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 OLD ENGRAVERS 
 OF ENGLAND 
 
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 ALAMAN
 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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 THE COUNTESS OF SALISBURY. 
 
 FROM THE MEZZOTINT BY VALENTINE GREEN. 
 After Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. 
 (See p. 141.)
 
 THE 
 
 OLD ENGRAVERS 
 OF ENGLAND 
 
 IN THEIR RELATION TO 
 CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND ART 
 (15401800) 
 
 BY 
 
 MALCOLM C. SALAMAN 
 
 AUTHOR OF " WOMAN THROUGH A MAN'S 
 EYEGLASS," ETC. 
 
 WITH FORTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED 
 LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK 
 AND MELBOURNE. MCMVI 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 Libra*? 
 
 THE PERSONAL NOTE. 
 
 WHILE attempting, in the following pages, to trace the 
 art of copper-plate engraving in England through, as 
 it seems to me, the most interesting period of its history, 
 namely, from its introduction in the middle of the six- 
 teenth century to its climax at the end of the eighteenth, 
 I have had no thought for that print-collector with whom 
 considerations of " state " and margin are more urgent 
 than the appeal of pictorial beauty or human interest. 
 To him the price at Christie's will count, perhaps, for more 
 than the intrinsic interest of the print, or the life-story 
 of the engraver. And to him these pages would probably 
 say nothing. 
 
 But to lovers of old times, who would eagerly turn 
 from their intimate delights among the pages of Pepys 
 and Evelyn, Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole, Mrs. 
 Delany, Fanny Burney, Mrs. Montagu, or any of the old 
 chroniclers, diarists or letter-writers, to visualise their 
 impressions with the contemporary prints, to them I 
 venture to hope my pages may serve a little for guidance. 
 
 There is a charm about old prints quite apart from 
 their quality as engravings. They are links of intimacy 
 with bygone times. The printed page may stir us with 
 vivid passages of history, or quicken our imaginations 
 with the social sidelight, or the contemporary gossip of 
 personal or fashionable import, but the prints of the 
 period bring us at once eye to eye with the people them- 
 selves. So we may see what they actually saw, the very 
 faces and persons of their contemporaries, the costumes 
 they wore, the attitudes they affected. So we may judge 
 the taste of their day in the pictures that responded to 
 it, and in the scenic aspect of their favourite plays. In 
 a word, the old prints revive for us the human atmosphere 
 of a past age. 
 
 2039373
 
 iv THE PERSONAL NOTE. 
 
 As the art of engraving developed in its various 
 branches, and its scope expanded with its larger means, 
 it interpreted contemporary life more and more com- 
 prehensively and intimately. Thus, the latter half of 
 the eighteenth century was pictured on the copper-plate 
 with a copiousness and a wealth of resource, charm and 
 accomplishment, never seen in England before or since. 
 For among the engravers were many artists, and they 
 had a wide choice of medium line, mezzotint or stipple, 
 etching or aquatint, each in its highest development. 
 The engravers were artists, that is the point, not impeisonal, 
 mechanical processes. And there were masters among 
 them. They lived in constant and familiar intercourse 
 with the painters ; for they were interpreters, not copyists, 
 and the painters realised that. So the engravers as artists 
 expressed themselves. Their prints were eloquent of 
 their individuality, and to-day they speak to us across 
 the centuries with the appeal of temperament and per- 
 sonality, as well as of art and the picturesque past. 
 
 Yet how few seem to feel the appeal of those old artists 
 on copper. Constantly, even their very identity is ignored, 
 and the mere tantalising statement " From an old print " 
 is held sufficient acknowledgment of a debt for some 
 engraving that illustrates the historic or scenic fact, or 
 illuminates the biographical record. 
 
 For myself, the old prints, as they hang on my walls, 
 around the venerable harpsichord, which was first touched 
 to music, in 1768, by Dr. Burney, Fanny's father, who 
 chose it for the school-friend of my great-grandmother, 
 speak to me with a fragrant charm of personal companion- 
 ship, which lures often to dream-rambles in the long 
 ago.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES : EARLY 
 
 LINE ENGRAVERS i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY : THE LINE ENGRAVERS 
 
 (continued) ....... 30 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY : THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT 60 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE STORY OF 
 
 MEZZOTINT (continued) 81 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT 
 
 (continued) ....... 100 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE GREAT DAYS OF 
 
 MEZZOTINT ....... 130 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT 158 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE REVIVAL OF LINE 
 
 ENGRAVING 177 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE STORY OF STIPPLE 
 
 ENGRAVING 203
 
 INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 ANONYMOUS MEZZOTINT. " The Spruce Sportsman " To face p. 174 
 BARTOLOZZI, F. " The Orange Girl " (after H. Ben- 
 
 weU) ... . . . 204 
 
 BECKETT, I. " Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dor- 
 chester " (after Sir G. Kneller) 72 
 BI.OOTEUNG, A. " Catherine of Bragauza " (after 
 
 Sir P. Lely) 68 
 
 BURKE, THOS. " Favourite Chickens : Saturday 
 
 Morning " (after W. R. Bigg, R.A.) 212 
 
 CHEESMAN, THOS. " Lady Hamilton as a Spinster " 
 
 (after George Romney) . . . . . ,, (a) 208 
 CONDi, JOHN. " William Beckford " (after R. Cos- 
 way, R.A.) (b) 214 
 
 DEI.ARAM, F. " Betrothal of Charles I. and Henrietta 
 
 Maria "........ 18 
 
 DICKINSON, W. " Elizabeth Stephenson " (after Rev. 
 
 M. W. Peters, R.A.) ,,146 
 
 DIXON, J. " Elizabeth, Countess of Pembroke, and 
 
 Son " (after Sir J. Reynolds, P.R.A.). . . 126 
 DUNKARTON, R. " Mary Horneck " (The " Jessamy 
 
 Bride") (after Sir J. Reynolds, P.R. A.) . . 142 
 EARLOM, R. "The Inside of the Pantheon in the 
 
 Oxford Road " (after C. Brandoin) . . . 154 
 EWTRACK, R. " James I. and His Queen " . . 12 
 
 FABER, J. "Margaret (Peg) Woffington " (after E. 
 
 Haytley) 90 
 
 FAITHORNE, W. " Thomas Killigrew " (after W. 
 
 Sheppard) . . . 36 
 
 FAITHORNE, W. " Lady Castleinaine " (after Sir P. 
 
 Lely) . . ,,40 
 
 FINLAYSON, J. " Elizabeth, Duchess of Hamilton and 
 
 Brandon " (after C. Read) . . . . 134 
 GAUGAIN, T. " Winter Amusement " (after W. 
 
 Hamilton, R.A.) (a) 216 
 
 GREEN, VALENTINE. " The Countess of Salisbury " 
 
 (after Sir J. Reynolds, P.R. A.) . . . Frontispiece 
 Hou^ui, W. " View of London Across the Thames " To face p. 48 
 HOUSTON, R. " Caroline, Duchess of Marlborough, 
 
 and Child " (after Sir J. Reynolds, P.R.A.). . no 
 JONES, JOHN. " Giovanna Baccelli " (after T. Gains- 
 borough, R.A.) . . .'... 150
 
 viii INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 KNIGHT, C. " Sweet Poll of Plymouth " (after T. To face p. 
 
 Stothard, R.A.) . . . . ' . . (6) 208 
 
 McARDEU,, J. "Lady Mary Coke" (after Allan 
 
 Ramsay) .......,, 100 
 
 NUTTER, WILUAM. " The Ale-house Door " (after 
 
 Singleton) . . . . . . . ,, (a) 210 
 
 PAYNE, JOHN. " Title-page of Gerard's ' Herbal ' " 24 
 
 PETHER, WILUAM. " The Brothers Smith of Chiches- 
 
 ter" . 132 
 
 PRINCE RUPERT. " The Executioner of John the 
 
 Baptist " (after Spagnoletto) tt 64 
 
 ROGERS, WILUAM. " Queen Elizabeth " . . 6 
 
 RYI<AND, W. W. " Cupid Bound by Nymphs " (after 
 
 Angelica Kauffman) . . . . . ,, 202 
 SHARP, W. " Lt.-Col. The Hon. Charles Cathcart " 
 
 (after G. Romney) ......,, 198 
 
 SIMON, JOHN. " Colley Cibber " (after Grisoni) . ,, 84 
 
 SIMON, P. " Credulous Lady and Astrologer " (after 
 
 J.R. Smith) ... (6) 210 
 
 SMITH, JOHN. " Mrs. Arabella Hunt " (after Sir G. 
 
 Kneller) 76 
 
 SMITH, J. R. " Col. Tarleton " (after Sir J. Reynolds, 
 
 P.R.A.) ..,,166 
 
 SMITH, J. R. -" The Elopement " (after George Mor- 
 
 land) ... . (b) 216 
 
 STRANGE, SIR R. " Charles I. in Coronation Robes " 
 
 (after Vandyck) ,, 186 
 
 TOMKINS, P. W. " English Fireside " (after C. Ansell) (b) 206 
 VAN DE PASSE, W. " The Duke of Buckingham " . 22 
 
 WARD, JAMES. " Juvenile Retirement " (The Doug- 
 las Children) (after John Hoppner, R.A.) . . ,, 170 
 WARD, W. " The Fruits of Early Industry and 
 
 Economy " (after G. Morland) . . . . ,, 172 
 WATSON, CAROLINE. " The Hon. Mrs. Stanhope " 
 
 ("Contemplation") (after Sir J. Reynolds, P.R.A.) (a) 206 
 WATSON, JAMES. " Elizabeth, Duchess of Man- 
 chester " (after Sir J. Reynolds, P.R.A.) . . 122 
 WATSON, THOMAS. " Mrs. Crewe " (after Sir J. Rey- 
 nolds, P.R.A.) ......,, 144 
 
 WHITE, GEORGE." William Dobson " (after W. 
 
 Dobson) , 88 
 
 WH.KIN, C. " Lady Cockburn and Her Children " 
 
 (after Sir J.Reynolds, P.R.A.) .... ,,(0)214 
 WILLIAMS, R. " Vanitas Vanitatum " (after 
 
 Schalcken) 74 
 
 Woou,ETT, W. " Battle at La Hogue " (after B. 
 
 West, P.R.A.) ,,194
 
 THE OLD 
 
 ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 
 
 Earliest Copper-Plate Engraving in England Thomas Geminus 
 The Map Engravers William Rogers Thomas Cockson 
 Renold Elstrack William Hole Francis Delaram Simon 
 Van de Passe William Van de Passe John Payne Martin 
 Droeshout William Marshall Robert Vaughan Thomas 
 Cecil and Thomas Cross. 
 
 THE " spacious days of great Elizabeth " were not memor- 
 able in the annals of pictorial art in England, but they 
 produced the first important engraver of English birth. 
 When, in 1589, William Rogers issued his " Eliza Trium- 
 phans " the earliest known example of copper-plate 
 engraving devoted by a native artist primarily to the 
 service of portraiture there was little encouragement 
 for art in this country. They were full-blooded, strenuous 
 days, those early days of England's expansion, when her 
 buccaneering admirals, patriots all to the backbone, 
 were thundering England over the seas, and her intrepid 
 travellers, merchant adventurers, and colonising pioneers, 
 were, for her glory and prosperity, braving all the terrors 
 and wonders of the unknown. They were days of great 
 B
 
 z OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 emprise, of splendid action, but they were days that 
 could spare no hours for quiet art. 
 
 Men wanted to know, to see, to feel, all that life could 
 give or promise them, and so the dramatic poets, writing 
 immortally, sufficed for their immediate artistic needs. 
 They had no care for mere picture. They were full of 
 ideals, but pictorial beauty was not one of these. Nor 
 was there any great painter in England to inspire this 
 ideal. There was none to picture for them even the 
 visions conjured by the poets' imaginings, or the marvellous 
 narratives of the voyagers. What portraiture the times 
 demanded was easily supplied by the miniature painters, 
 or " limners," as they were called, such as Nicholas 
 Hilliard, the goldsmith, and his eminent pupil, Isaac 
 Oliver ; or the foreign artists who came here, for mere 
 profit, like the Italian Zuccaro, or to escape religious 
 persecution, like the Flemish Lucas de Heere and Mark 
 Geeraerts. So it was that there had been little or no 
 pictorial stimulus to the craft of engraving on copper. 
 It had not yet attained the dignity of an art in this 
 country, as it had for long in Italy, in Germany, and in 
 Flanders. Indeed, its practice here in any form was 
 belated, although, of course, there had been woodcuts 
 of a kind since the earliest days of printing. 
 
 It was in 1540 that copper-plate engraving made its 
 first appearance in England, and this was in a book of 
 midwifery, called " The Byrth of Mankynde," surely a 
 very appropriate title to begin with. One Thomas 
 Raynold, printer and physician, was the publisher, but 
 the "iniquity of oblivion" has hidden from us the name 
 of the engraver, though, as Sir Thomas Browne would 
 say, " it might admit a wide solution." 
 
 Failing this, the name that stands earliest in the history 
 of line-engraving in England is that of Thomas Geminus, 
 who also belonged to the healing profession. He was a 
 Flemish surgeon, holding some official post in the royal 
 households from the days of Henry VIII. to the early 
 years of Elizabeth, and he added to his medical activities 
 the practice of engraving, instrument-making, and printing,
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 3 
 
 at his house in Blackfriars. He copied the plates in the 
 famous anatomical work of Andreas Vesalius, which had 
 been published in Padua in 1543, and incontinently pirated 
 the publication two years later, without any recorded 
 apology. But perhaps his methods and his conscience 
 easily adapted themselves to each other without the 
 intervention of scruples. Certainly it is on record that 
 the College of Physicians was bound to call Geminus 
 to account, and inflict punishment upon him, though for 
 what offence is not stated. Perhaps he advertised him- 
 self too much through his engraving and printing, and 
 so offended against the etiquette of the medical profession. 
 At all events, he appears to have had the courage of 
 his methods, for, without compunction he pictured Eliza- 
 beth, the year after her accession, as quite an ordinary 
 looking, unassuming young woman, which was not at all 
 the kind of representation of her royal person to please 
 the exacting vanity of the Virgin Queen. 
 
 It was, however, to the map-makers and the de- 
 scribers of countries Great Britain herself no less than 
 the strange lands of oversea that copper-plate engraving 
 chiefly owed its early impetus in England. The exploits 
 of the navigators, the tales of wealth and wonder brought 
 home by the adventurers and discoverers, had set the 
 Elizabethan Englishman " thinking imperially." His 
 spirit was singing " Rule, Britannia " ere ever the song 
 was written. With his imagination agog, he wanted 
 to let his eye roam at will over the charts of the world 
 while he dreamt of Empire an occupation, by the way, 
 which old Robert Burton, in his Oxford study, found to 
 be a most stimulating specific against melancholy. Doubt- 
 less, therefore, it was to flatter his countrymen's patriotic 
 pride, as well as the queen's imperious vanity, that 
 Augustine Ryther, of Leeds, in his frontispiece to Sax- 
 ton's maps of England, published under the aegis of Thomas 
 Seckford, the Master of Requests, represented Elizabeth, 
 with prepossessing and intelligent expression, as the 
 Patroness of Geography and Astronomy. 
 
 So map-engraving became the chief and most lucrative
 
 4 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 employment for those English and visitors from Flanders 
 alike who had the skill of the graver. And how delight- 
 fully quaint are those old maps and plans, with their 
 fantastic pictorial embellishments. Their primitive geo- 
 graphy is not troubled by exact degrees of longitude 
 and latitude, but their wavy seas are alive with ships 
 in deadly combat, and the fabulous monsters of the deep ; 
 their tracts of country are dotted with wild animals that 
 would puzzle zoologists, and armies waging battle ; 
 fleshly nymphs emerge from the serpentining rivers, 
 and dryads are sportive among the disproportionate 
 trees ; while sometimes even the devil himself will appear 
 in fearful places of haunted repute. Who cares nowa- 
 days about our makers of maps ? Yet what a flavour 
 of personality there was about those early English map- 
 engravers, with their flights of curious fancy : Augustine 
 Ryther, who also with his graver follows the Spanish 
 Armada round our coasts as it meets its destiny of destruc- 
 tion ; Humphrey Cole, " Goldsmith a Englishman born 
 in ye north, and perteyning to ye Mint in the Tower," 
 as his map of the Holy Land in the Bishop's Bible proudly 
 informs us ; Benjamin Wright, William Hole, Ralph 
 Aggas, of Oxford and London map fame ; and their 
 Flemish fellow workers, the brothers Francis and Remigius 
 Hogenberg (two of the most famous of Archbishop Parker's 
 engravers), Jodocus Hondius (Joos de Hondt), notably 
 in Speed's sumptuous " Great Britain " ; and the accom- 
 plished Theodore de Bry, in those glorious imperial records, 
 Hakluyt's " Voyages " the graphic memorialist, too, 
 of Sir Philip Sidney's funeral procession a precious series 
 of plates. 
 
 It is, however, only when we come to the work of 
 William Rogers that the real pictorial interest of English 
 engraving commences. He was the earliest of the notable 
 succession of line-engravers working in England from the 
 later days of Elizabeth till the closing years of the seven- 
 teenth century, when the art in this country, culminating 
 in the work of William Faithorne, began to decline in 
 popular favour before the novel, exquisite, and more
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 5 
 
 facile art of mezzotint. But, until Prince Rupert had 
 brought the secret of the new method over from Holland, 
 the engraver's art had to find its highest expression ex- 
 clusively through the medium of the beauty and dignity 
 of the graven line. Not that much, if any, of the line- 
 engraving done in England before Faithorne's advent 
 had its raison d'etre in artistic beauty ; but, admirable 
 craftsman's work though it was in great part, some of 
 it was distinguished by character and individuality of 
 intrinsic worth, while all of it possesses for us to-day an 
 antiquarian and historic interest of real importance. 
 
 William Rogers was something more than a capital 
 craftsman ; he was an engraver of considerable accom- 
 plishment and individuality. Indeed, his work, strong 
 and incisive, shows all the distinctive force of a pioneer, 
 and if he seldom gives us the line of natural grace, we 
 must blame the stiff and starched costume of his day, 
 and the lack of an inspiring painter. There was no 
 Velasquez in England to translate the graceless farthingale, 
 or the wide stuffed breeches, in terms of gracious pic- 
 torial harmony. Yet, in his masterpiece, the finest and 
 latest of his three portraits of Elizabeth, Rogers has left 
 us, not only one of the most interesting counterfeit pre- 
 sentments of the Maiden Queen, but an important land- 
 mark in the history of English engraving. 
 
 There, in the throne room, she stands, " th' admired 
 Empress through the worlde applauded," elaborately 
 dressed to play her part, in, perhaps, the most gorgeous 
 of her three thousand fantastically embroidered and 
 begemmed gowns, with monstrous farthingale, extrava- 
 gantly pointed stomacher, gigantic ruffs, and veil stand- 
 ing out in emblematic pretence of angel's wings, inordinately 
 stiffened with " the devil's liquor," as a contemporary 
 satirist called starch, the crown set upon one of her eighty 
 absurd wigs, and the orb and sceptre held by the long 
 fingers which, at dinner time, would serve her for forks, 
 after the custom of her day. Does she not look every 
 inch a Queen Elizabeth ? One may presume that Rogers 
 was one of the elect who were permitted access to her,
 
 6 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " to take the naturall representation of hir Majestic, 
 whereof she hath bene allwise of hir own right disposition 
 very unwillyng." Fancy Elizabeth ever unwilling to 
 pose for her portrait ! But these, it must be noted, 
 are the modest words of a royal proclamation. The 
 natural desire of all her subjects to possess her likeness, 
 and the daily complaints of the Lords of her Council, 
 and others of her nobility (sly dogs !), that most of her 
 portraits did not sufficiently express her Majesty's per- 
 son, favour, and grace, had moved the considerate queen 
 to prohibit any portraiture of herself which did not follow 
 the pattern and example that pleased her. We cannot 
 doubt that Rogers's prints provided that pleasing example. 
 Let us snatch a glimpse of the engraver at his work. 
 First, he must transfer his design to the copper-plate, 
 to do which he has the choice of two or three methods. 
 Perhaps he will slightly warm his plate, and spread over 
 it a very thin layer of white virgin wax ; then, when it 
 is cool, he will lay upon this his design, face downwards, 
 and gently rub the back of the paper until the waxed 
 copper has taken the impression. Or, if he be not par- 
 ticular about preserving his drawing, he may cover the 
 back of it with a dust of black lead or chalk, and, placing 
 this on the waxed surface, trace over his design. On 
 his work-table he has a strong round leather cushion, 
 and on this he will lay the plate, which is now ready to 
 be engraved. Having finely sharpened his gravers with 
 infinite care for their perfect evenness, he will choose, 
 according to his immediate requirements, either a square- 
 edged one for broad and shallow strokes, or one with a 
 lozenge-shaped point for strokes that must be deep and 
 narrow. Holding the handle firmly in the palm of his 
 hand, the first finger steady on the point, he will keep 
 his hand parallel with the plate, and the graver level 
 with it, while he guides the point as it makes its way 
 through the copper. Eye, brain, and hand are all working 
 in sympathy ; but if, by chance, the graver should make 
 too deep a stroke, then the burnisher is at hand to rectify 
 this with skilful rubbing. These were not yet in England
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 
 FROM THE LINE ENGRAVING BY WILLIAM ROGEHS
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 7 
 
 the days of the fine shades of line-engraving ; the subtlety 
 of dark and light in a single line, the long flick and the 
 dainty dot, the cross-hatching and the close parallel 
 lines were still to come ; but it is remarkable to find 
 in Rogers's masterpiece, the shading of the queen's face 
 accomplished by a kind of delicate stippling. 
 
