more original artistry of Bewick, and preference for imitation of copper-plate. Such imitation of refinements impossible in wood, of peculiarities not suitable to wood, became the fashion, and the vigorous work of Bewick, and of Thompson too, hearty and honest both, was left for the elaborate finish and tone of Harvey and Orrin Smith and others very much their inferiors in taste and capacity. Artificiality, softness, and polish came to be valued rather than the freshness, originality, and strength of the earlier day. The perfection of this erring endeavor is to be seen in Lane’s edition of the Arabian Nights, illustrated by William Harvey.

The Illustrated London News of necessity demanded larger work. For myself, if I have any deserving, it should be, rather than for my work, for that, in opposition to the mere elaboration of this formal imitation of copper which had weakened both engravers and draughtsmen, I tried to bring back a taste for the original and peculiar worth of woodengraving by obtaining drawings from a new class of men, — W. L. Leitch, E. Duncan, Geo. Dodgson, and others of our painters in water-color, — whose style and character I sought to render faithfully, so that the work of the painter rather than that of the engraver should be paramount. It was a fair enlarging of the sphere of wood-engraving. The engraver had to become an artist, to understand the artist’s drawing. The various drawings of men of widely different manner tested all the capabilities of wood; the necessity for rapid work forbade any foolishness of over-refinement; and there seemed a prospect, of the advancement of the art. John Leech, John Gilbert, and the brothers Dalziel, some others also aiding, dispelled the vision.

Leech—not in any way to depreciate the facility and marvelous grace as well as correctness of his sketches of character — could never draw. Nothing worse in drawing than his first contributions to Punch can well he imagined. His drawings, except the faces, are a mass of unmeaning lines, any serving which may evade the difficulty of accurate definition. Compare them with Tenniel’s, and the difference in artistic power will be clear to any educated eye. Tenniel, also, and Doyle, like Leech, employed that easy looseness ; the Cruikshanks and Seymour had done so before them. Beyond the outlines, the lines would not have suited Thurston or James Heath. Any apprentice could engrave such lines, and in the increasing demand apprentices had the work to do. It was indeed a return to the old mechanism of the plank-cutters, only the mechanics now used gravers instead of knives, John Gilbert, who could draw, found it more profitable to fill in two thirds of a block with a net-work of crosshatchings than carefully to draw a halfpage subject for the News while the

messenger waited or took a walk in the Park. And as Gilbert’s drawings, however spoiled in cutting, always looked spirited and showy, and Tenniel’s and Leech’s drawings for Punch did not depend upon the engraver for popularity, work steadily cheapened; the art became a business; and the. brothers Dalziel, fair engravers themselves, and of direct descent from the old Newcastle school of Bewick, started their establishment for the new manufacture. Boy or man in the factory, each cut his allotted portion of unintelligible fac-simile; perhaps one with more skill attended to faces and other important parts. The carcase, of the original drawing to untaught eyes looked just as good as the life; it was considerably cheaper ; publishers were satisfied; proprietors of engraving establishments made profit; and the public, understanding nothing, seeing so much and nothing better, gradually learned to think the art improved. Everywhere one heard, even from the splenetic critic, of the strides of engraving on wood. The last time I met John Thompson, we spoke of the new school. What did he think of it ? I asked. “It is not engraving at all! ” he replied. And he was right. The same manufacturing system, a trade, without even desire of artistic excellence, a mere speculation out of which to make money, as by cheese-selling or any other selling, which is not art, was followed up also by Pannemaker in Paris; and when, some ten or more years ago, I left England, there was no art of wood-engraving, there or in France. Going back some years since, and inquiring, I found in the lowest depth a deeper still, — the employment of “ engravers ” on no longer even drawings, but on photographs of drawings, not drawn even so as to be suitable for the purpose; these poor engravers cutting (as rats might gnaw) portions of something not understood by them, —patches of hair, or flesh, or brick, what mattered not to the cutters, their business only to stick exactly to the lines or measly surface of the square inch before them, and to gnaw out something that might look like that when printed. With the picture of which they engraved part they had no concern. I would not wrong some honorable exceptions by saying there were no engravers; but what I found were two-legged, cheap machines for engraving, — scarcely mechanics, mere machines, badly geared and ineffective. It was a veritable going back from wood-engraving to wood-cutting ; only that instead of bold and meaning lines, good manly carving, the modern unfortunates were employed upon wretched scrawls, as minute as meaningless, whereupon at once to ruin their eyes and waste their ill-paid lives.