 Little or nothing is known of Rogers's life. That 
 he was an Englishman and a citizen of London, and 
 was proud of both facts, we learn from his prints. From 
 their evidence, too, Mr. Sidney Colvin, who has said 
 the last word of learning on the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 century line-engravers of England, has surmised that 
 Rogers, like Albert Diirer and many other eminent en- 
 gravers, and painters too, in those days, had had the 
 training of a goldsmith. In the sixteenth century the 
 goldsmiths were still artists. Now, among the London 
 goldsmiths was a Richard Rogers working between 1567 
 and 1586, and there was another of the same name, 
 who commenced in 1602 and worked for thirty years. It 
 is quite probable that William was the son of the former 
 and the father of the latter, since he was born about 
 1545, and his work as an engraver on copper dates from 
 1589 to 1604. Certain it is, from the ornamental borders 
 of his prints, that he was familiar with the Flemish patterns 
 adopted by the London goldsmiths. But when the defeat 
 of the Spanish Armada seemed to assure every English- 
 man that he was master of the world, and the fabulous 
 golden city of Manoa was his for the finding, Rogers pro- 
 bably thought that gold would soon become too common 
 for the dignity of his graver, and so he transferred its 
 service to copper, and the picturing of his queen. The 
 very year of the Armada, he commemorated that moment- 
 ous national triumph by his " Eliza Triumphans," in 
 which the queen, assertive in extended bell-shaped skirts 
 richly embroidered and jewelled, is represented standing 
 in the midst of emblems of victory and peace, mistress 
 of the sea and the land, which are conventionally pic- 
 tured in the background. Even the Lords of her Council 
 could have offered no objection to this flattering tribute
 
 8 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of the engraver's art, yet there are only three copies 
 of this print known to exist, as there is but one of Rogers's 
 third Elizabeth portrait, the more decorative " Rosa 
 Electa." 
 
 We may presume that Rogers drew his portraits from 
 the life, although he did not specify ad vivum on his 
 prints, after the fashion of later engravers. His freedom 
 of design proclaims him an original draughtsman, and 
 when he engraved the curious memorial picture of Henry 
 VIII. and his progeny, which Elizabeth commissioned 
 Lucas de Heere to paint for presentation to that good 
 friend of the aliens, Sir Francis Walsingham, he con- 
 scientiously recorded the painter's name upon his plate. 
 The portraits he has left us of those typical Elizabethan 
 Englishmen, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Robert Dever- 
 eux, Earl of Essex, Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, 
 and George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, certainly look 
 as if they were done from the life ; so, doubtless, was 
 his likeness of that quaint old physician, John Gerard, 
 on the frontispiece of his famous " Herbal." These 
 prints only make us regret that Rogers was not given 
 the opportunity of portraying for us with his skilled 
 graver the features and personalities of others of his 
 illustrious contemporaries. If only the virile Rogers 
 could have given us vivid presentments of Shakespeare, 
 Raleigh, Sidney, Drake, as he must have seen them, 
 or, at least, the unpictured Kit Marlowe, whose " mighty 
 line " ought surely to have inspired the engraver's ! 
 
 For the engraved portrait, however, there was as 
 yet very scanty demand. London life was of limited 
 compass, and so localised that the celebrities of rank, 
 fashion, valour, and talent were easily and frequently 
 to be seen in their own persons. The beaux, when not 
 airing their accomplishments of wit, verse, dance, and 
 the foreign tongues, at Court, tilting at the ring, enjoying 
 with Elizabeth her favourite diversion of bull and bear- 
 baiting, or sitting with critical assumption upon the 
 stage of the playhouse, or adventuring oversea in search 
 of El Dorado, would strut along the central aisle of
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 9 
 
 St. Paul's Church to display their extravagances of fashion, 
 their immense ruffs, their " peascod-bellied " doublets 
 and distended hose of rich silk, stuffed with bombast, 
 and with costly lace peeping through the slashes. The 
 ladies, when not at Court, ostentatiously " shunning and 
 avoiding idleness," as Harrison describes them, with 
 needlework, pedantic learning, and " their lutes, citherns, 
 pricksong, and all kind of music," would haunt modish 
 Cheapside in search of the latest excesses in ruff, hood, 
 farthingale, or sleeve, or the most recherche thing in 
 jewelled buttons. But nobody went to seek their por- 
 traits at Sudbury and Humble's shop, at the Sign of the 
 White Horse, in Pope's Head Alley, Cornhill, as in later 
 years it was the custom to haunt the printsellers' shops 
 for the portrait of the latest Court beaut}', victorious 
 commander, darling of fashion, or" pet of the scandal- 
 mongers. Elizabeth would not have brooked such rivalry 
 in popularity. The Lords of her Council would have 
 humbly urged a royal proclamation against it. 
 
 But the authors and the booksellers found ample 
 employment for the engravers. The fashion had set in 
 of the fantastically ornate title-page or frontispiece, in 
 which the author's face generally peered from amidst 
 allegorical figures, which often needed explanation. And 
 not the least fascinating of the print collector's pursuits 
 of pleasure is tracing the work of the early engravers 
 among those books of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies which can still quicken the imagination and intellect 
 of the twentieth, or which have now but the antiquarian 
 interest of verbal sepulchres. 
 
 The earliest of these title-pages, combining portrait 
 with allegory, was that done by Thomas Cockson in 1591, 
 together with numerous full-page illustrations, for 
 Sir John Harington's translation of Ariosto's " Orlando 
 Furioso." The book has a story, which is important in 
 the annals of English engraving. Harington, that " saucy 
 poet, my godson," as Elizabeth called him, whom she 
 bored, while at Eton, with copies of her speeches, and 
 pursued at Cambridge with Burghley's good advice, was
 
 io OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 a licensed wit at Court, where his epigrams made for 
 gaiety if not always for decorum. But one day he carried 
 his license too far. Having translated the immoral story 
 of Giocondo, from the 28th canto of the " Orlando," 
 which even Ariosto had punctiliously advised his lady 
 readers to leave unread, Harington, in a spirit of provo- 
 cative naughtiness, circulated this in manuscript among 
 the maids of honour, who incontinently devoured it over 
 their embroidery. The maiden queen, however, affected 
 to be greatly angered at her godson's attempt to corrupt 
 the morals of her maids of honour, as she put it, although, 
 if the truth were told, she was probably only jealous 
 that they had been first to enjoy the manuscript. Any- 
 how, doubtless with many a good round oath, after her 
 custom, she straightway banished the mischievous poet 
 to his house near Bath, with the paradoxical injunction 
 not to return to Court until he had translated the whole 
 poem ! That he quickly performed this task, and to 
 Elizabeth's entire satisfaction, may be gathered from the 
 fact that she included a visit to his house at Kelston in 
 her " progress " of the following year. But the interest of 
 the book is not in its poor verse, nor is it intrinsically in 
 the title-page, and the quaint panoramic plates, with the 
 descriptions written under each figure, after the fashion 
 of children's drawings ; it is in the author's " Advertisement 
 to the Reader." In this he expatiates diver tingly on the 
 merits of the pictures, " all cut in brasse," which he claims 
 to be a novelty in book-illustration, although his modesty 
 will not permit him to praise them too much, since he 
 had given directions for their making. Then he says 
 naively : " The use of the picture is evident, which is 
 that (having read over the book) you may reade it (as it 
 were againe) in the very picture, and one thing is to be 
 noted, which everyone (haply) will not observe, namely 
 the perspective in every figure. For the personages 
 of man, the shapes of horses, and such like, are made 
 large at the bottom, and lesser upward, as if you were 
 to behold all the same in a plaine that which is nearest 
 seems greatest, and the fardes shewes smaller, which is
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. u 
 
 the chiefe art in picture." Surely the vivacious courtier- 
 poet was prouder of this ingenuous pronouncement than 
 even of his familiar epigram " Of Treason," or his famous 
 rules for the management of his household ! 
 
 The work done for Harington's book in 1591 was the 
 earliest we know of Cockson's, while the latest, dated 1636, 
 is of considerable military interest, showing all the suc- 
 cessive postures of the musketeers and pikemen, with full 
 explanations, invented by one Lieutenant Clarke. Be- 
 tween these dates Cockson, who, like Rogers, had probably 
 been trained as a goldsmith, but was a far less accomplished 
 engraver, executed portraits and a few title-pages, in- 
 cluding those for the works of John Taylor, the Water Poet, 
 and for the " Civil Warres " of Samuel Daniel, the Court 
 poet, who was licenser of plays in Shakespeare's time ; 
 as well as a very interesting political satire of topical 
 interest, entitled " The Re veils of Chris tendome." In 
 this James I. and other sovereigns are seen playing at 
 games of skill and chance with Romish priests, while 
 the Pope and others are trying to interfere. The most 
 striking of Cockson's portraits are those of Charles Blount, 
 Lord Mountjoy (whose liaison and belated marriage with 
 the unfortunately mated Penelope, Lady Rich Sidney's 
 Stella made so romantic a scandal), and those three 
 naval earls, Essex, Nottingham and Cumberland, riding 
 ridiculous prancing steeds, and turning their backs on 
 the sea and their past triumphs, depicted, if we take the 
 engraver's word for it, among curious curly waves. It 
 was not yet the proper convention to portray an admiral 
 standing beside an anchor and a cannon, and, had he 
 lived in those days, Nelson himself would have come 
 prancing towards us, while sea-fights, labelled Trafalgar, 
 the Nile, Copenhagen and the rest, progressed simultaneously 
 in the distant rear ! 
 
 A more prolific engraver than either of the two fore- 
 going was Renold (or Reginald) Elstrack, who, with a 
 neat though undistinguished style, has left us many 
 interesting records of the futile reign of James I. and its 
 graceless fashions. Son of Joseph Elstrack, a glass-
 
 12 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 worker from Liege, who had been long settled in London, 
 he was born in the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, in 
 January, 1571. After, no doubt, acquiring some practice 
 in draughtsmanship among the good-natured artists of 
 the Flemish colony, which centred in the Reformed Dutch 
 Church in Austin Friars, young Renold became a pupil 
 of Rogers, and devoted himself to engraving. His earliest 
 signed plate is dated 1598, and it is certain that he found 
 constant employment among the booksellers and print- 
 sellers up to the end of James's reign. Indeed, his repu- 
 tation was so considerable that, when Compton Holland 
 was bringing out his famous " Baziliwlogia " in 1618, he 
 commissioned Elstrack to engrave the title-page, and 
 nearly a score of the portraits with their cumbrous borders. 
 Evidently also Sir Walter Raleigh approved his publisher's 
 selection of Elstrack to carry out his allegorical ideas for 
 the frontispiece to his " History of the World " in 1614, 
 although his muse was not content to leave the engraving 
 to speak for itself. Truth to tell, the industrious Renold's 
 imagination could not keep pace with the flight of a 
 Raleigh's ; indeed, it ambled along very much in the rear. 
 There can be no doubt that Elstrack's engravings 
 found favour at Court, and, in the year that Shakespeare 
 died, he had the dubious honour of furnishing the preten- 
 tious and pedantic writings of James with a title-page, on 
 which that most contemptible and ineffectual king was 
 credited with a " wise and understanding heart ! " But 
 Robert Barker and John Bill were the king's printers, 
 and knew their business ; sycophantic inscriptions were 
 part of the booksellers' stock-in-trade in those days of 
 courtly flattery and self-seeking, so we must not blame 
 the engraver. Elstrack's portraits were his most im- 
 portant gifts to posterity. Of course we have King 
 James enthroned in the House of Lords, surrounded by 
 his officers of state ; but nothing is more characteristic 
 of that overdressed and undignified period than the large 
 print of James, puffed out with self-consciousness, posing 
 beside his monstrously-gowned queen, whose conjugal 
 contempt is expressed in her face. A companion print to
 
 JAMES 1ST AND HIS QUEEN.
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 13 
 
 this is a memorial group of the king's parents, in which 
 Mary Stuart looks more like Queen Elizabeth than the 
 alluring Queen of Scots, while Darnley is posturing as a 
 very popinjay, and, from the accompanying inscription, 
 one might imagine that both had died quietly in their 
 beds, and the shadow of the murdered Rizzio had never 
 come between them. But Elstrack's separate portraits 
 of these two appeal more humanly to the imagination. 
 
 The betrothal of the popular Princess Elizabeth with the 
 Prince Frederick, Count Palatine, naturally called for the 
 published print, as to-day such an event would evoke the 
 picture postcard, and flood the illustrated press ; and 
 Elstrack shows us a very stiff, uncomfortable pair of 
 lovers. Perhaps their clothes had something to do with 
 this, perhaps also the queen. Not only did she show her 
 disapproval of the match by absenting herself from the 
 betrothal ceremony, but she would persist scornfully in 
 addressing her daughter as " good wife Pfalsgrave." We 
 have no print of the actual wedding at Whitehall, a most 
 sumptuous affair, when the princess was married in a dress 
 of silver stuff, embroidered with silver, pearls and precious 
 stones, and with her hair falling down to her knees, putting 
 this up after the ceremony, and changing her gown to one 
 of gold stuff. But we have separate portraits of Elizabeth 
 and her husband, on horseback before the same background, 
 these identical plates doing duty later, with only the faces 
 altered to look older, and crowns added, when the prince 
 and princess had become King and Queen of Bohemia. 
 
 This economical custom of altering plates was then 
 not uncommon, and the effect was often ridiculous. For 
 instance, Elstrack's print of Prince Charles as a boy, 
 on horseback, was made to serve again when the boy prince 
 had become man and king, only a new head being engraved. 
 Sometimes the engravers would reflect the spirit of the 
 times in using the same figures even for different persons, 
 a portrait of King Charles, for example, being adapted, 
 with a mere change of face, to represent Oliver Crom- 
 well. These variations are the puzzle and delight of the 
 collector.
 
 i 4 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 The popular Prince Henry of Wales was, of course, 
 one of Elstrack's subjects, and, to look at his fine open 
 face, and remember his reverential friendship for Raleigh, 
 and Bacon's praise of him, one cannot help speculating 
 as to the different history which might have been England's 
 but for that prince's premature death. Thanks, too, to 
 the graver of Elstrack, we can read much between the 
 lines in his portraits of contemporary statesmen. But 
 not the least interesting of his prints, from the historic 
 point of view, are his records of that most infamous among 
 the many scandals of James's reign, the intrigue and 
 marriage of the Earl of Somerset with the notorious 
 Countess of Essex, and their complicity in the murder of 
 Sir Thomas Overbury, which so much exercised public 
 and judicial opinion, but not the conscience of the king. 
 The unfortunate, cultured knight is shown in his Tower 
 prison, writing his own epitaph ; while, in the group of 
 the Earl and Countess, dressed in all the excesses of con- 
 temporary fashion, they both look blatantly self-satisfied. 
 Perhaps the vagaries of the countess gave a topical interest 
 to Elstrack's caustic satire against women. The humour 
 of the times is evident, too, in his rare print of John Cot- 
 tington, that diverting impenitent thief and incorrigible 
 " gentleman of the road," who won his sobriquet, 
 " Mulled Sack," at the Devil's Tavern, where Ben Jonson 
 was wont to reign over the wits. This erstwhile chimney- 
 sweep immortalised himself, and filled his own pockets by 
 picking Oliver Cromwell's, as the member for Cambridge 
 was leaving the House of Commons, robbing Colonel Hewson 
 on the highway at the head of his regiment, Lady Fairfax 
 as she was going to Ludgate Church, and Charles II. as 
 he was luxuriating in profligate exile. But the print 
 shows this successful dare-devil in his earlier, roystering, 
 out-at-elbows days, before his more historic achieve- 
 ments and his full purses, else it could hardly have been 
 Elstrack's ; for they omitted to hang " Mulled Sack " 
 until 1659, when he had reached the respectable age of 
 fifty-five, and we lose sight of our engraver in 1625. 
 The plates of William Hole, who commenced engraver,
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 15 
 
 as they used to phrase it, in 1607, seem to reveal a person- 
 ality of refinement and charm. Without ever pretending 
 to any effects of richness and strength, such as we find in 
 the engravings of a later period, his graver was guided by 
 a dainty sense of the rhythmic line. So it is not sur- 
 prising to find him bringing it to the service of the gentle 
 art of music. With the exception of a single known 
 instance in Rome seven years earlier, which was brought 
 to light only by the Caxton Exhibition of 1877, music 
 had been printed from movable type until Hole began 
 to revolutionise the system in 1611. The history of 
 engraving and the history of music thus meet in a volume 
 entitled " Parthenia or the Maydenhead of the first 
 musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls, com- 
 posed by three famous masters : William Byrd, Dr. John 
 Bull, and Orlando Gibbons." What a concord of sweet 
 sounds in the very description ! It was dedicated to 
 " all the Maisters and lovers of musick ; " it had for a 
 frontispiece the picture of a long-curled young lady seated 
 at a virginal ; it was elaborately inscribed by the engraver, 
 in glowing words, to the Princess Elizabeth ; but it was 
 " ingraven by William Hole, for Dorothie Evans." Who 
 was Dorothie Evans ? Was she, perhaps, the lady of the 
 frontispiece ? And may not one scent a romance here ? 
 The life-records of these early engravers are so scanty 
 that we have to gather what we can from their works. 
 William Hole (or Guglielmus, as he often pedantically 
 signed his praenomen) was a young man in 1611 ; he was 
 associated with famous poets, the title-pages of whose 
 books he ornamented with his pencil and his graver, he 
 was evidently musical ; what more likely than that this 
 same Dorothie Evans, whose name lives for us, perhaps 
 also her features, on the first music-book engraved in 
 England, was the engraver's lady-love ? Let us hope 
 then that his domestic comfort was assured when, seven 
 years later, he was awarded for life the post of " head 
 sculptor of the iron for money in the Tower and else- 
 where." 
 
 What a book of reminiscences Hole could have written !
 
 i6 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Imagine him discussing with Raleigh in the Tower the 
 quaint details of his maps of the Land of Goshen and 
 Arabia for the " History of the World" ; and hobnobbing 
 with Ben Jonson, when he title-paged the poet's collected 
 works in 1616, an event which we may be sure " rare Ben " 
 celebrated with a generous wassail bowl. Imagine his 
 talks, when he did their portraits and the frontispieces to 
 their books, with George Wither, defiant of prison bars ; 
 with whimsical Thomas Coryat, of the " Crudities " ; with 
 John Florio, who gave Montaigne to England, and with 
 Michael Drayton, of the " Polyolbion," whose very name 
 Charles Lamb found to retain a sweet perfume in the 
 mention. And might not Keats have envied him, since 
 he not only " first looked into Chapman's Homer," but 
 " heard Chapman speak out loud and bold," while he drew 
 the poet's portrait for his engraving ? But Hole did royal 
 portraits too ; Charles I., both as Prince of Wales and 
 King, and Prince Henry at lance exercise, and also lying- 
 in-state, though his print bears no reference to the weird 
 story of Spifame, the French ambassador, of a naked young 
 man, who, professing that the Prince's soul had passed 
 into his body, which was of the same age and stature as 
 Henry's, entered the palace, and claimed audience of King 
 James to deliver him a message from God ! 
 