Here in America, engraving on wood has been for the last ten years steadily improving. It were not in good taste to speak of my own work, but in work by American hands the illustrated giftbooks issued by Messrs. Fields, Osgood & Co., under the superintendence and with the sign-manual also of Mr. Anthony, and the Picturesque America of Messrs. Appleton, have shown not only advance in execution, but progress toward that intelligent as well as earnest work which alone is entitled to the dignity of Art. Noting this, I began to dream of a revival here of the old days of Bewick and of Thompson. I wake startled by the cry of “ a new departure.” No more occasion to look back; redeant Saturnia, etc., is all bosh; there has been no engraving until now; in Scribner’s Magazine behold the Avatar of engraving on wood! I look, and wonder.

My attention to the new phenomenon was first attracted by a portrait, one of a series, engraved by Mr. Cole after a picture or from a drawing by Mr. Wyatt Eaton. It is always a pleasure to see conscientious and careful work. Yet even at the first glance I could not but ask the exhibitor, Why waste so much of pains on the unimportant parts of the engraving? Why give the same value to the background, which is nothing, a formless void without intention, as to the features? Why no difference between the texture of the coat and the texture of the cheek? At first it looked like the earnest but ill-considered performance of a very young man, ambitious, very painstaking, timid as a young man might be under the eyes of the master painter, afraid to be careless even of the minutest portions of the great work entrusted to him, and which he was resolved to render faithfully, however ineffectively. I praised — could not help praising — the endeavor, and the young endeavorer albeit ill advised or mistaking. But looking at the series, — there are the same faults, not mere shortcomings but shameful faults, throughout: the faces badly modeled (I may be blaming the engraver when I should blame the painter, but I speak also of such modeling as even good direction of lines will give) ; the heads looking as if carved out of wood, or patted into shape in butter (perhaps for the Philadelphia Exhibition) ; no drawing fairly made out, but all indistinct, hidden under a minuteness of weakest line that muddies everything; coats and neckties (of the same material, of course) and eyes and hair and background of one uniform texture; an unmeaning scribble in the background defined most carefully, while markings on the brows (of Emerson o Longfellow) were indefinite and slurred — all thought of the ambitious, timid, careful student was lost in disgust at the manifest conceit of such pretentious im potence, in sorrow for the false direc tion in which such pains had been be stowed. I speak severely, because these things have been lauded to the skies as fine art, when indeed they are only marvels of microscopic mechanism ; not works of art at all, but bad, altogether bad, in all that an artist cares or ought to care for. I bate no jot of critical severity for fear of paining Mr. Cole (whom personally I know not), because through all the dust stirred up around him I think I can discern conscientiousness, even with some young conceit, and certainly ability of hand, to be turned to good account when the mechanic has made himself an artist. What may have lured him into his wilderness of foolishly tangled and confused lines it is not my need to inquire; but the sooner he is out of it, the better for his own reputation and for the public taste, which is not so pure as to bear new modes of depravation. He will, I hope, forgive me for any offensive prominence I have here given him,— nothing “ set down in malice; ” it cannot be so offensive as the prominence of the work I am condemning. And he can do better. His Modjeska, in the March number of Scribner’s Magazine, is remarkably free from the faults I have had to point out in the other portraits. The background keeps its place; the hair looks like hair; the flesh is flesh; the delicacy of the dress (a rare piece of careful graver-work) is in good taste; the folds are nicely drawn; the texture is excellent. Better than all, the lines on the face are simple and harmonious. The whole cut is pure and good. Let him go on as he has begun here, abandoning the vain care for work too fine to be printed (some lingering of which even this betrays), and he will yet be known as a first-rate engraver; and though he may not thank me for administering so bitter a tonic, he will, in his healthy-mindedness, be as much ashamed of those Wyatt Eaton portraits as I am.