 Francis Delaram, who has left us some fanciful frontis- 
 pieces, and many portraits of historic and biographical 
 importance, is described by Bryan as an English engraver. 
 Mr. Colvin, however, doubtless more correctly, presumes 
 him to have been born in Flanders, and probably a pupil 
 of Cornelius Boel, of Antwerp, who was in England in 1611, 
 and engraved, at Richmond, the pictured title-page to 
 the Authorised Version of the Bible. Anyhow, we know 
 that Delaram worked in London from 1615 until 1627, 
 and the frolicsome revels of the musical cherubs in the 
 decorative borders of his prints show the influence of 
 Flemish engravers. The irony of history invests with 
 pathetic interest his betrothal group of Charles of England 
 and Henrietta Maria of France, who are seen standing side 
 by side, with flying cherubs holding crowns over their
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 17 
 
 heads, while between them poses a draped angel with 
 spreading wings, joining their hands. To point the moral 
 of this entente cordiale, laudatory verses presage, for Eng- 
 land, peace and plenty, but for her foes, " famine, ruin 
 and their overthrow ! " 
 
 That Delaram, like most of the early engravers, gener- 
 ally drew from life the portraits he engraved we may infer, 
 even when he does not expressly state it, from the vitality 
 in his admirable prints of Matthew de Lobel, the botanist ; 
 Bishop Williams, who kept King James's conscience 
 (surely a sinecure) after Bacon was deprived of that 
 privilege ; the valiant Sir Horatio Vere ; Sir William 
 Segar, a memorable Garter King-of-Arms ; the poet 
 Wither ; Lord Napier, of Murchistown, at work inventing 
 his logarithms ; and that brave old adventurer and 
 braggart, Captain O'Toole, " Great Mogul's Landlord, and 
 both Indies King," who, as " Arthurus Severus O'Toole 
 Nonesuch," was the butt of the satirists. 
 
 The engravers were now beginning to take notice of 
 the prominent Court ladies, or, perhaps, it was the other 
 way about. There was Katherine, Marchioness of Buck- 
 ingham, George Villiers's wife, and the Earl of Rutland's 
 daughter, in whose visage the poet professed to find a 
 thousand graces. But what was it that forbade Delaram 
 seeing her beauty ? Callousness, perhaps ; for she never 
 tried to save those three unfortunate women, who, only 
 a year or two earlier, had suffered shameful deaths on the 
 monstrous charge of having practised sorcery upon her, 
 and her young brothers, when she was a little girl. They 
 had actually taken her handkerchief, put it in hot water, 
 and rubbed their cat with it, because one of them had 
 been dismissed from service at Belvoir Castle ! And 
 so they had to die the death of witches ! What times ! 
 
 Another of Delaram's subjects was Frances, daughter of 
 Thomas Howard, Viscount Bindon, and granddaughter of 
 the Dukes of Norfolk and Buckingham, a remarkably 
 diverting woman. Beautiful and exceedingly ambitious, 
 she began with a mesalliance, marrying one Henry Prannel, 
 a London vintner's son. When he conveniently died, she 
 c
 
 i8 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 looked favourably upon the love of Sir George Rodney, 
 a young Somersetshire squire, until the wealthy old Earl 
 of Hertford came along, and made her his third wife. 
 Then the jilted young Rodney sought the inn nearest to 
 his fickle lady-love's abode, wrote her some farewell 
 verses in his own blood, and fell upon his sword in good 
 fifth-act tragedy fashion, which seems to have so flattered 
 the aged earl that the Countess was able to wheedle him 
 into settling five thousand a year upon her. But when- 
 ever, in the exuberance of her pomposity, she would 
 vaunt her two ducal grandfathers in his hearing, he would 
 tauntingly suppress her with " Frankie, my pretty, how 
 long is it since thou wert married to Prannel ? " Satisfac- 
 tion came to her, however, when the earl shortly died, and 
 she forthwith married Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Richmond 
 and Lenox, who had been in the habit of courting her in 
 various disguises under the very nose of her octogenarian 
 spouse. Having reached this matrimonial altitude, there 
 was no possible husband left for her, after the Duke's 
 sudden death, but the widowed old King himself, and she 
 took good care to let James hear of her vow that, after 
 so great a prince as Richmond, she would never be " blown 
 with kisses by a subject ! " Poor woman ! She had to 
 die without ever being a queen, though she almost pre- 
 tended that she was one. Perhaps the publication of 
 Delaram's two graven images of herself, first as Countess, 
 very slim, and then as Duchess, very plump, helped her 
 a little in her vanities. Perhaps, too, when she was 
 blowing out her windbag of fictitious state, and circulating 
 inventories of her imaginary gifts to the King's queen- 
 daughter, she would look at Delaram's prints of Queen 
 Elizabeth (after Hilliard), and the ill-favoured Mary, and 
 content herself with her superiority to those queens 
 in being alive ! 
 
 The name of Van de Passe stands out conspicuously 
 at this period of English engraving, for the influence of 
 that skilful family of Dutch engravers was important 
 and far-reaching. Crispin Van de Passe himself never 
 appears, in spite of contrary statements (even the well-
 
 
 
 BETROTHAL OF CHARLES I. AND 
 HENRIETTA MARIA.
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 19 
 
 informed Evelyn wrote it to Pepys), to have come to 
 England, although he had considerable dealings with 
 London print-sellers. There was, doubtless, demand here 
 for his sumptuous Queen Elizabeth, after Isaac Oliver, 
 as well as his cheerful group of the principal Gunpowder 
 Plot conspirators, alleged to have been engraved from 
 life, though it may be doubted whether, even in those 
 days, people who were conspiring to blow up royal families, 
 would go in parties to have their likenesses taken ! But 
 Crispin Van de Passe knew his business, and he brought 
 up his daughter Magdalen, and his three sons, Crispin, 
 William, and Simon to it, training them as skilful engravers, 
 and sending Simon and William in turn to settle in England, 
 and act as his intermediaries with the London print-trade. 
 
 Simon Van de Passe paid his first visit to London in 
 1613, having attracted the attention of the print-sellers 
 by an imposing full-length print executed the previous 
 year at Utrecht of Prince Henry " breathing himself 
 something warlike," as Bacon phrases it, at exercise with 
 his lance. It was, however, not until 1615 that Simon 
 settled in London, when, presumably, be began to collect 
 the portrait material for Compton Holland's new enter- 
 prise, the " Herwologia Anglica," which his sister and 
 his brother William engraved, and his father published 
 in Holland as a speculation of his own. 
 
 Simon seems to have been a young man of tireless 
 energy and industry. His graver was never idle, and 
 when it was not engaged on the copper, picturing the 
 personalities of the day, or giving title-pages to memorable 
 or ephemeral books, it would be decorating with dainty por- 
 traiture plaques of gold, silver or pewter, or chasing with 
 royal heads the little silver counters used for card playing, 
 which are now so rare a prize for the collector. 
 
 The personalities of James's reign are vivid in Simon 
 Van de Passe's prints. King James, on his throne, sits 
 above a verse proclaiming that " knowledge makes the 
 king most like his Maker," and possibly one may detect 
 a knowing wink in the royal eye. Queen Anne, riding 
 away from Windsor Castle, " tempers her words to
 
 20 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 trampling horses' feet," and, considering the language she 
 was wont to use on occasion, perhaps it is just as well. 
 Buckingham, swaggering from earldom to dukedom, is not 
 content with the strawberry leaves ; he must have luscious 
 fruit and artful cherubs to set off his comely face. Here 
 is Mary, Countess of Pembroke, "the subject of all verse, 
 Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," as Ben Jonson 
 reverently named her, with her sweet, grave face and " long- 
 settled eyes " intent upon the Psalms ; and here we come 
 face to face with " that fantastic lady," Lucy, Countess of 
 Bedford, in whose praises Donne and Daniel made verses 
 of elaborate conceit ; Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South- 
 ampton, ever gloriously remembered as Shakespeare's 
 friend, whose frank expression seems to invite us to ask 
 for the secret of the sonnets ; the famous old Earl of 
 Nottingham, newly married to a young wife, and now the 
 jest of the Court ; the showy Dorset, Anne Clifford's 
 first husband, who lived on better terms with his wife in 
 her diaries than out of them ; the courtly Worcester ; 
 Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Richmond and Lenox, the 
 King's kinsman and Frances Howard's third husband; 
 Gondomar, the hateful Machiavellian Spanish Ambassador ; 
 Paul Van Somer, the painter (perhaps the engraver's 
 masterpiece) ; and that noble friend of the arts, Thomas 
 Howard, Earl of Arundel, who collected all over Europe, 
 with never a dream of Christie's. Then we have the 
 principals of the Somerset scandal, though I fail to discern 
 in the Countess's portrait that " sweet and bewitching 
 countenance " which even a hostile contemporary could 
 not deny her ; also those great rival lawyers, all concerned 
 in the case, Bacon, Ellesmere, and Coke ; and Francis, 
 Earl of Rutland, and Sir Henry Hobart, the " upright 
 judge," who sentenced the poor women for bewitching 
 the Earl's children ! We can imagine the success of 
 curiosity that must have attended Simon Van de Passe's 
 print of Mataoka, the Indian princess known to romantic 
 fame as Pocahontas, who saved the intrepid Captain John 
 Smith's life in her native wilds, and then very prudently 
 married the worthy Englishman, Mr. John Rolff. Her
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 21 
 
 barbaric costume has given place to the tasteless English 
 fashion, and she wears but a single feather in her pork-pie 
 hat! 
 
 About 1622 Simon Van de Passe was lured from London 
 to Copenhagen, to become official engraver to King 
 Christian IV. of Denmark, and his brother William came 
 over from Utrecht to take his place. Apparently William 
 liked London, for he stayed here until his death in 1637, 
 although in the latter years of his life he seems to have 
 used his graver somewhat leisurely, if at all. But his 
 earlier years in London were very productive, and, doubt- 
 less, it was his own good work for the " Her w ologia," as 
 well as his brother's popularity, that immediately brought 
 him commissions for royal and other important portraits. 
 
 Some of these have curious histories. For instance, the 
 group of King James standing with his son Charles as 
 Prince of Wales. It was a gruesome fashion in those days 
 when publishing memorial portraits, to represent the 
 deceased with skulls in their hands, or under their elbows, 
 as emblems of mortal vanity ; so, when the King died, the 
 engraver merely took his plate, and changed the King's 
 sceptre into a skull, then he worked over the head of the 
 Prince of Wales, so as to suggest the defunct Prince Henry 
 in place of the living Charles, at the same time transforming 
 the prince's hat into a skull, and, hey presto ! there was a 
 memorial portrait of the King and his long dead son 
 ready for the print-sellers. Then there is the large plate 
 of James and his entire family, comprising both the 
 quick and the dead. To appreciate the comic effect of this, 
 one must imagine the engraver addressing the figures on 
 his plate something in this wise : " Will those of you who 
 are dead kindly signify the same in the usual manner ? " 
 Immediately the King, Queen, Prince Henry and the two 
 little princesses, Mary and Sophia, ostentatiously lean their 
 hands or elbows on convenient death's-heads, while Charles, 
 his sister Elizabeth and her husband and their seven 
 children, show they are alive merely by doing nothing 
 in particular. Later, when Charles had married, and the 
 King and Queen of Bohemia had increased their family,
 
 22 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the plate was altered to include Henrietta Maria and the 
 two additional children, but, as all these survived the 
 engraver, happily no more skulls were introduced into 
 the picture. William Van de Passe never hesitated to alter 
 his plates as the times demanded. His stately equestrian 
 portrait of the Duke of Buckingham (certainly his master- 
 piece), done in 1625, served three years later, after the 
 duke's assassination, to represent the new royal favourite, 
 James, third Marquis, and first Duke, of Hamilton. It 
 was merely a matter of a head, as, in the later troublous 
 years Hamilton himself found to his cost, when he fell 
 into Cromwell's hands. The chief interest of this engraver's 
 betrothal print of Charles I. and Henrietta is that it shows 
 the Queen in a very different aspect from that which the 
 graceful brush of Vandyck has made so familiar to us ; 
 she has not yet emerged from the farthingale and the 
 starched linen of the moribund Jacobean fashion. 
 
 That the Van de Passe influence was far-reaching was 
 chiefly through Simon having for his pupil one John 
 Payne, who in turn was the master of Faithorne. These 
 are very important links in the story of English line- 
 engraving, and certainly Payne holds the place of merit, 
 if not of honour, in the interval between Rogers and 
 Faithorne. He was an engraver of talent, though he 
 never realised his possibilities. Having learnt all that 
 Simon Van de Passe could teach him, he studied the 
 works of the famous foreign engravers of the day, such 
 as Callot, Delff and Vorsterman, and, with the new ideas 
 they suggested to him, he would look at his subjects, and, 
 graver in hand, would think things out for himself. So 
 his prints have distinction, and speak to us with the 
 eloquence of personality. Evidently John Payne had 
 the artist's temperament, else the artistic Faithorne and 
 George Glover had hardly been drawn to his teaching. 
 He had his periods of conscientious work, when he did 
 the best of his day, but he had also periods when his 
 hand guided the graver with uncertainty, or when the 
 copper remained untouched, the commissions were left 
 unexecuted. For his indolent disposition lagged behind
 
 THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 23 
 
 his talents, and found easy refuge in the pleasures of 
 dissipation. It is the old, old story of artistic talent, 
 without any backbone of moral character, falling away 
 to ruin. At his best, Payne produced prints which were 
 a credit to the engraver's art such things, for example, 
 as his famous double-plate of the great war-ship " Royal 
 Sovereign," of 1,700 tons, with 100 brass cannon, " for 
 defence and ornament the richest that ever spread cloth 
 before the wind ; " and the portraits of Dr. Alabaster, the 
 noted divine, after Cornelius Janssen, and Sir Benjamin 
 Rudyard, who published his poems with Shakespeare's 
 friend, Lord Pembroke, and was called " that silver 
 trumpet " from the clarion tones of his oratory after 
 Daniel Mytens all praised highly by that excellent 
 connoisseur, John Evelyn. Equally worthy, too, are his 
 Lancelot Andrews, the famous preacher, bordered in a 
 simple decorative style, which was a welcome innovation ; 
 Nicholas Leete a fine print ; the title-page to the 1633 
 edition of Gerard's " Herbal " ; and the Portrait of 
 George Wither for the " Emblems " which moved 
 the poet himself to self-satisfied verse. It was, of course, 
 these best works of Payne's that procured him a recom- 
 mendation to the notice of King Charles, whose appre- 
 ciative favour might have made his fortune, and en- 
 couraged him to the fulfilment of his artistic possibilities. 
 If his graver could so faithfully translate Janssen and 
 Mytens, it should have revelled in the fine and flowing 
 lines of Vandyck ; his Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, 
 gives only a hint of what he might have done as an engraver 
 of that master. But Payne had all the defects of his 
 temperament, and he neglected his chance of Court favour 
 and artistic distinction. Idling with boon companions 
 among the taverns, he sank in dissipation lower and 
 lower, working only sporadically as a hack of the book- 
 sellers, until, in 1647, when but little over forty, his graver 
 failed him altogether, and he died in absolute want. 
 One of his latest prints was a portrait of Francis Hawkins, 
 a precocious boy of ten, who translated from the French 
 a work on " Youth's Behaviour," which had considerable
 
 24 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 vogue. To Payne, too, we owe the features of old Hobson, 
 the famous Cambridge carrier, who gave us the proverbial 
 " Hobson 's Choice," and lives in Milton's verse ; but surely 
 it was a strange irony of circumstance that called the idle 
 and dissolute engraver to provide a title-page for " The 
 Christian Warfare against the World, Flesh and 
 Devil ! " 
 
 We now come to a name that lives through one work 
 only, and that merely because of its immortal subject. 
 When, in 1623, young Martin Droeshout was engaged by 
 those worthy printers, Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 
 to engrave a portrait of the late Mr. William Shakespeare 
 for the first collected edition of his Comedies, Histories 
 and Tragedies, which they were about to publish, he was 
 probably pleased to get the job, but could hardly have 
 dreamed that it was to give him an imperishable name. 
 The original portrait which he had to translate to the 
 copper could not have been very inspiring. It was a 
 wooden-looking oil-painting, done in 1609, presumably 
 by one of the artists of the Dutch colony possibly one 
 of the Droeshout family, but no doubt the poet had good- 
 naturedly sat for it, and it was accounted a true likeness. 
 Whether Martin Droeshout ever saw Shakespeare in the 
 flesh may be a puzzling question, but it is not beyond all 
 conjecture. He was only fifteen when the poet died, 
 and, of course, Shakespeare had been settled some years 
 at his home in Stratford, though, from time to time, he 
 had visited London on business ; but, when a child, 
 Martin may easily have seen him, he may even have 
 remembered Shakespeare sitting for that portrait. Any- 
 how, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the more genial 
 expression in the engraved portrait was due to some 
 pleasant boyish memory, which guided the young en- 
 graver's hand, beyond the hard lines of the oil painting, 
 to a veritable portraiture of the " gentle Shakespeare." 
 
 " O, could he but have drawne his wit, 
 As well in brasse, as he hath hit 
 His face ; the Print would then surpasse, 
 All that was ever writ in brasse."
 
 TITLE-PAGE OF GERARD S HERBAL
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 25 
 
 Thus Ben Jonson, and surely engraver had never higher 
 tribute to his truth. 
 
 Martin Droeshout was born in London in 1601, as 
 the baptismal records of the Dutch church in Austin 
 Friars duly testify. His father, Michael, was " a graver 
 in copper which he learned in Brussell," as he was described 
 in one of the periodical Returns of Aliens, and he came 
 from Brussels, his birthplace, to join his parents and 
 several other members of his family, who had long been 
 settled in London. Here Michael married, at the Dutch 
 Church, in 1595, the first of his four wives, Susanneken 
 Van der Ersbeck, of Ghent, by whom he had four sons, 
 two of whom, John (the second of that name, the first 
 having died in infancy) and Martin, he trained to his 
 own profession. He lived in, or close to, Bread Street, 
 Cheapside, where the Mermaid Tavern was, and what 
 more likely than that those boys of his would become 
 familiar with the faces of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, 
 Fletcher, and the other convivial poets of the immortal 
 club, as they made their way along narrow Bread Street, 
 to and from the Mermaid ? Possibly, even, still merry 
 from their " wit combats," they may have looked in at 
 Michael Droeshout's to see, and laugh over, his latest 
 prints, and maybe prompt him with bombastic descrip- 
 tions for them. That he was an engaging fellow four 
 women testified by marrying him ; and one may almost 
 hear an echo of Shakespeare's clowns in the absurd legend 
 he engraved on his crude plate of the Gunpowder Plotters : 
 " The Powder treason, propounded by Sathan, approved 
 by Antichrist, Interpreted by Papists, Practised by 
 Traitors, Revealed by an Eagle (Lord Monteagle !), 
 Expounded by an Oracle, Founded in Hell, Confounded 
 in Heaven." 
 
 But, hypothesis apart, it was surely something more 
 than the mere accident of business that gave Martin 
 Droeshout, at 22, his chance of ensuring a perpetuity 
 of reflected light. He was certainly a far better engraver 
 than his father, who was the merest journeyman, and 
 his brother John, who was not much better, but, although
 
 26 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 in the course of his career he did a few passable portraits 
 and title-pages, and even a moral satire, " Dr. Panurgus," 
 which long had a vogue, we need remember only that he 
 gave us the face of William Shakespeare, and that Ben 
 Jonson approved. 
 
 The most prolific English engraver of the first half 
 of the seventeenth century was William Marshall. Evelyn 
 called him, in late reminiscence, a " lamentable fellow," 
 but unjustly. He was undistinguished, but he was re- 
 spectable. Biographically he is almost an unknown 
 quantity, the known quantity of his work being the sum 
 of our knowledge of his life. But from this we may 
 guess at his character. Steady-going industry, con- 
 scientiousness in fulfilling engagements, these must have 
 been dominant traits, else could he hardly have won 
 the confidence and esteem of the authors and booksellers, 
 as he evidently did. Between 1617 and 1649 he lived 
 the laborious days of the patient, uninspired plodder, 
 treating his opportunities always with respect. He seems 
 to have been sensible of his limitations, attempting no 
 ambitious effects with his graver, even when those eminent 
 Flemish engravers, Lucas Vorsterman, Robert Van Voerst, 
 and Cornelis Van Dalen, were in England showing our 
 native engravers the richer capabilities of their art. He 
 saw the revolution of the fashions, from the stiff and 
 graceless extravagances of James's reign to the easeful 
 elegancies of Charles's, but the changes seem to have had 
 no distinctive pictorial message for him, even when 
 Vandyck came to lock the wheels of fashion and stamp 
 the period with its type of grace. 
 
 The interest of Marshall's prints is, therefore, not 
 artistic, but historic, biographic, literary. Their dis- 
 tinction is derived entirely from the persons or the books 
 with which they are associated. But what associations 
 these are ! What a glorious privilege was the engraver's 
 to have been at the christening, so to speak, of immortal 
 books ; to have stood, in a manner, godfather to the 
 " Religio Medici " and Herrick's " Hesperides," perhaps 
 even to have talked of them with Sir Thomas Browne
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 27 
 
 himself and the melodious Dean ! William Marshall's 
 name borrows a literary fragrance from the mere titles of 
 Sir John Suckling's collected poems, and Howell's letters, 
 the " Emblems " of Wither and of Quarles, the poems of 
 Drayton, Owen Feltham's " Resolves," old Fuller's 
 " Holy Warre," Thomas Heywood's " Hierarchic of the 
 Blessed Angels," and that momentous book of pity, the 
 " Eikon Basilike." Then, there is the portrait of Milton, 
 which Marshall, in the ordinary way of business, was 
 engaged to do in 1645, for the title-page of the first collec- 
 tion of the early poems. It is a poor engraving, but who 
 cares for that ? It ushered in Milton's early poems ! 
 Moreover, it has a story which shows the poet in a humorous 
 light, and in this case Charles Lamb's " solemn service of 
 music " is not required before entering upon him. Milton 
 was not yet blind, and he did not recognise his own idea 
 of his personal appearance in Marshall's print (and no 
 wonder !), so he adopted a subtle method of avenging his 
 offended vanity without exposing it by forbidding the 
 publication. He offered to write four Greek lines for 
 Marshall to engrave below the portrait, which offer the 
 unsuspecting engraver gladly accepted. Innocent himself 
 of Greek, he little dreamt that the poet of " Lycidas " 
 would use the language of Homer to disguise a rather 
 mean trick at the expense of a poor hard-working engraver. 
 So Marshall proudly engraved, in ornate Greek letters, 
 the words in which Milton exposed him and his work 
 to the ridicule of scholars. Was the engraver allowed 
 to remain in happy ignorance of the poet's revenge ? 
 I fear he knew too many students of the humanities for 
 that. Could that scholarly royalist soldier and writer of 
 dull comedies, Sir Robert Staplyton, for instance, have 
 resisted the translation when Marshall was doing the 
 portrait frontispiece for his " Juvenal " ? But, perhaps, 
 the genial engraver enjoyed the 'laugh against himself, 
 especially when it was a Milton's laugh. Had he not 
 been possessed of a sympathetic humour, would that 
 jolly old Westmoreland squire, Richard Brathwaite, who, 
 with his " bolster lectures," " Art Asleep, Husband ? "
 
 28 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 anticipated Douglas Jerrold, have entrusted to him the 
 title-paging of his " Solemn Joviall Disputation, briefly 
 shadowing the laws of Drinking ? " 
 
 One of Marshall's best engravings is his portrait of John 
 Donne, as a young man, done from a painting for the 
 posthumous collection of the poems. It shows us little 
 of the famous Dean of St. Paul's, but much of the im- 
 petuous young secretary, who married his lady-love in 
 haste and in secret, even though she was the Lord Chancel- 
 lor's niece and housekeeper, and then perforce repented 
 at leisure in the Fleet Prison. Of Marshall's few female 
 portraits the one that reveals most of personality is that of 
 Bathsua Makin, the learned Putney and Tottenham 
 schoolmistress, at one time governess of Charles L's poor 
 little daughter Elizabeth, who must have suffered not a 
 little from Bathsua's Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, not to 
 mention the mathematics and the Continental tongues ! 
 
 A great deal of journeyman work, in the way of por- 
 traiture and book illustration, was done between 1622 
 and 1678, by Robert Vaughan, who appears to have been 
 something of a character, and no respecter of kings. 
 Under a portrait of James I. he deliberately parodied the 
 obsequious lines affixed by the Van de Passe brothers to 
 their portraits of James and Charles. Vaughan wrote : 
 
 " King's have their Periods : by Dame Nature's date, 
 The poor man dies, so doth the potentate ; 
 And though to ye world's eye King's seeme compleater ; 
 Their standing high, makes but their fall the greater." 
 
 This makes one eager to discover any fortunate collector 
 who may have possessed himself of Vaughan's print of 
 Charles II., done in Commonwealth days, with verses of 
 so offensive a character that, as the story goes, the engraver 
 was prosecuted for them "when the King enjoyed his 
 own again." What could those verses have been, which 
 Charles, who could suffer Rochester's lampoons and 
 Killigrew's mocking jests, found too much even for his 
 reputation ? It is a tantalising question ; is it above anti- 
 quarism ? Unlike most of his engraving contemporaries,
 
 EARLY LINE ENGRAVERS. 29 
 
 with whom Charles I.'s head was as insistent as it was 
 with " Mr. Dick," Vaughan, in his sturdy republicanism, 
 evidently scorned to portray the royal martyr's features, 
 though he pictured Stratford's. In the year that Cromwell 
 died, he published a curious print called " An Age for 
 Apes," in which he clothed ape-like figures in the costumes 
 of the day, just as the modern caricaturists did when 
 Charles Darwin's " Origin of Species " first staggered 
 humanity. Vaughan had a rough satirical humour of 
 his own, but he was not above domesticity. In his frontis- 
 piece to " The Perfect Cook," a volume of much appetising 
 solicitude, dedicated to the Lady Mayoress, he has given 
 us a picturesque peep into a Cromwellian kitchen. 
 
 We may pass over Thomas Cecil and Thomas Cross, 
 two engravers whose long uneventful careers produced a 
 great deal of undistinguished work. They were, in 
 truth, merely booksellers' hacks, of praiseworthy industry 
 unrelieved by any flashes of talent, and whatever interest 
 may attach to them or their works is only the reflection 
 of the momentous times in which they happened to live. 
 Cross was another of Evelyn's " lamentable fellows," but 
 Cecil is certainly honoured by respectful mention in 
 the " Sculptura," though quite gratuitously. However, 
 from his interesting print of Archibald Armstrong, 
 Charles I.'s famous jester " Archie," without his motley, 
 we learn that a king's jester, out of business hours, could 
 look just a wise and pleasant gentleman. 
 
 But we are coming now to engravers of a very different 
 stamp.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE UNE ENGRAVERS (continued). 
 
 George Glover Peter Lombart William Faithorne Wenceslaus 
 Hollar David L,oggan Robert White. 
 
 GEORGE GLOVER had real ability. A fellow pupil with 
 Faithorne, he learnt the groundwork of his art, and learnt 
 it well, from John Payne. Boon companion though that 
 capable engraver was, on his good days he must have had 
 much to teach to his two clever pupils ; and Glover seems to 
 have "bettered the instruction" even earlier than Faithorne. 
 After the example of their master, they both looked 
 studiously at the works of the eminent foreign engravers, 
 notably of Claude Mellan, and we may imagine what a 
 revelation to them must have been the fine, rich engravings 
 of Lucas Vorsterman and Robert Van Voerst, " the king's 
 engraver," from the pictures of Holbein and Vandyck. 
 
 When Vorsterman, after working in England for six 
 years, in the employment of the King and the Earl of 
 Arundel, who had brought him here, returned to Antwerp 
 in 1630, he left behind him the influence of his deep and 
 splendid shadows. Then, almost immediately, came 
 Vandyck himself with his own vital pictorial influence. 
 So, when the young English engravers looked at the great 
 painter's head of Charles I. as the Flemish engraver inter- 
 preted it, with new effects of shadow in closely crowded 
 lines, the face almost stippled with delicate pecks of the 
 graver's point ; when they looked too at Vorsterman's 
 superb Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, after Holbein, and his 
 
 30
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 31 
 
 " St. George and the Dragon," after Raphael, in the King's 
 collection, they must have perceived, by contrast, that 
 hitherto, engraving in England had not been regarded 
 sufficiently as a pictorial art, and that its immediate 
 development rested with such as themselves. Under 
 these influences, therefore, George Glover executed a few 
 really fine prints. 
 
 Up to the time of their production no English engraver 
 had done anything so bold and rich in effect as Glover's 
 portraits of those two representative Members of Parlia- 
 ment, the irresolute Sir Edward Bering, after Cornelis 
 Janssen, and the inflexible John Pym, after the native 
 painter, Edward Bower. I doubt if even Faithorne had 
 then engraved anything of equal importance. The only 
 wonder is that Glover never again reached quite the same 
 level of performance, although he has left some prints of 
 considerable merit. From its publication in 1640, we 
 may assume that his large oval print of Queen Henrietta, 
 after Vandyck, received the painter's approval. It was 
 from life, however, that Glover engraved the face of that 
 fiery, persecuted, dauntless champion of English freedom 
 in every form and degree, John Lilburn, one version of 
 the print introducing his prison bars, which, thanks to his 
 passion for justice and for print, he was seldom without. 
 
 That Glover had originality in the interpretation of 
 character is seen in his ad vivum print of that brilliant, 
 ingenious, fantastico Sir Thomas Urquhart, who translated 
 Rabelais, invented a universal language, and was so 
 " mathematically affected," to use his own phrase, that 
 he showed his affection for his mother by dedicating to 
 her a " most exquisite table for resolving all manner of 
 Triangles." This " wonderful son that could so astonish 
 a mother " is seen, in Glover's print, attired in all the 
 foppery of the Cavalier fashion, much be-laced and resetted, 
 reaching out his hand to take his laurels ! The engraver 
 has surely given us the very man, and made him " stand 
 upon his legs," as Whistler might have said in the artist's 
 praise. Standing on their legs, too, in a curious " broad- 
 side " of Glover's, are William Evans, Charles I.'s giant
 
 32 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 porter, and Sir Geoffrey Hudson, the courtly dwarf, while 
 old Thomas Parr sits sleeping away the last of his re- 
 puted 152 years. What happened to Glover in his 
 later days, why he never became the great engraver his 
 earlier prints seemed to promise, alas, we do not know. 
 His latest recognised work was dated 1652 ; " the rest is 
 silence." 
 
 The stately Countesses of Vandyck, like the butterfly 
 " Beauties " of Lely, and the gracious ladies of Reynolds, 
 Gainsborough and Romney, stand for types of their time. 
 For the early engraving of these, however, there was no 
 caressing scraper of the mezzotinter, but there was the 
 sympathetic graver of Peter Lombart. He was, I believe, 
 a native of Middelberg in Holland, who went for his artistic 
 training to Paris, where he is said to have studied design 
 under the fashionable painter, Simon Vouet. Having won 
 some reputation in Paris, he came with his family to 
 London in 1648, an accomplished engraver, with a style 
 essentially French, so French, indeed, that he is often 
 regarded by connoisseurs as a native of France. He 
 appears to have been welcomed among the Dutch colony, 
 and, the year after his arrival in their midst, he gave his 
 daughter in marriage. Attaining the dignity of Deacon 
 of the Church in Austin Friars, he seems to have lived his 
 fourteen years in London in circumstances of high repute. 
 Evelyn records a visit from him at Sayes Court in June, 
 1653 : " Mr. Lombart, a famous engraver, came to see 
 my collections." Now, the accomplished diarist, with his 
 inquiring mind, was hardly the man to receive at his house 
 a celebrated foreign engraver without showing a learning 
 interest in all that concerned him and his art ; therefore, 
 when we find him, in his " Sculptura," classifying Lombart 
 among the Dutch and Flemish engravers, surely we may 
 accept as conclusive this evidence as to his nationality. 
 
 Lombart's reputation as an engraver of taste and style 
 must have been early established, for, only two years after 
 his coming to London, he was entrusted with the important 
 task of engraving the Vandyck series of Countesses. And 
 what an interesting series it is. The heroic and devoted
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 33 
 
 Countess of Morton, more famous as Lady Dalkeith, 
 whose romantic escape in disguise to France in charge of 
 the little Princess Henrietta was sung by the poets ; 
 Anne, Countess of Bedford, loyal daughter of the infamous 
 Countess of Somerset, who knew not her mother's story 
 till, as a grown woman, she accidentally read it in a book ; 
 the miserably married Countess of Castlehaven ; the 
 dainty Countess of Devonshire ; the brilliant, beautiful, 
 bewildering Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, the political woman 
 of her day, at whose feet, Waller, Carew and Suckling 
 laid the homage of their muses, and Strafford and Pym 
 the flattering service of their friendship ; Dorothea, 
 Countess of Sunderland, Waller's Sacharissa, " the match- 
 less Sidney, that immortal frame of perfect beauty " ; 
 Margaret, the other Countess of Carlisle, and the Countesses 
 of Carnarvon, Middlesex, and Pembroke. It is curious, 
 by the way, that, within the very first years of the Common- 
 wealth, there should have been a demand for prints of 
 the ladies of King Charles's Court. And, of the engravers 
 then in London, Lombart's was the eye best qualified to 
 perceive the grace of Vandyck, his the touch that could 
 best interpret it with refinement. Another of his Vandyck 
 engravings affords a perfect quarry for the curious collector. 
 This is the well-known picture of Charles I. riding under 
 an archway, attended by M. de St. Antoine, carrying the 
 King's helmet. Sometimes it may be found with Charles's 
 head, sometimes with Cromwell's, for Lombart's plate 
 seems to have undergone several changes of politics, after 
 the odd fashion of those days. This talented engraver's 
 residence in London was fruitful of many portraits which 
 are prized to-day. Among these are Robert Walker, the 
 gifted painter, whom Cromwell favoured, engraved from 
 his own painting, now in the National Portrait Gallery ; 
 William Cartwright, the young Oxford poet-parson, who 
 would " drop into poetry " even over King Charles's 
 recovery from smallpox, and at whose death the King 
 wore mourning ; the bright-souled Jeremy Taylor ; Sir 
 Robert Staplyton and John Ogleby, whose vivid portraits 
 outlive in interest their dull works, 
 D
 
 34 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Whether Lombart was Dutchman or not, France was, 
 in any case, his adopted country, and she called him back 
 to her. In 1662 he returned to Paris, where, of course, 
 he was already well known, and there he remained, busily 
 engraving, and there he died in 1681. It was said that he 
 was " about sixty " at his death, probably, he felt and 
 seemed no older, but " about " is a vague term, and, with all 
 due deference to so erudite an authority as Mr. Colvin, 
 it is sufficiently elastic, I submit, to allow the Pierre 
 Lombart who died in Paris to have been the Peter Lombart 
 of Middelberg, who was Deacon of the Dutch Church in 
 London, and had a daughter married in 1649. They 
 wedded early in those days, and prosperous Dutch artists 
 with happy Gallic temperaments did not always remember 
 exactly when they were born. 
 
 Now we call Room for the Master ! But first let us 
 hear his message : 
 
 " The result of air, the symmetry of parts, the exact 
 harmony of proportions, of lights and shadows, may be 
 performed to the height in graving." These are the 
 words of William Faithorne, and, in giving practical illus- 
 tration of their truth, he proved himself, not only the 
 greatest English engraver of his time, but one who, at his 
 best, could more than hold his own with such masters 
 as Nanteuil, Edelinck, or Gerard Audran. He raised 
 engraving in this country to its proper dignity as an art, 
 and when his brother engravers were falling under the 
 spell of the new and more facile method of mezzotint, and 
 were all deserting the graver for the scraper, he never 
 swerved in his allegiance to the noble art of the graven 
 line. He showed that, in a master's hand, no demand 
 of expression, the boldest or the most delicate, was beyond 
 its means, that, by the simple magic of touch, it could 
 reveal the subtlest secrets of light and shade, as well as 
 the simple beauties of pure form. So thoroughly was 
 Faithorne master of his graver that he seldom if ever 
 needed to call the etching-point to his aid, while to a 
 mind that penetrated all the mysteries of character his 
 hand was ever responsive.
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 35 
 
 William Faithorne was born in London in 1616. Who- 
 ever his parents were, they seem to have recognised their 
 son's artistic aptitude, and to have given him the means of 
 cultivating it. He studied drawing and painting under 
 Robert Peake, who enjoyed the dignity of Sergeant- 
 Painter in James's reign, and was filially accepted as a 
 legacy by Charles, and, what is more important, was 
 father of the celebrated printsellers, William and Robert 
 Peake. Being attracted by the art of engraving, young 
 Faithorne next became the pupil, as we have already 
 seen, of John Payne, and early began to engrave small 
 heads in the neat and finished manner of his master. 
 The Peakes, who appear at that time to have been the most 
 influential of the London printsellers, and to have engaged 
 the best available engravers, naturally gave employment 
 to their father's clever young pupil, and this connection 
 proved of the greatest importance in Faithorne's career. 
 The times were troubled, King and Parliament were at 
 feud, and, as the various stages of the conflict brought 
 fresh personalities into sudden prominence, the people 
 called for portraits. So they were busy times at the Peakes' 
 shop, next the Sun Tavern at Holborn Conduit on Snow 
 Hill, and none of the engravers was more industrious than 
 Faithorne. Yet he did not regard his engraving as a 
 mere question of demand and supply, he was responsive 
 to artistic influences, notably that of the pure and dignified 
 line of Claude Mellan. 
 
 But all England was now vibrating with the passions 
 of civil war, and there were temperaments among those 
 engravers and printsellers that thrilled to the " drums and 
 tramplings," and the call of loyalty. Robert Peake, 
 being the son of a Court painter, was naturally drawn to 
 the King's cause, and, as Faithorne gratefully reminded 
 him in after years, when Sir Robert was Vice- President 
 and leader of the Honourable Artillery Company, he 
 prompted the young engraver to loyalty, and " changed 
 the steel of his tools into weapons, and the exercise of his 
 arts into arms." Peake had probably had some previous 
 military experience, for when, in 1643, he joined the King
 
 36 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 at Oxford, taking with hr'jn, among his recruits, Faithorne 
 and Wenceslaus Hollar, another of his engravers destined 
 to lasting fame, he received the commission of a lieutenant- 
 colonel. 
 
 At Oxford, by the way, attached to the Court was 
 another of the elder Peake's gifted pupils, William Dobson, 
 who had worthily succeeded as Sergeant-Painter the great 
 Vandyck, to whom he owed the generous recognition of 
 his fine talents, and his rescue from penurious obscurity. 
 It was probably in the University city that Dobson painted 
 that remarkable portrait of Prince Rupert, which Faithorne, 
 doubtless in the intervals of his military duties, translated 
 so vividly to the copper, showing us an older and more 
 thoughtful Rupert than in Vandyck's gracious present- 
 ment. But there was now more serious business on hand 
 for the young engraver. Basing House was the object 
 of attack from the Parliamentary forces, and thither 
 Faithorne and Hollar marched from Oxford with Colonel 
 Peake's hundred musketeers, to form the mainstay of 
 the garrison, which, under the gallant Marquis of Win- 
 chester, with Peake as second in command, kept the 
 King's flag flying, in the face of a furious siege, from 
 August, 1643, until October 16, 1645. They had famous 
 comrades at Basing House ; among them old Inigo Jones, 
 Dr. Thomas Johnson, the botanist, and Thomas Fuller, 
 who, as chaplain, cheered the heroic defenders with the 
 spirited and comforting phrase. We may be sure that 
 Faithorne bore his part bravely in that historic defence, 
 and was one of his Colonel's most trusted lieutenants, for, 
 in after years, he referred to this episode in his career as 
 having won him some reputation in the world. 
 
 At the surrender of Basing House, Faithorne was 
 taken prisoner and brought to London, but he appears 
 to have been treated with consideration, for he was lodged 
 in Petre House, Aldersgate Street, the old mansion of the 
 Petre family, which, during those troublous times, was 
 used as a political prison. His captivity, however, was, 
 perhaps, an advantageous circumstance for him, and for 
 posterity. There were thousands of good fighting-men
 
 1 ':# 
 
 ' X-' / 
 
 t/u first (i ' 
 
 THOMAS KILLIGREW. 
 
 FROM THE LINE ENQRAVINO BY W. FAITHOHNE. 
 ^//er W. Shepnard.
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 37 
 
 in England, but there was only one Faithorne. The 
 fortune of war, having taken the sword from his hand, 
 now put back the graver in its place. There was constant 
 employment for his art, and the tedious hours of captivity 
 were turned to profit. In his Aldersgate prison Faithorne 
 engraved many fine portraits, and it was there that he 
 reached the high-water mark of his earlier period in the 
 splendid plate of General Sir Thomas Fairfax, after the 
 painting by Robert Walker, which that admirable painter 
 introduced into his portrait of Faithorne himself. 
 