But if I write thus severely of Mr. Cole’s ineffectual elaborations (I had passed them by had I been allowed to do so), into what gall shall I dip my pen to write with proper harshness of other manifestations of those “ departure ” scholars who, having invented “ the small-tooth comb as applied to engraving on wood,” have come really to consider the same (what Holman Hunt’s father called pre-Raphaelitism) “ a grand invention”? And they have taken in the publishers, and are taking in the painters, too. Does not the comb give tone? Why, “with this many-toothed graver, when we have cut a sky, without or atmosphere or gradation, though the clouds be never so shapeless, we can scratch the whole into varieties of tenderness and form which shall be printable for we don’t know how many impressions upon proper paper.” More: “ We can produce with the same little instrument perfect fac-similes even of the

painter’s brush marks, when required; and to some painters these things are of importance.” What is this wonderful instrument, the perfecter of good engraving, the certain cure for bad? It is a multiple graver. Think of tying together a row of pencils with which to draw at once, or a row of five or six or seven brushes (I am ignorant of the exact number of teeth in the wonderful wood comb)! You of course do your drawing or paint your picture with only one; but having done it, it is probably unsatisfactory. Now take your combination! Drive it gently up and down certain portions of your drawing or picture,— over the whole if you like, and in as many directions as you think necessary! Yon will get tone in your work; what more I do not know. The only difference between a six-pencil power and a six-graver power is that the graver cuts— I would rather not exaggerate, so say scratches — white lines. You see it is the Bewick invention rediscovered sixfold. I have mentioned its applicability to skies, where is, abundant scope for its delightful exercise. But you have water, which you may possibly have engraved in level lines, not without some sense of propriety, since you so convey a notion of the level water. A perfectly beautiful effect is produced by after perpendicular plowing with the instrument. Or you may have been — why not? — utterly careless as to the direction or meaning of your lines, in the water or elsewhere. The wonderful wood-worker will set all to rights. No one need know which way went your lines originally. In that there is a manifest advantage. Or again, your most talented draughtsman, having outlined his principal figures with a charcoal line of sixfold breadth of determination, requires the remainder of his subject to be of a dreamy unsubstantiality. What means so fitting as the six-toothed annihilator of meaning? After a few operations on the face of the block in various directions (perpendicular is generally preferred, but you can have it all ways), you may call the part so improved whatever pleases you — a rice field, or a torrent, or a street pavement. It is as much like one as another. It can be dust or chickens, a snow storm or prairie grass, or distant mountains; the only requisite is that after due examination you shall be uncertain which. Some solid blacks, equally formless, may be interspersed with as much judgment to complete the effect.

And this manufactured rubbish is carried with flourish of trumpets and much hymning into the market-place, and sold to a believing public as " high art ” ! Cross - white - lined backgrounds, and wooden or cadaverous faces worked in cross-stitch, skies, mountains, walls, and water, in white worsted, we are asked to admire as fine engraving. In the words of our greatest engraver, It is not engraving at all.

The purpose of engraving is expression, which necessitates some attention to differences. When you find sky and pavement of exactly the same texture and material, the same regularly placed square black dots (obtained by cutting with the multiple graver two series of white lines, one perpendicular, the other horizontal) supposed to represent a patch of blue sky, a stone pavement, the front of a carriage, the neck and body of a horse, the side of a house, some distant trees, etc. (see cut of Henry Bergh on Duty, at page 873 in the April number of Scribner’s Magazine), — when you find all these differences, of form and substance so treated that you can scarcely distinguish one from another even by aid of the hard obtrusive outlines with which Mr. Kelly vulgarizes his drawings, you may be sure, whether you have had art education or not, without help from the judgment of an engraver, that such tricky and most clumsy mechanism is not engraving, is not art. How can the absolutely inexpressive be artistic?