 But the artist yearned for his liberty, for, after all, 
 Petre House was a prison, although within its walls Faith- 
 orne was permitted to engrave his copper-plates, and 
 Lovelace himself, who had his own poetic notions as to 
 what made a prison, saw his " Lucasta " poems through 
 the press, with Faithorne's engraved title-page. Thanks 
 to the solicitation of the influential friends which his 
 talents had won for him, the engraver was at last set at 
 liberty on condition that he left the country. Straightway 
 he made for Paris, the home at that time of great engravers. 
 There he was in his element, and, through the medium of 
 the Abbe de Marolles, a famous collector of prints, in 
 whom he found a most appreciative friend, he became a 
 pupil of the great Robert Nanteuil. This was the crowning 
 influence of his artistic development. Having learnt what 
 the illustrious Frenchmen could teach him of crayon- 
 drawing and engraving, he returned to England in 1650, 
 an accomplished draughtsman, with a complete equipment 
 for an engraver of the very highest order. What this 
 meant in actual achievement we may see in his consummate 
 prints of Sir William and Lady Paston done a few years 
 later. 
 
 Shortly after his return to London, Faithorne married 
 and settled down to domestic felicity and professional 
 enterprise. Of his wife we know nothing, except that 
 she was sister of a Captain Grand, and bore her husband 
 a daughter and two sons. Of these Henry became, in due 
 time, a bookseller, and William won reputation as an 
 engraver in mezzotint.
 
 38 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Faithorne now added to his artistic activities by setting 
 up in business as a printseller, as most of the engravers of 
 old were henceforth in the habit of doing. He lived over 
 his shop, after the custom of those days, first, it would 
 seem, " Att ye signe of ye Shipp, within Temple Barr," 
 and later, next to the sign of the Drake, close to the 
 Palsgrave's Head Tavern, without Temple Bar, and here 
 he carried on a flourishing trade in his own prints and 
 those of other engravers, English and foreign. He was 
 able to give employment to others, and when his old friend 
 and companion-in-arms, Wenceslaus Hollar, came back 
 from Antwerp in needy circumstances, and found little 
 demand for his skilful etching-point, Faithorne took him 
 to live in his house for a time, and readily found him 
 work. 
 
 Through the years of the Commonwealth, and still 
 more after the Restoration, Faithorne's pencil and graver 
 were constantly employed in portraying notable person- 
 alities in various walks of life, translating pictures, or 
 furnishing the booksellers with plates and frontispieces 
 for their publications, pictorial playing-cards, and even 
 maps his London in 1658 being a topographical record 
 of infinite value. His engaging personality (his face in 
 Walker's portrait, with the keen bright eyes, the sensitive 
 mouth, and the flow of curly chestnut locks, is eloquent 
 of charm), his pre-eminent talent and cultured mind, doubt- 
 less made his shop a favourite place of call for the dilettanti 
 who were following the new fashion of print-collecting. 
 
 Samuel Pepys, a great admirer, would often drop in 
 at the shop next to the sign of the Drake, and his visits, 
 of course, he faithfully recorded in his immortal diary. 
 One afternoon, soon after the coronation, he looked in at 
 the engraver's, and " bought some pictures of him," and, 
 while he was there, the King's life-guards rode gaily past 
 after escorting the " Merry Monarch " to Lincoln's Inn, 
 to see the revels there. On another occasion Faithorne 
 showed Pepys his " Workhouse, and the best things of 
 his doing he had by him." Generally the little secretary 
 would buy " two or three heads," which he always described
 
 17TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 39 
 
 in his enthusiastic way, as the best he had ever seen. 
 " Nov. 7, 1666. Called at Faythorne's to buy some 
 prints for my wife to draw by this winter, and here did 
 see my Lady Castlemaine's picture, done by him from 
 Lilly's, in red chalke, and other colours, by which he 
 hath cut it in copper to be printed. The picture in chalke 
 is the finest thing I ever saw in my life, I think ; and I 
 did desire to buy it ; but he says he must keep it awhile 
 to correct the copper-plate by, and when that is done he 
 will sell it me." Again, " By coach home in the evening, 
 calling at Faythorne's, buying three of my Lady Castle- 
 maine's heads, printed this day, which indeed is as to 
 the head, I think, a very fine picture, and like her." 
 
 So Faithorne's art, interpreting Lely's, had charmed 
 back Mr. Pepys's wavering admiration for that imperious 
 profligate beauty. Was there a great rush to Faithorne's 
 for the Castlemaine print ? It would be an interesting 
 side-light on the times could we know who bought it 
 other than Pepys, and, of course, the King, then still her 
 slave. That Charles was interested in engraving we 
 gather from Evelyn, with whom he discussed the art, 
 while sitting to Cooper for his portrait. This was in the 
 very year 1662 that Evelyn published his " Sculptura : 
 or the History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving 
 in Copper," and Faithorne his " Art of Graveing and 
 Etching." But, though the great engraver had done some of 
 the most interesting prints of Charles at various periods 
 of his life, we never hear of the King himself paying visits 
 to Faithorne's " work-house." Perhaps its pervading tone 
 was too serious and dignified for his merry Majesty. 
 Faithorne had no prints, other than the Castlemaine's, to 
 offer him of the light and airy ladies of his Court. Their 
 painted faces, with the little corkscrew curls, did not 
 appeal to the noble line of a Faithorne ; he left their 
 pretty immodesties appropriately to the seductive bland- 
 ishments of mezzotint. So we look in vain to him for a 
 Nell Gwyn, a Duchess of Portsmouth, a Frances Stewart, 
 or any other of the voluptuous, easy-hearted young women 
 who laugh and intrigue their flaunting ways with such
 
 40 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 engaging indecorum through the lively pages of DeGram- 
 mont. Perhaps Faithorne would not have seen them 
 exactly as they were. His art lent always dignity to his 
 subjects, and dignity was not a flower that bloomed by 
 the primrose paths of dalliance at Charles's Court. A 
 Lely might dip his brush in the gay hues, the frivolous 
 lights, and elusive shadows, of the passing moment, but 
 Faithorne's graver could not have helped toning these to 
 the neutral harmonies of Time itself. In Barbara, Lady 
 Castlemaine, he seemed to see a woman who stood for 
 the type of her class, time, and circumstance, " the very 
 head and front " of their offending. So, in his engraving 
 of her he said his first and last word to the whole bevy 
 of historic courtezans. With her head resting on her 
 hand, her long hair falling loosely, she seems to be gazing 
 into the future with a look of languid defiance, as if to 
 say, " Take me or leave me. In me you see incarnate 
 the spirit of Charles II. 's Court pleasure first, and the 
 devil take the rest." And, to place side by side with this 
 if we will, the engraver has left us a portrait of Lord 
 Castlemaine, the complacent husband. 
 
 If we had only Faithorne's prints to inform us, we 
 might suppose that his was a time entirely of high serious- 
 ness in England, and the " pomps and vanities " of White- 
 hall had no existence. For the faces that they show us 
 are the faces, not of the butterflies of pleasure and fashion, 
 but of those, for the most part, who did or thought fine 
 or serious things. The greater number of his portraits he 
 drew himself from the life, but many he engraved from the 
 paintings of contemporary artists. Vandyck, William 
 Dobson, Robert Walker, Lely and his pupil John Greenhil^ 
 Mierevelt, John Hoskins, the miniature painter, Dirke 
 Stoop, the Dutchman, who came to London with Catherine 
 of Braganza, Gerard Soest, William Sheppard, and Henry 
 Cooke, who was driven to give up portrait-painting by the 
 caprices of his sitters to all Faithorne lent the charm of 
 his individuality. 
 
 Let us look at his prints. Here are the royalties, of 
 course : Charles I. in his panoply, and Queen Henrietta
 
 LADY CASTLEMAINE. 
 
 FROM THE LINE ENGR 
 After Sir Peter Lely, 
 
 'ma BY W FAITHORNE
 
 17TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 41 
 
 one vision of her in mourning, with stiff collar and black 
 veil in place of her familiar laces. Charles II. as both 
 Prince and King one charming portrait of him as a young 
 man, which might easily explain Lucy Walters and the 
 Duke of Monmouth, subtly altered later, with more deep- 
 ened lines, to an explanation of all the rest. Perhaps one 
 might almost stretch one's conscience to find some excuses 
 for Charles, when one looks at poor plain Catherine of 
 Braganza, as she first appeared in England, an obstinate 
 anachronism, in preposterous farthingale, and ridiculous 
 crimped hair, " her foretop long and turn'd aside very 
 strangely." James IT. as Duke of York, in the armour he 
 wore when he proved himself a worthy English admiral ; 
 Prince Rupert, as both soldier and artist ; the Duke of 
 Monmouth, the pretty little Princess Mary of Orange, 
 and her boy-husband, William III.'s father they are all 
 here. Cromwell, too, in full armour. And a greater than 
 these. 
 
 Milton, who had not long given his masterpiece to 
 the world, and was about to publish " Paradise Regained " 
 and " Samson Agonistes," sat to Faithorne for his portrait 
 in both oil and crayon, which the engraver subsequently 
 translated to the copper. What a privilege for the artist 
 face to face with Milton, looking into those sightless 
 eyes, with their immortal visions, listening to the " voice 
 whose sound was as the sea," while his skilful hand, 
 guided by fine intuitions, traced the placid features of the 
 poet as he appeared at sixty-two. Looking at this portrait, 
 we may forgive Milton's practical joke at poor Marshall's 
 expense twenty- five years earlier. 
 
 Here, too, are lesser poets : Abraham Cowley, the 
 great unread ; Thomas Killigrew, the witty playwright 
 and " King's Jester," founder of Drury Lane Theatre ; 
 and his rival theatrical manager, Sir William Davenant, 
 absurdly wearing Ben Jonson's laureate wreath ; Mistress 
 Catherine Philips, " the Matchless Orinda " of Cowley 's 
 and Dryden's panegyrics ; Sir Thomas Stanley, Lovelace's 
 poet cousin, and John Ogleby, who danced himself into 
 notice, and won a bubble reputation with illustrated
 
 42 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 versions of Virgil and Homer one of Faithorne's finest 
 engravings. Here also are the prose writers : Ettas 
 Ashmole, of Museum fame, who paid Faithorne 7 for 
 his plate, and his brother antiquaries, Lord Coleraine 
 and Sir Henry Spelman ; Archbishop Ussher ; Sir William 
 Sanderson, whose " Graphice " Walpole often quotes ; 
 Henry More, the English Platonist, seen appropriately 
 in the midst of rural nature, which he loved with such 
 intimate understanding ; Sir Richard Fanshawe, the 
 literary ambassador ; and doughty old Thomas Hobbes, of 
 the " Leviathan," a " book the bishops will not let be 
 printed again," as Pepys recorded, when he had 
 to pay three times its original price " at the second 
 hand." 
 
 The scientists are here : Harvey, who added the 
 circulation of the blood to human knowledge ; Robert 
 Boyle, " the father of English chemistry," finely done 
 from the life ; and a troop of physicians, astronomers, 
 astrologers, mathematicians, and physiognomists, who 
 had their day, and now live only, perhaps, in Faithorne's 
 prints. But here is that benevolent Irish gentleman, 
 Valentine Greatrakes, the pioneer of massage, who, to 
 the mystification of the scientists, gratuitously rubbed 
 away ills that even the King's touch could not cure ; 
 and here also is Sir Isaac Pitman's seventeenth century 
 predecessor, Richard le Baloman, teacher of shorthand ! 
 Musicians, too : Henry Lawes, " whose tuneful and well- 
 measured song first taught our English music how to 
 span words with just notes and accent " ; with Thomas 
 Mace, that wise and very human old lute-player, who 
 wrote, in his " Music's Monument," to show the necessity 
 of singing well, or not to sing at all ! Would that they 
 heeded him nowadays. 
 
 Here are the statesmen, warriors, preachers, lawyers ; 
 devoted fighting royalists, like Endymion Porter, whose 
 " true and lively portraiture " was, by the irony of popular 
 demand, made to serve also, with slight alteration, for 
 that of the Parliamentary general, Lord Essex ; and 
 loyal patriots on the other side, like the redoubtable
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 43 
 
 Bulstrode Whitelock and Sir Henry Vane Milton's " Vane, 
 young in years, but in sage counsel bold." 
 
 And now the ladies : Lady Paston,- of course, proclaims 
 herself a masterpiece ; but it is curious to compare Mistress 
 Sarah Gilly with the amazing medley of hyperbolic and 
 elegiac verse published after her early death to prove 
 her a paragon. Old Frances, Countess of Exeter, the 
 innocent heroine of a grave scandal in her youth, but 
 painted by Vandyck in her age, is a splendid print, but 
 so rare that even Horace Walpole, whose grandmother- 
 in-law she was, had been vainly trying for years to add 
 a copy to his fine collection of Faithorne's, helped, too, in 
 his hunt by " Reynolds, the painter" ; and when at last 
 he got one, it was " the greatest present to me in the 
 world." 
 
 In the year 1680 Faithorne, then sixty-four years of 
 age, retired from the business of printselling, and, giving 
 up his shop without Temple Bar (Wren's stone archway, 
 of our own remembrance, by the way, had replaced the 
 ancient wooden structure since Faithorne had first gone 
 to live there), he removed to a private house in Printing 
 House Yard, Blackfriars, a locality much affected by 
 artists. Here he still worked with his graver, and drew 
 portraits in crayon, occasionally painting in oils ; but his 
 days of great engraving were over. He did pictorial 
 playing-cards of topical interest, " broadsides " of traitors 
 being drawn on sledges to execution, and even an adver- 
 tisement of a new fire engine ! In 1690 we actually find John 
 Evelyn, one of Faithorne's old admirers, describing, in a 
 letter to Pepys, the great engraver, as merely " father to 
 the bookseller." He was getting old, he had lost his 
 wife, and his son William, the engraver, appears to have 
 got into difficulties, which caused the father much distress. 
 His health gave way, and he died, as Walpole says, of a 
 lingering consumption, and was buried near his wife in 
 St. Anne's, Blackfriars, May 13, 1691. Perhaps no more 
 fitting epitaph can be found for him than some of the 
 verses which his friend, the once popular poet, Thomas 
 Flatman, prefixed to his " Art of Graveing."
 
 44 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " That hand, whose curious art protracts the date 
 Of frail mortalities, and baffles fate 
 With Brass and Steel, can surelie potent be 
 To rear a statelie monument for Thee. 
 For my part, I prefer (to guard the Dead) 
 A copper-plate, before a sheet of Lead. 
 So long as Brasse, so long as Books endure, 
 So long as neat wrought Pieces, Thou'rt secure. 
 A Faithorne Sculpsit is a charm can save 
 From dull oblivion, and a gaping grave." 
 
 Among the seventeenth- century engravers of England 
 there was none more interesting and individual, none 
 who has left us work of greater value and distinction, than 
 Wenceslaus Hollar. We have already met him in connec- 
 tion with Faithorne, but he stands by himself. He was 
 not, however, a line-engraver in the technical sense, for 
 the etching-point rather than the graver was his principal 
 medium. The difference, briefly, is this : The line 
 engraver cuts his lines direct into the copper with the 
 point of his graver, as we have seen William Rogers doing ; 
 whereas the etcher, with the point of his needle, scratches 
 his design on to the copper-plate through a coating of 
 varnish or, as it is technically called, " ground," composed 
 generally of asphaltum, Burgundy pitch, and virgin wax. 
 Then he proceeds to " bite in " his etching by pouring 
 aqua-fortis (nitric acid) over the scratched ground, so 
 that only those portions of the copper which have been 
 laid bare by the point will feel the corroding effect of 
 the acid. These scratched, or etched, lines will thus be 
 " bitten in " to the required depth, according to the 
 length of time they are subjected to the action of the acid, 
 while the rest of the plate is protected by the " ground." 
 When this is removed, by a warming process, the copper- 
 plate, with the etched picture, is ready for printing. 
 
 When, and to what extent, Hollar employed the 
 graver to deepen his bitten lines, and strengthen his 
 effects, is difficult to determine, but that he did so is 
 certain. His etchings reveal the feeling of the line- 
 engraver rather than the painter-etcher. But, however
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 45 
 
 that may be, without the refined, spirited, and ever active 
 needle, the observant eye and exact pictorial sense, 
 of this admirable artist, we should know far less than 
 we do of the external aspect of England and English life 
 between 1637 an d 1677, the period of his connection with 
 this country. In Hollar's countless prints he is known 
 to have done 2,733 in the course of his career the greater 
 parts of the reigns of the two Charleses, as well as the 
 Commonwealth, live for us in picture. As for the City of 
 London, it would be impossible to estimate the loss to 
 the historian and the archaeologist if Hollar's prints did 
 not exist. 
 
 Wenceslaus Hollar was born at Prague on July 13, 
 1607. His father was a lawyer and an important civic 
 official, who was held in such esteem by the Emperor 
 Rudolph II. and his successor, Ferdinand, that he was 
 granted a patent of nobility. Young Hollar soon showed 
 that the bent of his mind was not law, as his father had 
 hoped, but that his true vocation was art. The works of 
 Albert Diirer appealed to him as no forensic arguments 
 ever could, and fired his ambition to become an engraver. 
 Matthew Merian was his master, under whose guidance 
 he quickly became adept with the etching-point, as 
 with the graver and the pencil, but it was through the 
 medium of the bitten line that he found his artistic ex- 
 pression. 
 
 At his father's death Hollar was left entirely on his 
 own resources, and he wandered from Prague to Frankfort, 
 and thence successively to Strasburg, Cologne and Antwerp. 
 Everywhere and always he worked industriously, with an 
 extraordinary versatility in his choice of subjects, and 
 he had ever the joy of the artist in his work, but, lacking 
 the commercial instinct, he would always sell his plates, 
 when he did sell them, to the advantage of the printseller, 
 never to his own. So he found it very hard to earn a 
 livelihood, and this was mainly the story of his arduous 
 life. There was, however, a piece of temporary good 
 fortune awaiting him : The Earl of Arundel, that " great 
 Maecenas of all the politer arts," was passing through
 
 46 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Cologne on his way to Vienna, as Ambassador to the 
 German Emperor, when he happened to see Hollar's 
 etching of the City of Prague, and, with an eye always 
 alert to recognise artistic talent, he sought the young 
 engraver, and, taking him into his employment, brought 
 him over to England in the year 1637. Hollar was now 
 for a while in flourishing circumstances. Living at Arundel 
 House, of which he has left us some delightfully picturesque 
 etchings, vivid with actuality, he found congenial work 
 among the earl's famous collections, translating favourite 
 pictures to the copper. The Earl of Arundel was a man 
 of proud simplicity and distant manner, but " with those 
 whom he affected, which were lovers of state, nobility, 
 and curious arts, he was very free and conversable." 
 Hollar was evidently one of those whom he " affected," 
 and so the young engraver worked in an atmosphere of 
 gracious encouragement. Also his talents and his person- 
 ality attracted sympathetic friends. Young Evelyn, 
 already a dilettante, made his acquaintance, and, con- 
 ceiving high admiration for his gifts, described him as 
 " a very honest, simple, well-meaning man." He was 
 popular, too, in the earl's household, where romance and 
 domesticity awaited him. Before long he fell in love 
 with Mistress Tracy, one of the Countess's waiting women, 
 and married her, their union being blessed by two children, 
 a son and a daughter. Happiness, distinction and pros- 
 perity crowded upon him for the time being, albeit the 
 time was brief. Through the influence of the Earl of 
 Arundel, Hollar was brought to the notice of the art- 
 loving King, who appointed him drawing-master to the 
 youthful Prince Charles, whose graphic exercises still 
 exist to prove his teacher's encouragement. Portraiture, 
 too, occupied him largely and with happy results, for, 
 in the rendering of the human countenance, his spirited 
 and delicate touch was singularly appropriate, so that 
 Hollar's portraits had a cachet of their own. His subjects 
 were invariably distinguished. 
 