Surely I am not objecting to the employment of cross-wldte-line. I myself have used it more than any other engraver of past times; may claim indeed to have brought it into vogue, though I have never been able to equal the work of Charlton Nesbitt, which first taught me of what value it might be made. It is indeed of especial value in flesh, the texture and roundness of which can hardly be rendered on wood with sufficient sweetness in cross black lines, after the manner of copper or steel. If my readers will now refer to the December number of Harper’s Magazine, they will see there (illustrating an article on Mendelssohn and Moscheles) a series of portraits in which cross-white-line has been used with excellent effect, because the lines have been, ordered by taste and judgment; So that while by their direction helping to give form, they are also in harmonious combinations agreeable to the eye. The cross-lining here too is judiciously confined to the flesh, distinctly marking a special substance. Once only has it been ventured on else, in the powdered hair of Mozart (page 74); and the crossing not having been carried through the under side of the hair, the sense of hair is left as well as the appearance of powder. Had the small tooth been employed on this head in the new approved manner, the powder had probably gone under the hair and into the eyes of the unfortunate Mozart; his coat would have been of powder, and the atmosphere around him as dusty as himself.

The heads I refer to are not all of equal merit (I would particularize those of Handel, Bach, Schumann, Beethoven, and Mozart); but they are all better than anything possible to be produced by a multiple machine, or by that excessive fineness affected also by the “ new departure.”

As to fineness, it is altogether a mistake to suppose that a work cannot be too fine, or that fineness (closeness and littleness of line) and refinement (finish) are anything like synonymous terms. There is such a thing as propriety — suitability not only to size but to subject— in the treatment of an engraving. A work may be bold even to the verge of what is called coarseness, yet quite fine enough for the purpose; by which I do not at all mean the purpose of the publisher, but the purpose of the artist. Also, it maybe finished and refined, however bold; in which case to call it coarse simply because the lines may be large and wide apart would be only misuse of words. It is no proof of judgment when a publisher counts the lines and thinks there are too few for his money; nor is it to the credit of the engraver when he endeavors to hide his ignorance of drawing under a multiplicity of cross-hatchings., machine or hand work equally false, so assisting at the further depravation of his employer’s taste, and aiding and abetting in cheating the innocent buyers of “illustrated” books into a belief that the work is fine. Fine indeed in a finical sense, but not fine artistically.