 From the very first, London and its suburbs appear 
 to have fascinated Hollar, and their architectural, topo-
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 47 
 
 graphical and scenic characteristics found ready inter- 
 pretation on his copper-plates. With him we may linger 
 in the aisles of old St. Paul's, or bustle among the merchants 
 on the Exchange, watch the comings and goings at White- 
 hall, or Westminster, take the summer air pleasantly in 
 Tothill Fields, where the maze was and the bear-garden, 
 and duels were frequent, or ruralise in quiet Islington. 
 Then, as we wander with him " along the shore of silver- 
 streaming Thames," whether at royal Richmond or Green- 
 wich, by London Bridge or Somerset House, he will always 
 capture for us the actual contemporary note of our river's 
 picturesqueness. But he never sees it with the imagina- 
 tive vision of the painter-etcher, who must interpret all the 
 poetry and mystery of tone, colour, and atmosphere with 
 the magic of the etched line. Hollar always aims at the 
 spirited view, rather than the spirit of the scene. Not 
 his the inspired impromptu, the transient impression 
 of an eternal moment of beauty ; with him all is deliberate 
 study of fact, and its plain statement, all is elaborately 
 wrought to a finish, without any thought for artistic 
 economy of line. Hollar's is the prose of etching as Whist- 
 ler's is the poetry. Hollar would see the barges and 
 wherries floating by the riverside buildings, and record 
 them as characteristic facts in his view ; they would 
 never appeal to him as mere factors of beauty, rhythmic 
 suggestions in a pictorial poem. A Thames etching by 
 Hollar is, to one by Whistler, as, say, Macaulay's descrip- 
 tion of London, in the famous third chapter of the History, 
 compared with Wordsworth's sonnet on Westminster 
 Bridge. Picturesque fact is the motive of the one as 
 suggestive beauty is of the other. Perhaps there was 
 no encouragement in those violent times for the pictorial 
 poem on copper ; the quiet charm of atmospheric mystery 
 made no appeal to the seventeenth-century Englishman. 
 He liked to see his London and his Thames pictured 
 " all bright and glittering in the smokeless air." And 
 very probably the bludgeon of the footpad would have 
 rudely disturbed the pencil of the artist, had he lingered 
 after sunset, as the master in our own day would so
 
 48 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 lovingly linger, to listen to Nature singing " her exquisite 
 song" in perfect tune, "when the evening mist clothed 
 the riverside with poetry as with a veil, and the tall 
 chimneys became campanile, and the warehouses were 
 palaces in the night.and the whole city hung in the heavens." 
 
 But Hollar was a Benedick whose wife had been behind 
 the scenes of the fashionable wo'rld, so, instead of evening 
 mists that clothe the riverside, he took note of contem- 
 porary feminine costume of every rank and class, and, in 
 an exquisite series of plates, he has left us " the severall 
 habits of Englishwomen as they are in these times, 
 1640," a series which he extended, three years later, to 
 the costumes of the women of other nationalities. 
 
 There were sterner subjects, too, for his pencil and 
 his point ; the trial and execution of Lord Straff ord, 
 for instance, which he was privileged to witness. Hollar, 
 may, in fact, be regarded, in a sense, as the forerunner 
 of the special artist of modern times, for he was ever ready 
 to picture the interesting event on the spot, whether it 
 was a state trial, a lordly execution, a battle at sea, an 
 army marching and encamping day by day, a coronation 
 pageant, or a Quaker being whipped at the cart's-tail, 
 or branded in the pillory. The times, in fact, are eloquent 
 in Hollar's prints. There was one set-off, however, to the 
 engraver's happy industry at this period. His engravings 
 of Vandyck's portraits, especially those of the King and 
 Queen, did not find favour with the painter, whose lack of 
 sympathy he must have felt sorely, especially since Van- 
 dyck's death in the same year robbed him of the chance 
 of changing the unfavourable opinion. 
 
 But there were worse troubles in store. The Civil 
 War, which now broke out, altered everything for poor 
 Hollar. Driven from England by stress of the political 
 storm, the Earl of Arundel hurriedly betook himself with 
 his collections to Antwerp, leaving Hollar stranded in 
 London. It was a hard time for artists, and he got what 
 casual employment he could from the printsellers, among 
 these the Peakes. Versatile as he was, he could not 
 create a demand for his prints, so he took service in the
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 49 
 
 King's cause. We have seen him marching, under Sir 
 Robert Peake, to the siege of Basing House, but an etched 
 portrait of the Marquis of Winchester seems to be the 
 only pictorial record he has left us of that episode. His 
 soldiering was soon ended, for he was taken prisoner 
 during one of the sorties early in the siege, and transported 
 to London. There he at once resumed his art work. His 
 interesting plate of the Royal Exchange, with its animated 
 crowd of merchants and brokers, being dated 1644, shows 
 that, while his comrades at Basing House were still holding 
 out against the Parliament men, Hollar was quietly doing 
 his etchings, a prisoner, in London. His captivity does 
 not seem to have been very rigorous, and by the end of 
 that year, after he had witnessed and pictured Archbishop 
 Laud's trial, he was at liberty, whether by " French 
 leave " or Parliament's is not known, to join Arundel at 
 Antwerp. Presumably his wife and children were already 
 there, in the household of the Countess, but when, a 
 couple of years later, the Earl went to Padua, where he 
 died, poor Hollar remained behind with his family in 
 Antwerp, face to face with the old problem of " making both 
 ends meet." Industrious as ever, doing some of his 
 most accomplished and characteristic work, he found the 
 question of ways and means one of harassing perplexity. 
 Hard were the ways of the Antwerp publishers, and mean 
 their payments. He could scarcely squeeze a living out 
 of them. Yet at Antwerp he did his masterpiece in 
 portraiture James, Duke of York, as a youth, after the 
 younger Teniers, and many exquisite things besides, 
 among them those rare prizes of the collector, the plates 
 of Muffs and Shells. 
 
 In 1652 Hollar returned to London, hoping for better 
 times, but the same struggle for existence involved him. 
 The Commonwealth was not a period of artistic encourage- 
 ment, and Hollar's art required cultured appreciation. 
 It was only poorly paid for. The London printsellers 
 proved as hard bargain-drivers as were those of Antwerp. 
 We may be sure that Faithorne, with whom he lived for 
 a time, being a brother artist, treated him well in his 
 E
 
 50 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 business transactions, but Peter Stent, Overton, and the 
 rest, who were only dealers, took advantage of Hollar's 
 poverty and distresses, and ground him down to work 
 for them at the almost inconceivable pittance of fourpence 
 an hour ! He was a man of "an incorrigible and losing 
 honesty." He would work with an hour-glass always by 
 his side, and, so scrupulous was he to give his employers 
 the exact value of their money, that he would never 
 charge for any minute not actually occupied by the work 
 in hand. Art must have seemed long indeed to poor 
 Hollar in those days. So he remained always poor, 
 but, even at fourpence an hour, he never lost his joy as 
 an artist, his dignity as a gentleman. 
 
 The Restoration brought him a tiny smile of fortune, 
 though it was rather a mocking smile. Charles II. had 
 not forgotten his old drawing-master ; the Bohemian 
 engraver's was just one of those frank and engaging 
 personalities, with the gentle, thriftless, happy-go-lucky 
 temperament, that would appeal to his unconventional 
 majesty. So the King was pleased enough to appoint 
 Hollar " His Majesty's Designer," if the title could serve 
 him in any way, but he had no money to give him. His 
 own pockets were too nearly empty. Even the menial 
 servants of the palace had to go an unconscionable time 
 without a farthing of wages, and often lacked enough 
 to eat so expensive were the King's pleasures. How- 
 ever, there was something to be made out of the coronation 
 pageantry, which Hollar pictured in detail, and Charles, 
 moreover, took the trouble to influence the Lord Mayor 
 and City Corporation to assist the engraver with funds 
 for the purpose of completing his great London map, and 
 other topographical works. 
 
 So Hollar's prospects were beginning slightly to im- 
 prove, when misfortune fell upon him once more. He 
 had already lost his wife, either during the years of struggle 
 in Antwerp, or shortly after his return to England, and 
 now the Great Plague came to plunge London in despair 
 and desolation. His work was stopped, of course, in 
 the general stagnation ; for, who would want engravings
 
 ?7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 51 
 
 when food itself was barely to seek, and the death-cart 
 was busy in every street ? It stopped at Hollar's door. 
 His son an " ingenious youth," who " drew delicately " 
 was a victim of the Plague. What had become of his 
 daughter " one of the greatest beauties I have seen," 
 as his friend John Aubrey, the antiquary, described her, 
 we do not know ; the Restoration was a perilous time for 
 beauties. It is, however, probable that his son's death 
 had left Hollar alone, and with a lonely hunger for affec- 
 tion, for, that very year, with his fortunes at their lowest, 
 he married again, with characteristic improvidence, and 
 seemingly a young woman without a penny to her name. 
 But he worked always ; and the sea-fights with the Dutch, 
 not invariably to England's credit, engaged his spirited 
 etching-point to a lively picturing. 
 
 The catastrophe of the Great Fire offered still greater 
 opportunity to the industrious engraver. Hollar went 
 over the vast area of destruction, sketching among the 
 ruins, and, thanks to him, we are able to see exactly 
 what London looked like immediately after, as well as 
 before, the conflagration. He was now honoured with 
 the title of " King's Scenographer." It sounded well, and 
 no doubt the King meant well, and, probably, Charles, 
 in his genial, sociable way, would welcome the poor artist 
 as " our merry scenographer ! " and hearten him with 
 easy, good-natured promises, when the thought of the 
 half-starved wife and children at home reduced him, in 
 his desperate need, to making application for the King's 
 material assistance. 
 
 One of these promises certainly bore fruit in a com- 
 mission to go, as special artist, in the suite of Lord Henry 
 Howard to Tangier, and draw and engrave plans of the 
 city with its fortifications, so newly an English possession. 
 This work kept Hollar a year abroad, and his return 
 journey, in His Majesty's ship Mary Rose, was rendered 
 exciting and perilous by a fierce and prolonged encounter 
 off Cadiz with seven Algerian pirate ships. Fighting 
 against desperate odds the English vessel was victorious, 
 and Captain Kempthorne, the commander, deserved his
 
 52 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 knighthood. Hollar, of course, sketched the fight in 
 progress, and gave it permanent record on his copper- 
 plate. But Charles II. was a poor paymaster except 
 to his mistresses and a hundred pounds represented 
 Hollar's only compensation for a year's service abroad, 
 with the risk of death or slavery among the pirates. 
 Even for that sum he had to wait long and apply frequently. 
 
 Hollar lived the last years of his life in Gardiner Street 
 (or Gardiner's Lane), Westminster. There several pupils 
 came to him, worked with him, and became his friends. 
 Among these was the versatile Francis Place, who was one 
 of the earliest experimenters in mezzotint, and Pearce 
 Tempest, who became a noted publisher of prints, besides 
 those capable followers in his own manner of etching, 
 Robert Gaywood, William Carter, Thomas Dudley, and 
 others. In 1672 he made an interesting and fruitful 
 tour of the midland and northern counties, sketching 
 actively as he went. But, though he was continuously 
 working for his skinflint taskmasters, the booksellers and 
 printsellers, struggling hard to maintain his increasing 
 family, he was never out of financial difficulties. Aubrey 
 said of him, " He was a very friendly, good-natured man 
 as could be, but shiftless as to the world, and died not 
 rich." As a matter of fact, this son of Bohemian nobility, 
 this artist whose fame outlives the centuries, died so 
 poor that the bailiffs were actually in possession of his 
 worldly goods, and he had to beg as a favour that they 
 would not remove his bed until, lying upon it, he had 
 satisfied the Greatest Creditor of all. Hollar was buried 
 on March 28, 1677, in St. Margaret's, Westminster, at 
 the north-west corner of the tower. The subsequent 
 struggle to live of his widow and numerous children is 
 veiled by obscurity, from which Mrs. Hollar emerges for 
 a moment, some years after her husband's death, to sell 
 a book of his prints to Sir Hans Sloane. In that book 
 was the genius of the artist. Perhaps it was all the poor 
 woman had left of the man she loved, except +he hungry 
 children. 
 
 How many graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, I
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 53 
 
 wonder, know the name of David Loggan ? Yet, if one 
 cares to learn what those famous seats of learning, and 
 their academic life, looked like in the days of Charles II., 
 one must owe a debt of gratitude to the patient industry 
 and observant eye, the facile pencil and deft graver, 
 of that Anglicised German. 
 
 David Loggan was born at Dantzic in 1635 of Scottish 
 ancestry, it has been said. The career of an engraver 
 seeming to wait upon his happy gift of draughtsmanship, 
 he found his way to Holland, where the art of the graver 
 could be learned among the masters. He studied with 
 Hendrik Hond (or Hondius), one of the thirteen children 
 of our old friend Jodocus Hondius, and came to 
 England in 1653. No doubt his master, having long- 
 standing family connections with the London print trade, 
 was able to give him useful introductions. Anyhow, he 
 was soon busy, drawing portraits from the life in pencil 
 on vellum, and engraving them ; while, at the time of 
 Charles II. 's coronation, we find him producing prints 
 of the emblematic triumphal arches erected for that 
 pageant, and to stand one year afterwards. But Loggan 
 had come from Germany, with the Teuton love of univer- 
 sities. Oxford attracted him, and the charm of its ancient 
 buildings, and its scholastic atmosphere, held him. One 
 day he was making one of his minutely detailed drawings 
 of All Souls College, when the university authorities 
 took note of him. He was the very man they wanted to 
 make permanent records of the colleges. Anthony a 
 Wood, the celebrated antiquary, was then collecting 
 materials for his work on the antiquities of Oxford, and 
 it is more than probable that he suggested the idea of 
 Loggan's work as a pictorial supplement to his own. 
 Anyhow, he showed active interest in its progress, and 
 gave it the benefit of his own researches. He and Loggan 
 were frequently in company, and would often discuss 
 archaeology over the convivial cup at the Mermaid Tavern. 
 By 1665 the engraver had settled at Nuffield, near Oxford, 
 and was at work on his " Oxonia Illustrata." But Loggan 
 was not content to give merely the architectural aspect of
 
 54 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the colleges he pictured their living atmosphere, showing 
 us the courts and quadrangles, and the leafy gardens in 
 their gaiety of blossom, with the bowling-greens, tennis- 
 courts and summer-houses, all alive with dons, under- 
 graduates, college servants, interested visitors. He 
 invested his drawings, in fact, with that human 
 interest which makes them speak so charmingly to us 
 to-day. 
 
 This must have been a period of congenial activity, 
 bringing him into personal relations with men of light 
 and leading, as well as the scholastic pedants. Several 
 of these, of course, sat to him for their portraits, and among 
 them was the Chancellor of the University himself, the 
 famous Lord Clarendon. Loggan was now a man of 
 consideration at Oxford, having been appointed, in 1669, 
 official engraver to the University, at the munificent 
 salary of twenty shillings per annum, with a diploma, 
 and a silver box, provided by Dr. Fell, the Bishop of 
 Oxford, to keep the seal in. Moreover, when Cosmo de 
 Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, was received at Oxford, 
 Loggan was privileged to present to him his portrait of 
 the King done on white satin, and also to show him his 
 engravings of the colleges. 
 
 Loggan's social standing, too, must have been acceptable 
 to the county, for he married in 1671, the daughter of an 
 Oxfordshire squire, Robert Jordan, of Kincote Hall, and 
 took up his residence at Holy well, Oxford. Then he 
 became a full-fledged undergraduate of the University, 
 subscribed to the Articles of Religion, and next took a 
 still more important step. On May 29, 1675, he shed 
 his German nationality, and became a naturalised English- 
 man. His sponsor was Peter Mews, Bishop of Bath and 
 Wells, " the fighting Bishop," whose portrait, of course, 
 he drew and engraved. 
 
 The " Oxonia Illustrata " having now been published, 
 Loggan's work in the University city was done, and pro- 
 fessional considerations and, perhaps, the social ambitions 
 of his wife, called him back to London. He was now a man 
 of importance ; in 1676 he set up house in Leicester Fields,
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 55 
 
 next door to the Golden Head (afterwards Hogarth's house), 
 and, bringing with him a distinguished reputation from 
 Oxford, his portraits, always minutely drawn on vellum 
 and carefully engraved, were soon in great demand. 
 So popular did they become that Dryden satirically refers 
 to the poetasters getting Loggan to crown their heads 
 with bays, for the adornment of their senseless plays. 
 Many eminent men sat to him, among them the Duke of 
 Ormonde, the ill-fated Earl of Argyll, and General Monk, 
 Earl of Albemarle, besides several leading dignitaries 
 of the Church. For the engraving of some of these he is 
 said to have employed the assistance of his more accom- 
 plished pupils, like Robert White, and even eminent en- 
 gravers, such as Gerard Valck and Peter Vanderbank 
 in fact, it was suggested, by no less an authority than 
 George Vertue (who had it from his master, Michael Van- 
 dergucht, a pupil of Loggan's), that even Loggan's master- 
 piece, the portrait of young Sir Thomas Isham, was not 
 actually the work of his own graver. Certainly it was 
 not an infrequent custom of some of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth century engravers, whose works were greatly 
 in demand, to sign plates executed by their pupils or 
 less known employees, adding merely the final touches 
 themselves ; but because an artist might, in a single work, 
 excel greatly all his other efforts, that is no reason to rob 
 him of the credit of a masterpiece. Among a few portraits 
 in mezzotint which Loggan published is one of the same 
 subject, but he signed neither this nor any of the others, 
 and they were probably done by Valck, who had come 
 to England with his master, Blooteling. 
 
 Some of Loggan's articled pupils won reputations for 
 themselves, but Mrs. Loggan appears to have provoked 
 trouble among them. She must now be a fine town lady, 
 and she would insist on her husband's apprentices donning 
 livery to attend her when she took her walks abroad to 
 air her perfumed finery. But one of them, at least, 
 Edward le Davis, a young Welshman, struck against this 
 indignity. He would be an engraver, not a lackey, so, 
 in spite of his indentures, he ran away to Paris, and made
 
 5 6 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 a fortune by picture-dealing. What words passed between 
 David Loggan and his wife, when he discovered that one 
 of his best apprentices had decamped, are not recorded. 
 Perhaps he forgot his acquired " Oxford manner," and 
 remembered only his native " Donnerwetter ! " He was 
 so newly an Englishman. 
 
 The success of the " Oxonia Illustrata " naturally 
 suggested a similar work in connection with Cambridge. 
 The University authorities eagerly countenanced the 
 project, and allotted the engraver a workroom in Trinity 
 College, where he set up a printing press, and during 
 the next twelve years, while " Cantabrigia Illustrata " was 
 in progress, Loggan paid frequent visits to Cambridge. 
 The work was completed in 1690, when he was appointed 
 official engraver to the University, as he had been at 
 Oxford, with a bonus of fifty pounds. Various sums had 
 also been paid to him by the colleges severally, and the 
 profits of these publications were likewise his, for he 
 procured a licence to sell them for a term of years. It is 
 said that he injured his eyesight during his Cambridge 
 work ; anyway, he did little or no more engraving after 
 1690. He appears to have lived always in easy and 
 pleasant circumstances. His connection with Oxford 
 was maintained through his son John, who went up to 
 Trinity College in the Revolution year, and eventually 
 took a Fellowship at Magdalen. About the year 1700 
 Loggan died at his house in Leicester Fields. 
 
 The ablest and most distinguished of Loggan's pupils 
 was undoubtedly Robert White. He was born in London 
 in 1645, and very early he began to cultivate his natural 
 gift of draughtsmanship. Apprenticed to Loggan, he 
 went with his master to Oxford, and worked with him, 
 with both pencil and graver, on the " Oxonia Illustrata." 
 But it was to his intellectual sense of portraiture, with 
 his happy facility in conveying a likeness, that he owed 
 the constant and extensive demand for his engravings 
 during the forty years of his professional career. From 
 Loggan he learnt the value of careful pencil drawing on 
 vellum, and exquisite finish distinguishes his results.
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 57 
 
 That he could not always recapture on the copper the 
 first fine vivid impression of his pencil's careful touch is not 
 surprising, considering his prodigious industry. He is 
 known to have engraved some four hundred plates, all in the 
 arduous line manner, and chiefly from his own drawings, 
 though some were after contemporary artists, such as 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller (who drew his portrait) ; Sir Peter 
 Lely ; John Riley and his pupil, Jonathan Richardson (who 
 in turn taught Hudson, the master of Reynolds) ; Mrs. 
 Mary Beale ; John Hayls (Pepys's friend) ; Henry Tilson 
 (Lely's gifted pupil, who killed himself for love) ; Wissing, 
 William Sunman, Closterman, whose quarrels with the 
 Duchess of Marlborough over his picture of the Marlborough 
 family led the great duke to say to him, " It has given 
 me more trouble to reconcile my wife and you than to 
 fight a battle." But it was certainly to White's own gift of 
 catching a likeness that he owed his continuous popularity. 
 He always remained true to his graven line, and graphic 
 in his prints are most of the prominent personalities of 
 three reigns. 
 
 There were few historic happenings of those eventful 
 times that did not move White's graver to portraiture. 
 To look through his innumerable prints is, as it were, 
 to read Macaulay in human features, to follow Burnet 
 and Evelyn with the actual vision, to gossip with garrulous 
 Pepys face to face. Here is Charles II., in a print of 
 curious interest, in the act of " touching for the King's 
 Evil," with all the solemn ceremony of that healing super- 
 stition, just as Evelyn describes it. General Monk dies, 
 and we see all the pomp and circumstance of his belated 
 Abbey funeral. The Rye House plotters are brought to 
 trial, and the implacable Jeffreys is here posing for justice. 
 The dazzling profligate Buckingham, and the brilliant 
 wanton Rochester, cannot strut, caper, and buffoon through 
 their glittering extravaganzas of life, and die in the 
 patchouli odour of sudden penitence, without their features 
 appealing to the engraver. The trial of the Seven Bishops 
 stirs all England, and here they are, as well as their counsel 
 and their obstinate King. The campaigns in Ireland
 
 58 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 yield their victories, and here is General Ginkel, with 
 his hardly won earldom of Athlone. 
 