By such fineness a work is not bettered. The fineness may be out of character with the subject,—may positively contradict its sentiment and manner. Think of Michael Angelo’s Sibyl engraved in the style of the Emerson head! Has one no instinct of impropriety there ? Or take some landscape strong in opposition of color,—a wild, tempestuous scene, large and vigorous in treatment; the painter has flung his paint upon it, left the coarse marks of his half-pound brush and the mighty sweep of his trowel. He cares not for that, — need not care; seen at a proper distance the effect is what he desired. What would you say to the engraver who should so far disregard the bold carelessness characteristic of the painting as to give you in niggling minuteness every brush and trowel mark, in order that, or so that, you may forget the real worth of the picture, despite the painter’s slovenliness and absolute disdain or dislike of finish, in your admiration of the engraver’s most delicate and neatest handling? “ See how grandly broad the rendering of that cloud! ” (It is perhaps the painter talking to himself who speaks; or is it the accomplished literary critic discoursing upon matters of unknown art to an admiring crowd?) “ A momentary sketch, instantaneous as a photograph, exceedingly effective! No, it could not be improved by any additional care in modeling, or by any gradations of shade or color.” Says the engraver, or his work for him, “ Never mind the cloud or anything else of the picture! See how admirably I have imitated the crossing of the brush strokes! Examine that bit of clotted hair; notice the shadows of the blobs of color left where the palette-knife laid it on! You can tell at a glance which is brush-done, and which is knife or trowel work.” Is that the purpose of engraving? Labor, even skilled labor, can be ill bestowed. And if, after all this trouble about brush marks, you have lost what drawing there was in the picture, missed the very spirit of the landscape while busied with those little sprigs of mint and anise in the corner, how shall your engraving be called fine, though it needs a microscope to enable me to count the lines? What wonderful eyes, what dexterity of hand, must have been in requisition! But after all it is not a fine engraving. Fine as an artist’s word is not the same word as in the proverb of the feathers. Fine feathers may make fine birds, but fine lines will not make a fine engraving. The one is the French fine, thin, crafty, not exactly honest: from which are many derivatives, such as finasser, to use mean ways; finasseur, a sharper (later dictionaries perhaps may add a sharpener of small-tooth combs for engravers) ; finasserie, petty trick, poor artifice; finesse, cunning, etc. Quite other is the masculine fin, the essential, from which we get finir, to finish, and finisseur, a finisher or perfectioner. And the first fine is the very opposite of the old Roman finis, the crowning of the work. The artist does care for finish, that is, the perfectness of his work; he is below the real artist and will reach no greatness whenever he can he content with the unfinished. But the word fine, the proper adjective for a great work, was taken, perhaps unaware, by poor engravers, careful mechanics without capacity for art, as a cover for their deficiencies, and, accepted by ignorant connoisseurs, now passes current, for the beguilement of trusting publishers and an easily bewildered public. So trick is admired instead of honest art workmanship.

An engraving is fine, that is good, so far as art, as distinguished from mechanism, has been employed upon it, is visible in the result; visible, I would say further, even to the uneducated, if not already vitiated by the words of misleading critics. The art of an engraving is discoverable, even by the uninitiated, in the intention of the lines. You may not have an artist’s quickness of perception, nor his maturer judgment, but if you see an engraving in which the parts, any of them taken separately, are unintelligible, you will rightly suppose that the engraver did not know what he was doing, or how to do it; that the master spirit which ought to have moved him, the presumed Art power, was only a false god, like the Baal whose priests were taunted by Elijah. Either he was talking (may be with a critic), or pursuing (not a real art purpose), or on a journey (far away from any consciousness of intention), or peradventure he was asleep; there is no sign of the presence of art in the work. Do not believe that the work is good for anything, though you read the most impartial and unbought recommendations of many a newspaper. Art is a designing power. If you can find no proof of that, reject the work as bad. Is it so difficult to form an opinion? I take up two engravings, the Bach head and the Emerson head, both already referred to. As some amends to Mr. Cole, I would take his Modjeska instead of the Bach, but the larger size of the Bach will make my remarks more clear. The Emerson head, so much larger than the Bach, would have borne the bolder work; being larger and finer (I use the word now in the sense of having more lines), the details should have been more distinct. Of what use a greater number of lines, if not to give more accurate definition? It does not give that. The larger head has less drawing in it than the smaller. In the Bach the direction of the lines helps the drawing ; the curve of line, the increasing or decreasing strength, assists the perspective of the forms, shaping them and (which the most artignorant of observers may understand) distinguishing prominences from hollows.

Light and shade alone are of any use toward that in the Emerson portrait. It has no perspective of line whatever; not a line anywhere helps to define the drawing. It is one undistinguishable mess of meaningless dots and lines. You may cut out a piece of cheek and replace it with a bit of the background or the coat, and, the color matched, no one would see that you had transferred portions which ought to be so different in treatment. Eyes, eyelashes, eyebrows, forehead, are equally foggy. There is no definition or sign of certain intention anywhere. If the accumulation of lines upon the cheek is a fair representation of flesh, the head is without hair. If the combination where hair should be is hair, then the undeveloped man must be hairy, as a shaven ape at least. I point to these things not for the sake of further criticism, but to give my readers some clue toward a correct judgment of what is art in engraving, and what is not. If the taste of buyers of engravings can find opportunity for improvement (it is not to be expected that the sellers should first furnish that; the Ephesian image vendors were not among the earliest converts), then our engravers may be encouraged to mend their ways. Some encouragement may be needed. I know the difficulties surrounding them and speak of conscientious necessity and with “ tender heart.”-

Need the instruction be carried further? Shall we look again at Henry Bergh on Duty? I am still speaking to the heathen, — say to some rural purchaser (may the shadows of such increase!) of illustrated works. Dear sir, or madam, as the case may be, be pleased (not too much) to notice that the coat of the driver (page 873, April number of Scribner’s again), the front of the carriage, side in perspective and front of the horse, part (why only part?) of Mr. Bergh’s apparel, the sky, the unshadowed parts (again why only those parts ?) of the pavement, the perpendicular sides of houses, the more distant figures, the glass lamp, also some trees, are one and all represented by nothing more or less than a series of perpendicular lines crossed by horizontal white ditto. Most innocent purchaser of “fine art”! do you think you have it here? Look a little on to The Bull-Dog of the Future, at page 880, or at Moran’s views of the Stickeen River, in the same number. But I guess these last are altogether by machinery; so there is no one for me to blame. Enough of these abortive popularities!

Every line of an engraving ought to have a meaning, should be cut in the plate or in the block with design. From a drawing you can erase a false line; from a metal plate you can hammer out your faults; in wood there is no such easy alteration. On paper or canvas you can rub in a meaningless background, a formless void, which is all you want; in steel or copper you can cross lines repeatedly so minutely that all which can be seen is as vague as any rubbing in. You cannot do this in wood. To cut so finely as to get only color is next to impossible, and so far as it can be done useless, for it will not print. It is for this reason — that every line in wood-engraving bears witness for or against you — that I have spoken of white line (the meaning of which, I hope, is now understood by my readers) as the true province of engraving on wood. Cutting round a black line drawn for you, you are so far dependent upon your draughtsman ; for pure fac-simile, or the Dalziel pretence of fac-simile, that may do. But the best drawings are not made in line. Tints are washed in with a brush, a more rapid and more effective and more painter-like method; and the engraver has to supply the lines, that is to say, he has to draw with his graver such lines as shall represent color, texture, and form. He is not an artist who neglects one of these ; and he is an artist only so far as every line he cuts has intention of representing something. In such work he is an artist in exactly the same degree in which the translator of poetry is a poet. No literal translation is artistic. He must be possessed with the spirit of his original before be can speak in his own language what had been said in the other tongue. Between literality (never correct) and translation, which do you prefer, — Pope or Chapman?

Art is not nature, but, as Emerson well observes, “ nature passed through the alembic of man.” That for the picture. The picture in the engraver’s hands passes through a new alembic. It is not a photographic image of the picture, but an engraving. Well but, I am told, the artist (the “ artist ” meaning always the painter, whose picture is photographed, or, worse, drawn on the wood by himself), the artist insists on strict adherence, an exact copy even of his brush marks, even (it has happened) of the texture of the material on which his drawing was made, — large and rough for his unartistic convenience. I can but answer—Deference has of course to be paid to the painter. To whom else? He ought to know what he means by his picture, and how he would have it rendered in black and white, though he may not know how to do it, being ignorant of the engraver’s language. Let him have your respect next to respect for the truth of Art and the respect for yourself as his equal, when you may be so, outside of the Academies! Still, your business as an engraver is that of a translator, not a copier. If your original is mannered and tricky, avoid the tricks though you imitate the manner! Do the best you can for the picture; faithful to the good, which you are not asked to excel, and not caricaturing what is bad! A copy readily becomes a caricature. Anyhow, if a painter trusts his work to an artist, he must suffer the penalty of being assisted by an artist’s experience. I recollect the opportunity for a good portrait of Mazzini (there is none now) being lost owing to the conceited ignorance of the painter of a bad one. Calamatta was asked to engrave the bad one; finding it faulty, and knowing Mazzini personally, he ventured to suggest that he might have to make certain alterations. The frightened painter refused to submit to the man of genius; the commission was transferred to a copier, and the result was not satisfactory, — perhaps not even to the painter, though I would not be sure of that.