 Here are the Lords Justices, to whom William III. 
 delegates his authority when he goes a-fighting in Flanders. 
 But the Jacobite Walk in Hyde Park is now frequented 
 in greater numbers, and with a bolder and more aggressive 
 air ; and there are mysterious assignations on the Piazza 
 of Covent Garden, and everywhere are deep whispers of 
 deadly plots. So here we have William's arch enemy 
 Sir John Fenwick, the inveterate Jacobite, whose dramatic 
 plotting must inevitably bring himself and his associates 
 to the scaffold ; also those two other famous Jacobites, 
 Sir Roger L' Estrange, who had so long in his keeping 
 the licence of the Press ; and Jeremy Collier, who bravely 
 raised his voice against the licentiousness of the play- 
 wrights, and his hand in benediction of the dying Jaco- 
 bites at Tyburn. Here is complacent Samuel Pepys, 
 in one of his most expensive wigs, as ready to sing to you 
 as to confide a quaint version of the latest Court scandal, 
 a criticism of the newest play, or the intimacies of his 
 wife's dressing-room ; and here are Bishop Burnet and 
 Lord Chancellor Clarendon, each ready to tell " how it 
 strikes a contemporary." The law is incarnate here 
 in the great Chancellor Somers, and here is a succession 
 of famous primates, Sancrott, Tillotson, and generous 
 Tenison, who could say as kindly things over Nell Gwyn's 
 grave as he could over Queen Mary's. Henry Purcell, 
 the glory of English music, and his eminent master, 
 Dr. John Blow ; George Herbert, most saintly of poets ; 
 John Bunyan, and happy, sonorous, inimitable Sir Thomas 
 Browne ; princes, courtiers, statesmen, lawyers, church- 
 men, soldiers, writers, all came alike to Robert White's 
 busy graver. And not only contemporary personalities 
 appealed to him. He has left us a splendid head of old 
 William Camden, of " Britannia " fame, and a most charac- 
 teristic print of the redoubtable Earl of Cumberland, 
 of Elizabeth's day, in full jousting array, with the Queen's 
 glove, jewel -set, in his hat, as though he is about to chal- 
 lenge all comers to maintain that his mistress (not his
 
 I7TH CENTURY LINE ENGRAVERS. 59 
 
 wife, be it noted) is the " most worthiest and most fairest," 
 as was his favourite pastime. 
 
 In White's house in Blooms bury was a closet full of 
 the proofs of his plates, rolled up and carelessly thrown 
 there. Careful in his work, he would not seem to have 
 been very provident in his affairs, or perhaps his wife had 
 a mind to be in the fashion, for that way extravagance 
 lay. His own portrait suggests a man of refinement 
 and of simple habit. He would receive generally a matter 
 of four pounds on the completion of a plate, though he 
 was paid as much as thirty on occasion ; then, of course, 
 he sold his prints. According to Wai pole, he saved some 
 four or five thousand pounds, yet, somehow or other, 
 all this had vanished before his death in 1703, for he died 
 in exceedingly poor circumstances. But here is the 
 familiar irony of artistic life-story. The printseller who 
 bought up White's plates after his death realised a fortune 
 by them, which would show that the artist was a poor 
 man of business. A few plates he left unfinished, and 
 these were completed by his son George, whom we shall 
 meet presently as a proficient worker with the scraper. 
 Robert White was the last important English engraver 
 of his period who was able to maintain the dignity and 
 appeal of line-engraving in face of the conquering advance 
 of the soft, persuasive mezzotint. He certainly published 
 a few portraits engraved in the new manner, mostly after 
 Kneller, but he put his name to these only as publisher, 
 not as engraver, and if he did scrape them, as has been 
 surmised, it must have been merely by way of curious 
 experiment. It was as a line-engraver that Robert White 
 wished to be remembered, leaving the easier art to his son. 
 
 And now, while we follow the story of mezzotint from 
 its birth to its glorious maturity, we may leave the older 
 and greater art dozing, as it were, through discouraging 
 years until it is awakened by the immortal message of 
 Hogarth, and roused to yet more splendid and beautiful 
 vigour by the genius of Strange, Woollett and Sharp.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE STORY OP MEZZOTINT. 
 
 The Apocryphal Legend The True Story Ludwig Von Siegen and 
 Prince Rupert The Colonel invents and the Prince adapts The 
 First Mezzotint Early Experiments and Improvements The 
 Great Executioner Prince Rupert brings the Art to England 
 Confides the Secret of it to John Evelyn The " Sculptura " an- 
 nouncement Prince Rupert falls in Love and forsakes Engrav- 
 ing William Sherwin The Earliest English Mezzotint Francis 
 Place George Lumley Lely's Beauties and the New Art 
 Henri Gascar Abraham Blooteling He invents the "Rocker" 
 and establishes the Technique of the Art The Growing Popu- 
 larity of Mezzotint Richard Tompson and Alexander Browne, 
 the Publishers Valck, Van Somer, Van der Vaart The Royal 
 Mistresses Edward Luttrell Lloyd, the Printseller Isaac 
 Beckett Robert Williams William Faithorne, Junr. Bernard 
 Lens John Smith His Eminence in Mezzotint His Associa- 
 tion with Kneller, and their Quarrel. 
 
 THERE was a story, long believed of Prince Rupert, that 
 one day he saw a soldier cleaning the barrel of his musket, 
 which the dew had rusted during a lengthy spell of " sentry- 
 go " in the night. The Prince, according to the legend, 
 noticed that, as the soldier scraped away the fine grain 
 eaten into the metal by the damp, which was in effect 
 the rust, a sort of nondescript design was left, and from 
 this he was supposed to have conceived the idea of mezzo- 
 tint engraving. It was a plausible story, but its truth 
 has been discounted, since Horace Walpole related it, 
 by the discovery that the art was invented, not by 
 Charles I.'s famous nephew, but by a German soldier 
 of more modest fame. 
 
 60
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 61 
 
 Yet mezzotint engraving has its romantic story. 
 When Prince Rupert was in Brussels in 1654, ne sought 
 the acquaintance of a certain Colonel Ludwig Von Siegen 
 but it was not to talk of military matters. Perhaps 
 he was trying to forget the stricken fields of Marston 
 Moor and Naseby, the surrendered battlements of Bristol, 
 in the peaceful arts and sciences which now engaged his 
 subdued activities. Among these engraving enjoyed his 
 particular favour and interest ; and his wonder and 
 curiosity had been aroused by the report of certain extra- 
 ordinary prints mysteriously produced from copper- 
 plates which yet revealed no touch of graver or of etching- 
 point. These, he learned, were the work of Colonel 
 Ludwig Von Siegen, lately in the service of the young 
 Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, whose interest in the arts was 
 well known. 
 
 It appeared that in August, 1642, Von Siegen had sent 
 to the Landgrave, from Amsterdam, a few impressions 
 of a copper-plate engraving he had made from a portrait, 
 done by himself while in Cassel, of the young prince's 
 mother, Amelia Elizabeth, the Dowager Landgravine of 
 Hesse Cassel. This he described, in a letter still existing, 
 as having been done by an entirely new method of his 
 own invention, which he declared no copper-plate engraver 
 or artist could explain or imagine. It was, in fact, the 
 process of engraving in mezzotint, and the portrait of 
 the Dowager Landgravine was the first example. The 
 secret of his invention, however, Colonel Von Siegen had 
 kept to himself for twelve years, and, in the interval, he 
 had worked during his leisure hours at its development ; 
 but the flattering interest evinced by Prince Rupert, 
 when he curiously and admiringly examined the prints, 
 overcame the reticence of the gallant and ingenious in- 
 ventor. He confided his secret to the sympathetic prince. 
 He told him how, by means of a steel roller with fine sharp 
 teeth cut on the face of it, fixed to a horizontal handle, 
 he had worked over and over a copper-plate, in every 
 possible direction, until the surface presented a close and 
 even burr or grain, which, when inked, had given an
 
 62 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 impression of practically uniform black. Then, with a 
 sharp tool, which he had devised for the purpose, he 
 had gradually scraped away portions of the burr to varying 
 depths and degrees,while other portions were left untouched, 
 so that the high lights, middle tints, and black shadows, 
 of his design resulted from impressions taken from the 
 worked plate, and a whole picture was accordingly pre- 
 sented merely by gradatory tones of light and shade, 
 and without a single line or dot, as in the known forms 
 of engraving. The delicate effect Prince Rupert could 
 see for himself in the prints he was examining. 
 
 The tools Von Siegen showed the Prince, were, of course, 
 experimental, and somewhat of the rough and ready order, 
 but they had sufficed to give convincing proof of the 
 Tightness of the principle. Prince Rupert was delighted ; 
 he grasped the idea with enthusiasm, and was eager to 
 give it practical application with his own endeavour. 
 And is it not probable that it was with the story of the 
 soldier and the rusty musket-barrel Von Siegen satisfied 
 the Prince's natural curiosity as to the evolution of the 
 idea of mezzotint ? The romance of this invention of 
 a new art, which chance and the dew of night had dis- 
 covered to the ingenious mind of the German soldier, 
 already conversant with all the customary methods of 
 engraving, must have appealed strongly to the imaginative 
 prince, and we may be sure that he told again that story of 
 Von Siegen's. And, possibly, in the enthusiasm of the 
 repetition, he may gradually have come to fancy himself 
 almost as the hero of it, or, anyway, allow his hearers to 
 do so. Has not a prince been ever regarded as a proper 
 hero of legend ? 
 
 Prince Rupert was always impetuous. No sooner had 
 he learned the secret of mezzotint than he began to engrave 
 plates, and for a time gave all his energies to the develop- 
 ment of the art. In this he engaged the assistance of 
 Wallerant Vaillant, a Flemish painter of repute, who 
 appears to have been the first to turn the new method to 
 professional advantage. He and Rupert worked together 
 to improve upon Von Siegen's tools, and his handling of
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 63 
 
 them, especially in the matter of " grounding " the plates. 
 And, after four years' practice and experiment, Prince 
 Rupert was able to produce his fine plate of the Executioner 
 of St. John the Baptist, after a picture by Spagnoletto. 
 This he did, or, at least, completed, at Frankfort in 1658, 
 when he went there to attend the coronation of the 
 Emperor Leopold. Vaillant was also at Frankfort for that 
 ceremonial ; so also was Theodor Caspar von Fiirstenberg, 
 Canon of Mentz, to whom Von Siegen had further en- 
 trusted the secret of his invention, and Jan Thomas, of 
 Ypres, the Court painter, who had it from Prince Rupert. 
 So among those four pioneers in Frankfort the delicate 
 art was nursed, with promise of healthy growth. 
 
 But now the scene changes to England. London 
 had welcomed Charles II., after his long exile, with delirious 
 demonstrations of joy, and a little later came his cousin 
 Rupert. But the Prince's bent of mind, his tastes and 
 occupations, were too serious for the frivolous dalliance 
 of the new Court, and Pepys records that he was " welcome 
 to nobody." He found himself out of tune with the new 
 manners and fashions. 
 
 " In days of ease, when now the weary sword 
 Was sheathed, and luxury with Charles restored ; 
 In every taste of foreign courts improved, 
 'All, by the King's example, lived and loved.' 
 New peers grew proud in horsemanship to excel, 
 Newmarket's glory rose, as Britain's fell ; 
 The soldier breathed the gallantries of France, 
 And every flowery courtier writ romance. 
 New marble, soften'd into life, grew warm, 
 And yielding metal flow'd to human form ; 
 Lely on animated canvas stole 
 The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul." 
 
 This was the prevailing atmosphere of Whitehall, 
 and Prince Rupert sought refuge from it at his quiet house 
 in the Barbican Drury House in Beach Lane close to 
 Aldersgate. Here he enjoyed his favourite pursuits, 
 experimenting in chemistry, physics and the " curious 
 arts," and here he was visited by congenial spirits. One
 
 64 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of these was John Evelyn, and the visit he paid to Drury 
 House on February 21, 1661, made that a red-letter day 
 in- the history of mezzotint engraving, for the prince then 
 initiated him in the mystery of the new art. The visit 
 was repeated on March 13, and Evelyn records in his 
 diary : " This afternoon Prince Rupert shew'd me with his 
 owne hands the new way of graving called Mezzo Tinto, 
 which afterwards by his permission I published in my 
 ' History of Chalcography ' ; this set so many artistes 
 on worke, that they soon ariv'd to that perfection it is 
 since come, emulating the tenderest miniatures." 
 
 The first mezzotint engravers in England, however, 
 owed no more to Evelyn's " Sculptura " than a deliber- 
 ately mysterious announcement of the new art, together 
 with an example of it, in a plate of the Executioner's Head, 
 expressly done for the book by Prince Rupert. Evelyn 
 merely whetted the curiosity of the engravers by speaking 
 of the paradox of an engraving without a graver, burin, 
 point or aqua fortis, in which the shadows were the least 
 difficult parts, and the lights the most laborious, " yet 
 performed with the greatest facility." And he gave Prince 
 Rupert the credit of the invention. But how to achieve 
 this seeming paradox of engraving, he left the engravers 
 to discover for themselves. Prince Rupert had, " with 
 a freedom perfectly generous and obliging," accorded 
 him permission to publish " the whole manner and address 
 of the new way of engraving," but Evelyn considered 
 that he had given hints sufficient for the ingenious, while, 
 if he were more explicit, the attempts of the incompetent 
 would only cheapen and vulgarise the art. So he carefully 
 and tantalisingly avoided any explanation. 
 
 It is impossible to say when the first essay in mezzotint 
 was made in England, or who made it. When Pepys, on 
 November 5, 1665, went by water to Deptford, and visited 
 Evelyn at Sayes Court, his host showed him the treasures 
 of his collections, " and, above all, the whole secret of 
 mezzotinto, and the manner of it, which is very pretty, 
 and good things done with it." What were the " good 
 things " in mezzotint that Evelyn showed to Pepys we
 
 THE EXECUTIONER OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
 After Spagnolftto.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 65 
 
 do not know. They were probably prints he had procured 
 from Germany and the Netherlands, where a few artists 
 had already taken up the new method. That they 
 included any plates done in England, save Prince 
 Rupert's " Executioner's Head," is extremely unlikely. 
 Evelyn himself, though he toyed with the graver, seems 
 never to have attempted mezzotint ; and, although he 
 published his " Sculptura," and presented a copy of it 
 to the Royal Society in 1662, a few years elapsed before 
 anything was heard of English mezzotints. 
 
 Meanwhile, Prince Rupert had turned his attention 
 to arts of a more seductive nature. The intrigues and 
 frivolities, the witty rakes and voluptuous beauties, of 
 the Court had failed to lure him from his chemicals and 
 his copper-plates, but at last he found metal more attractive. 
 The theatre had revived under the sympathetic encourage- 
 ment of the " Merry Monarch," and the French fashion 
 of actresses playing women's parts had been introduced 
 as a novelty on the English stage. This fashion did not 
 leave Prince Rupert unaffected. It was when the Court 
 was enjoying its revels, its frolics, and its amours, at 
 Tunbridge Wells in the summer of 1668, that the Queen 
 sent for the players from Drury Lane. Among these was 
 the beautiful Mistress Hughes, who immediately captured 
 the amorous fancy of the veteran Rupert, as the lively 
 Count Hamilton tells us, and " brought down and greatly 
 subdued his natural fierceness. From this time, adieu 
 alembics, crucibles, furnaces, and all the black furniture 
 of the forges ; a complete farewell to all mathematical 
 instruments and chemical speculations : sweet powder 
 and essences were now the only ingredients that occupied 
 any share of his attention." So entirely did the imperious 
 actress reduce the Prince to subjection in the course 
 of her conquest, " that he no longer appeared like the 
 same person," an event which greatly pleased the King, 
 and there was much rejoicing at Tunbridge in consequence. 
 But, in spite of his amorous infatuation, Prince Rupert 
 did one last service to the development of mezzotint : 
 he initiated William Sherwin in the art, and to that 
 F
 
 66 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 engraver we owe the earliest mezzotint dated in England. 
 This was a portrait of Charles II., done in the year 1669, 
 and it was gratefully dedicated to Prince Rupert. 
 
 The son of a clergyman and Biblical commentator, 
 Sherwin was born at Wellington in Shropshire, and he 
 married a grand niece of General Monk, Duke of Albe- 
 marle. He had practised engraving in the line manner, 
 but only con amove, and when he read, in Evelyn's book, 
 about the new method of engraving, he was eager to 
 attempt it. Perhaps he made experiments of his own 
 without very satisfying results, but, through his marriage 
 connection with General Monk's family, he was fortunate 
 in enlisting the interest of Prince Rupert, who encouraged 
 his enthusiasm by showing him how to engrave in mezzo- 
 tint. Sherwin was seemingly a man of means, and he 
 had no occasion to use his engraving skill for pecuniary 
 profit, but he secured the cheap title of " Engraver to 
 the King." This can hardly have imposed very laborious 
 duties upon him, for, though he engraved his " Charles II." 
 in 1669, and he lived until 1714, very few prints exist 
 to show his industry, and at the best they are somewhat 
 crude. 
 
 Although Sherwin, owing to his foresight in having 
 dated his plate of the King, is regarded as the first English- 
 man who practised mezzotint, there was another working 
 independently at the same time. This was Francis Place, 
 also an amateur. The son of Rowland Place, of Dimsdale 
 in Durham, he was born in Yorkshire in 1647, and came 
 in due course to London to study law. But the arts 
 allured him, and when the Plague broke out, he was glad 
 enough to turn his back upon the attorney's office, with 
 no intention of returning to it. Henceforth he was the 
 dilettante of versatile talents. He painted pictures, he 
 drew architectural subjects, he etched in the manner of 
 his friend Hollar, he engraved in line, he exercised his 
 ingenuity and spent his money in the manufacture of 
 porcelain, from a particular earth he had discovered ; 
 he enjoyed the friendship of artists, and generally 
 lived pleasant days. The mystery of mezzotint early
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 67 
 
 attracted him, and there is little doubt that, from a careful 
 study of the " Executioner's Head " in Evelyn's book, he 
 discovered the secret for himself. Probably, too, he 
 purchased at the shop of Richard Tompson, the printseller, 
 at the Sun in Bedford Street, a copy of Alexander Browne's 
 " Ars Pictoria," when it made its appearance in 1669, 
 and having found, at the end of the volume, a momentous 
 paragraph, entitled " The Manner or Way of Mezo Tinto," 
 he straightway went to the author's lodging at the sign 
 of the Angel, the corner of James Street and Long Acre, 
 and consulted him as to the requisite grounding tool or 
 " engin," as Browne calls it. That he early mastered 
 the method is evident in his prints, which are marked by 
 brilliancy and refinement, and reflect the individuality 
 of the engraver. They are rare as they are few, but no 
 prints of that day are more instinct with charm than 
 Place's portraits of Philip Woolrich, Charles I., after 
 Vandyck, General Lambert, Tompson, the printseller, 
 or his artistic friend, William Lodge, of Leeds, who was 
 the hero of a funereal dream-story. Place was by tem- 
 perament an artist, and when he was officially offered a 
 salary of 500 a year to draw all the ships of Charles II. 's 
 navy, he declined the commission. But his mezzotinting 
 was a labour of love, and later he taught the art to his 
 friend George Lumley, a lawyer of York, who, among 
 some interesting prints, did a portrait of Lady Mary 
 Fenwick, whose vain efforts to save her Jacobite husband 
 from the scaffold invested her with such pathetic interest. 
 But that was in William III.'s reign, and, although Francis 
 Place lived until 1728, we are still with mezzotint in its 
 earlier days. 
 