A copper engraving (I continually say copper rather than steel, from love of the richness of line which characterized the old material), which the engraver absolutely draws with his own lines, — no drawing at all on the plate except his own, —has the dignity of a poetic translation. A wood-engraving from a washed drawing has the same merit, is a translation of as much, or of greater difficulty, since every line is unalterable. Copper has its preëminences, fineness and delicacy. I know not of any others. There are brilliant and atmospheric effects; above all, a freshness and painter-like touch, peculiar to wood, which on copper cannot be produced. Especially the character of the painter (oh, no! 'not as shown in brush marks) can be rendered in a way not approachable by copper. These are indications of art in engraving, the results at which an artist-engraver would aim, and by which alone, according to the degree of his success, he must take rank among artists.

I am not depreciating mere fae-simile work. Of that there is something to be said. A little volume, unfortunately long since out of print, an edition of Rogers’s Poems, contains some designs by Stothard, drawn by him in simple outline, in pen and ink. Any boy nowadays would think he could cut such simple things. Clennell cut most of them; Thompson two or three. Clennell has reproduced Stothard’s drawing; Thompson’s, though excellently engraved, are Thompson’s. It took the best artist even to do justice to a bare outline.

This may lead me fairly to speak of the qualifications of an engraver. And the first is self-forgetfulness. Perhaps that is the only ground in which any excellence can have healthy growth toward, perfection. I am sure that it is the one thing necessary for the engraver, for his own salvation as well as for the accomplishment of his work. Only that man will I call artist who can forget himself in his work. There may be what charity and not much precision of speech will call art along with self-display; but it will never be art of the greatest. With such artistic modesty and conscientiousness, a man who studies what is proper for his work rather than what may be most admired by my few friends this afternoon, and who will do his best with or without the price he thinks he may deserve, will, if he have the artist nature, have some fair chance of success — as an engraver; I do not say as a transmuter of wood into coin, but as a member of the great Guild of Art. If he care not for that end and finish, let him set up his multiple machinery, and as boss steam - engine to the concern exploit the same for his increasing profit! What such gain shall profit a man I think I have read somewhere.

For him, however, who would take the way, the only way, of Art, steep and rugged it has been said, yet not without some flowers on the roadside, I would fain add a few truisms — so they seem to me, — the repetition of which at least is harmless.

Self-forgetfulness at his work will not necessitate heedlessness of respect for his own manhood. It may be that some painter or patron may demand his adherence to the impossible or the undesirable. If it be possible for him to keep his place as translator rather than to become a machine in their unknowing hands, let him bear in mind the duty laid upon every artist to be true to his perceptions! There is no other ladder that can reach to greatness.

Indistinctness is not tone.

A poor engraving may please because the picture is liked for its subject, its sentiment, its effect, or anything else. That is no praise to the engraver.

Do not disdain delicacy, however difficult of attainment in wood! But do not prefer it before force! Combine the two when that can be done with propriety!

Do not be flattered when you are told that “ we should not have taken that for wood; we thought it must be steel! ”

Prefer essentials to non-essentials!

Artifice is not art.

And again, to help you to that difficult self-forgetfulness, which should be the last as well as the first thing to be cared for by you, — recollect that an engraver, whoever may employ him, is employed not for his own sake, but for the sake of the engraving.

And yet one more word, — only what has been said before in different form: Above all things, as you would be an artist, worship reverently and be faithful to the Ideal !

W. J. Linton.