 It must be regretted that the new method did not 
 arrive early enough for the contemporary interpretation 
 of the art of Vandyck, to whose genius it would certainly 
 have made sympathetic appeal ; nevertheless mezzotint 
 came to England at the psychological moment. Its 
 soft and sensuous blandishments of light and shade were 
 happily adapted to interpret the " animated canvases " 
 of Lely and his followers. Through its subtle language the
 
 68 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " sleepy eye " of a Whitehall beauty " spoke the melting 
 soul " with more seductive eloquence, while its tender 
 tones persuaded the careless draperies to more harmonious 
 Impromptus. The painters of the day reflected in their 
 portraits the easy, voluptuous temperament of the day, 
 and facile mezzotint came complacently to their service. 
 Among the earliest painters who used the new method 
 was the Frenchman, Henri Gascar, who came from Paris 
 to England under the patronage of Louise de Querouaille, 
 Duchess of Portsmouth, and at once enjoyed the lucrative 
 results of fashionable favour. For a time he was a rival 
 even to Lely, and having acquired the secret of mezzotint, 
 he scraped plates from his own portraits of Charles II. 
 and his mistresses, the Duchesses of Portsmouth and Cleve- 
 land, Nell Gwyn, and others. The art, however, was still 
 technically in a somewhat primitive condition when 
 Abraham Blooteling, a distinguished Dutch line-engraver, 
 devoted his ingenuity to its development. 
 
 Blooteling was born at Amsterdam in 1634, an( ^ studied, 
 his art under the famous Cornelius Visscher. He attained 
 eminence, and in 1665 succeeded to a competence as heir 
 under the will of Cornelis van Dalen, the Younger. At 
 the suggestion of his friend, David Loggan, he came over 
 to England about 1670, and engraved some dozen or more 
 important portraits in the line manner. Having, however, 
 learned the process of mezzotint from Fiirstenberg, and 
 rinding that this was beginning to arouse some interest 
 in England, he set himself to improve the method and 
 develop its possibilities as an art. The service he rendered 
 to it was invaluable and far-reaching, for he invented 
 the instrument known as the cradle or rocker, a steel 
 tool for grounding the plate, which superseded the primitive 
 toothed wheel used hitherto. By means of this tool, 
 worked with full command of the hand, a much finer and 
 closer grain could be produced on the surface of the plate, 
 so that richer and more delicate effects were attained 
 in the scraping. Thus Blooteling definitely established 
 the technique of mezzotint. He was a genuine artist, and 
 a master of his medium, and, in those early days of the
 
 CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA. 
 
 FROM THE MEZZOTINT BY ABRAHAM BLOOTELINO 
 After Sir Pfter Lely.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 69 
 
 art, the prints he produced during his six years' residence 
 in England, especially after he had perfected his method 
 of grounding the plates, must have come as a revelation. 
 Even Lely himself could not fail to be amazed when he 
 saw his own painting so flattered by the engraver's art, 
 as, for example, in the superb, almost life-size, head of 
 the Duke of Monmouth, and that of Catherine of Braganza, 
 which certainly does not justify Evelyn's statement that 
 " her teeth wronged her mouth by sticking a little too 
 far out." If we place beside this his baby-faced Duchess 
 of Portsmouth, and, together with these two, the sardonic- 
 looking Charles II., we have a curious study in historic 
 physiognomy. Among the more interesting personalities 
 in Blooteling's prints we find the sturdy admiral, Lord 
 Sandwich, Pepys's friend with the " noble disposition," 
 and the Earl of Arlington, with his " compound counten- 
 ance," of whose futile diplomatic efforts to ingratiate 
 himself with Mistress Stewart by way of influencing the 
 King, Count Hamilton writes so vivaciously ; Anne 
 Killigrew too, the gifted young poet-painter and maid-of- 
 honour, " a grace for beauty and a muse for wit," whose 
 memory Dryden sang in stately ode. 
 
 The portrait in mezzotint was now beginning to in- 
 sinuate itself into the favour of the fashionable, and the 
 more far-sighted printsellers prepared for a harvest. 
 Richard Tompson, for instance, and, a little later, Alex- 
 ander Browne, the " practitioner of the art of limning," 
 as he styled himself, who had already described the process 
 of mezzotint in his " Ars Pictoria," commissioned en- 
 gravings in the new way, chiefly after the flattering Lely, 
 but, in publishing them, they veiled the engravers with 
 anonymity, a fact which gave rise to the mistaken im- 
 pression that they themselves were the engravers. There 
 is no doubt, however, that their prints were for the most 
 part the work of the Dutchmen, Gerard Valck, Blooteling's 
 pupil, assistant, and eventually brother-in-law, Paul Van 
 Somer, and Jolin Van der Vaart, the last two being painters, 
 who took up mezzotint more or less casually. 
 
 It is significant of the times that portrait prints of
 
 70 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the various royal mistresses were amongst those oftenest 
 in demand, and the variegated tastes and fancies of the 
 King and his susceptible brother ensured an engaging 
 diversity of subject. The duchesses of amorous notoriety 
 were, of course, very much mezzotinted ; so also was 
 Mistress Nell Gwyn, the ancestress of dukes and duchesses. 
 Then, thanks to Valck's skill, we have " poor Nellie's " 
 rival, Mary, or " Moll " Davis, the lively and pretty 
 actress and dancer, of the Duke of York's company, who 
 won Charles II. 's easy tenderness by her singing of the 
 old ballad " My Lodging is on the Cold Ground " with 
 such homely effect that he richly furnished for her a 
 house in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, gave her a " mighty 
 pretty fine coach," besides such unconsidered trifles as 
 rings worth seven hundred pounds apiece, and allowed 
 her to dance the Queen out of countenance, and provoke 
 the Duchess of Cleveland to a jealous fit of the sulks. 
 
 " Merry," strangely " merry," times these ! Yet, 
 thanks to the contemporary engravers, we are able to 
 see the very face of them, to say nothing of the " age 
 and body," and, as we look at the expressions in the prints, 
 we cannot find in them any suggestion that these kings 
 and queens, and lords and ladies, thought they were 
 doing anything to awaken the wonder of a later age. 
 Among the anonymous Tompson prints is one of that 
 Susan, Lady Belasyse, who, after her husband and his 
 friend John Porter had " killed one another out of love," 
 as the wits described their ridiculous but fatal duel, became 
 the best-beloved of the impressionable Duke of York. 
 He would have made her his second duchess and subsequent 
 queen, if the King had not told him he was too old to 
 play the fool over again ; so she had to be content with 
 such consolation as she could find in a life peerage, and 
 a copy of the unfulfilled marriage contract, which she 
 was reluctantly persuaded to return to her royal lover. 
 
 Another object of James's passing fancy, whose fea- 
 tures peep out from among the group of Browne prints, 
 is the coquettish Countess of Chesterfield, whose amour 
 with the Duke of York, and her subsequent packing off to
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 71 
 
 Derbyshire by her jealous husband (one of the most 
 amusing stories in De Grammont), made it proverbial at 
 Court, as Pepys tells us, to send a man's wife to the Peak 
 whenever she vexed him! 
 
 Mezzotint, however, seems still to have been a some- 
 what recondite process, and the Dutch engravers kept 
 the secret as much as possible to themselves. But this 
 was not for long. An art so attractive could not fail to 
 appeal to English engravers, while its apparently facile 
 method suggested early professional rewards. The diffi- 
 culty was to obtain the technical secret, for the amateur 
 achievements of Sherwin and Place were probably known 
 to few. 
 
 Like Place, Hollar, and many other engravers, Edward 
 Luttrell was intended for a lawyer, but when he came 
 from Dublin to London, and became a student at New Inn, 
 he found, as many of his countrymen have done, that his 
 Irish temperament did not assimilate happily with English 
 law. Art, however, was his bent, and he became as success- 
 ful as he was skilful in drawing crayon -portraits. The 
 new mezzotint prints soon engaged his curiosity, and 
 with Browne's crude description of the process for a clue, 
 he set to work practically to find out the way for himself. 
 He devised a tool for grounding the plate, but its results 
 failed to satisfy him ; it produced too coarse and uneven 
 a grain. In his difficulty he consulted his friend John 
 Lloyd, the printseller. Lloyd was equal to the occasion ; 
 he knew that one of Blooteling's skilful assistants, a 
 certain Blois, was about to return to Holland, and from 
 this man he arranged to buy for forty shillings the secret 
 of Blooteling's method of grounding the plates. It was 
 a purchase that had far-reaching results. Whether or 
 no Lloyd after all played Luttrell false, and refused 
 to share the secret with him, as Walpole relates, is of 
 little importance. As a matter of fact, Luttrell had 
 rendered himself independent of Lloyd's negotiation with 
 Blois, for, having made the acquaintance of Paul Van 
 Somer, the Dutch engraver, he learned from him the whole 
 process of mezzotint. Lloyd, however, did certainly
 
 72 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 make use of the secret he had purchased to more profitable 
 advantage, for he imparted it to a calico-printer's young 
 apprentice, who became the first English mezzotint engraver 
 of real artistic importance. 
 
 Isaac Beckett came to the metropolis from his native 
 county of Kent, where he was born in 1653, with a tem- 
 perament peculiarly susceptible to the gay and pleasant in- 
 fluences and temptations of a London that had Charles II. 's 
 Court for its daily example. Feminine fascinations 
 lured him from his work, for calico-printing could hardly 
 have satisfied a nature with the instinct and yearnings of 
 an artist. At last, a certain affair of gallantry, pursued 
 after the thorough manner of Whitehall and Tunbridge 
 Wells, led to complications which necessitated a summary 
 withdrawal from the calico-printer's business. Beckett's 
 pleasures had been expensive, and he was in diffi- 
 culties ; but not for long. He knew Luttrell, and had 
 seen some of his mezzotints, which looked to him as easy 
 of execution as they were certainly charming in effect. 
 He felt there was a fortune for him in the art, if only he 
 could learn the secret of its technique. Luttrell good- 
 naturedly told him that Lloyd had bought the secret, 
 but was unable to make use of it. Beckett saw his chance, 
 and, making his way to the printseller's shop in Salisbury 
 Street, Strand, he persuaded Lloyd to impart to him the 
 principle of Blooteling's method while he brought to its 
 practical application the mechanical skill he had acquired 
 at the calico-printer's. The result was so successful that 
 Lloyd not only helped him out of his temporary difficulties, 
 but entered into a solid business arrangement with him. 
 So Beckett became a professional engraver. But he was 
 ever a man of gallantry and adventure. The joy of living 
 beams from his face in Smith's mezzotint portrait of him. 
 Women loved him too well, and he loved them not wisely, 
 but, with the attraction of his buoyant, pleasure-loving 
 nature, he never lacked friends to help him out of his tight 
 corners. He was always lucky, and at last he married an 
 heiress, with a comfortable thousand or so to her name. 
 With this backing of fortune, Beckett was able to set up in
 
 CATHERINE SEDLEY. COUNTESS 
 OF DORCHESTER. 
 
 FROM THE MtzzoTiNT BY I BECKETT 
 After Sir Godfrey Knrl/er.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 73 
 
 business as a printseller at the Golden Head, in the Old 
 Bailey, and he prospered exceedingly. 
 
 The first of the great English mezzotint engravers, he 
 appears to have fixed the process definitely, and established 
 a standard. Through his brilliant and delicate effects the 
 arts of painting and mezzotint engraving were brought 
 into really harmonious relationship, and the portrait- 
 painters of the day now began seriously to recognise the 
 new way of engraving as their legitimate medium of trans- 
 lation to popularity. 
 
 Beckett, who did nearly all his engraving between the 
 years 1681 and 1688, was particularly associated with 
 Godfrey Kneller, who had now come, after a brief period of 
 rivalry, to wear the mantle of his superior, Sir Peter Lely. 
 But there were many prominent portrait-painters at this 
 time collaborating with the engravers in mezzotint, and 
 notably with Beckett. Among these were Wissing, Thomas 
 Murray, John Riley, Simon Verelst, Gerard Soest, Michael 
 Dahl, Edward Hawker, Simon Du Bois, Closterman, 
 Nicolas de Largilliere, Samuel Cooper, and Kneller's 
 assistants, Byng and Laroon. 
 
 Beckett lived till 1719, but his success as engraver 
 and printseller had enabled him to retire many years 
 earlier. Certainly he offered to his patrons at the Golden 
 Head prints of high merit and very varied attraction, 
 and the sale of them would certainly be determined by the 
 latest Court gossip or topic of passing interest. Catherine 
 Sedley's portrait would certainly be wanted when her 
 lover, James II., soon after his succession, created her 
 Countess of Dorchester, which so grievously upset the 
 Queen that the poor lady could hardly eat a morsel of dinner 
 or speak a word to the King, for two days until, in fact, 
 she had swallowed the affront. Witty daughter of a 
 witty father, the Countess's plain-speaking was proverbial, 
 as when she said, " I wonder for what qualities James II. 
 chooses his mistresses. We are none of us handsome, and 
 if we have wit, he has not enough himself to find it out." 
 The tragedy of Sedgemoor would call for the features of 
 the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth and his neglected
 
 74 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 duchess, as well as the Earl of Feversham, whose incompe- 
 tent generalship and execrable punitive measures were 
 rewarded with the Order of the Garter ! The scandal of the 
 hour would ask for the handsome faces of the Duke of 
 Buckingham or the disreputable, extravagant " Beau " 
 Fielding, who out-fashioned fashion, and played the 
 part of Nemesis to the Duchess of Cleveland, when he 
 bigamously married her in her decadence. Dr. John 
 Blow's latest music, and Adrian Beverland's newest 
 outrage in book form, would invest their portraits with 
 temporary interest, while Kneller's, Lely's, Largilliere's, 
 Dryden's friend, Lord Mulgrave's, and that proud, hand- 
 some Jacobite outlaw, John Drummond, Earl of Melfort's, 
 would also be called for ; as well as that of the eccentric 
 old Cornishman, Sir James Tillie, w r ho, having been re- 
 puted an atheist, sought to prove his belief in life after 
 death by having himself buried under his favourite summer- 
 house in his own park, seated in his armchair, with wine- 
 bottle and glass on a table before him " and so to heaven," 
 as Pepys would say. But the connoisseur, turning over 
 Beckett's prints to look for his masterpiece, would un- 
 doubtedly have chosen one of a certain Lady Williams, 
 said to have been yet another of James, Duke of York's 
 numerous flames. 
 
 Another engraver who must share with Beckett the 
 earliest honours of mezzotint as an established art, was 
 Robert, or Roger (nobody knows which) Williams, a 
 Welshman born. Very little is recorded of his life, but 
 his prints proclaim him a genuine artist. A pupil of 
 Theodore Freres, the Dutch painter, who visited England 
 at Lely's suggestion, he was early attracted to mezzotint 
 engraving, and his training enabled him to get a painter's 
 quality into his scraping, which produced very bold and 
 brilliant effects. Lamed early in his career, and eventually 
 deprived of one leg, he nevertheless worked cheerfully and 
 industriously from about 1680 to 1704, and to him we 
 owe some of the most masterly prints of the period. Among 
 the more interesting personalities are Thomas Betterton, 
 the Henry Irving of his age, of whom a great contemporary
 
 VANITAS VANITATUM. 
 After Schatcken.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 75 
 
 actor said that " he put on his part with his clothes, 
 and was the very man he undertook to be," which, in 
 those anachronistic days of stage costume, must have 
 meant great acting indeed ; Margaret Hughes, the proud 
 and lively actress who so subjugated, and all but ruined, 
 Prince Rupert, the father of her daughter Ruperta, after- 
 wards the Viscountess Howe ; and Lady Harriet Wentworth, 
 whom the Duke of Monmouth proclaimed his wife in the 
 sight of God, though another had a legal right to his name. 
 Then there is John Banister, the violinist and composer, 
 who was dismissed from the leadership of Charles II.'s 
 band for saying, in the King's hearing, that the English 
 violinists were superior to the French ; but he is chiefly 
 remembered for having given the first public concert 
 ever heard in London. This was the inauguration, on 
 December 30, 1672, of a daily series of afternoon per- 
 formances of music " by excellent masters " at his house, 
 " called the Musick School, over against the George Tavern 
 in White Fryars," as the London Gazette duly set forth. 
 Williams's prints, of course, kept pace with the times, 
 and representative among them are the Great Duke of 
 Ormonde, that curiously matched pair the Duke and 
 Duchess of Lauderdale, the first Earl of Portland, William, 
 Duke of Bedford, " Bloody Claverhouse," the gallant 
 Admiral Sir George Rooke, to whom we owe Gibraltar, 
 the famous General Lord Cutts, who was so brave a fire- 
 eater as to be nicknamed " the Salamander," and who, 
 though his posts brought him in 6,000 a year, died so 
 much in debt that his aides-de-camp subscribed ten pounds 
 apiece to bury him ! And among the portraits comes 
 refreshingly the charmingly vivacious girl blowing soap- 
 bubbles, known as " Vanitas Vanitatum," and reproduced 
 in this volume. 
 
 Mezzotint engraving was now fairly established in Eng- 
 land, for several native engravers had turned their attention 
 to the fascinating medium, and, by the time that William 
 and Mary came to reign here, the shop-windows of the 
 London printsellers were already being dominated by 
 mezzotint in powerful rivalry with the older art of line.
 
 76 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 For Edward Cooper, at the sign of the Three Pigeons, 
 William Faithorne, Junior, a son of the great line-engraver, 
 was doing some noteworthy prints, but unhappily the 
 grip of dissipation was upon him, and he would never 
 free himself sufficiently to develop his talent. Portraits 
 of his father's friend, the minor poet Flatman, John Dryden, 
 and Thomas Shadwell, the MacFlecknoe of Dryden's 
 satire, who had his revenge in wearing the laureate wreath 
 so rudely snatched from the great poet's brow; Prince 
 Eugene, too, an enthusiastic print-collector, as well as 
 great soldier these represent the engraver as he was. 
 Bernard Lens, the son of an obscure painter, and the father 
 of an eminent one, was born in London in 1659, and added 
 mezzotint engraving to his occupation of drawing-master. 
 Most attractive among his portraits was that of Mary, 
 Lady Radclyffe, pretty " Moll " Davis 's daughter by 
 King Charles, whose heritage of Stuart blood proved fatal 
 to her two sons, the Earl of Derwentwater and Charles 
 Radclyffe, who both shed it on Tower Hill, but with an 
 interval of thirty years between. Lens is chiefly interesting, 
 however, for having perceived the capacity of mezzotint 
 for pictorial effects of artificial light, such as we find in 
 his " nocturnes," " Fireworks in Covent Garden," and 
 " Fireworks in St. James's Square," celebrating events 
 of national rejoicing. 
 
 The engraver, however, whose name stands out with 
 brightest lustre at this period was John Smith, who may 
 be regarded as the first really eminent master of mezzotint. 
 The son of a reputable but undistinguished engraver, 
 Smith was born at Daventry, in Northamptonshire, in 1652, 
 and, coming early to London, he was apprenticed to a 
 painter named Tillet, in Moorfields, to learn drawing and 
 painting. Being well equipped as a competent draughts- 
 man, he next turned his attention to mezzotint engraving, 
 and, becoming the pupil, first of Van der Vaart, and then of 
 Beckett, he mastered its possibilities. He was soon scraping 
 plates after Van der Vaart and Wissing, and other painters 
 of the day, but his greatest opportunity came when Kneller 
 saw his work, no doubt at Beckett's, and chose him for his
 
 MRS ARABELLA HUNT 
 
 FROM i> 
 X/fer Si, 
 
 i MEZZOTINT BY Jo* 
 Godfrey Kneller.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 77 
 
 engraver-in-chief. His excellent drawing, as well as the 
 brilliant effect of his mezzotinting, was exactly what 
 Kneller wanted to make his hard-toned paintings look 
 their best when translated to the copper. So he invited 
 Smith, who was a young man of bright, engaging personality 
 and handsome presence, to live with him at his house 
 in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and engrave his pictures, 
 as he rapidly painted them. At first Smith worked 
 for the printsellers, Tempest, Browne, Cooper, Palmer, 
 G. Beckett, and others, but towards the end of the century 
 he became his own publisher at the sign of the " Lyon and 
 Crown." 
 
 In Kneller's house he must have come in contact with 
 many of the most notable persons of the period, while his 
 artistic skill and his personal charm brought him popularity. 
 It is a singularly attractive face, with the thin dark-brown 
 eyes, that looks from Kneller's portrait of him, which Smith 
 himself engraved in 1716 ; but in that face it is easy to 
 read qualities of character that would often clash with the 
 good-humoured vanities of Sir Godfrey. Their eventual 
 disagreement was inevitable, but by the time it happened 
 they had each reaped ample profit from their association. 
 Smith engraved altogether 138 plates after Kneller's 
 pictures, and the painter's reputation has certainly benefited 
 through the interpretation of Smith's scraper. 
 
 Other portrait- painters, too, owed much to him Kerse- 
 boom, Riley, Dahl, Richardson, D'Agar, Murray, Vander- 
 bank, Gibson, Sir John Medina, and numerous lesser men. 
 Smith was an engraver not only of conspicuous talent, 
 but of untiring industry, and he seems to have felt the 
 joy of artistic work. Not content to engrave the profitable 
 portrait or retouch the plates of others until they revealed 
 his own quality, he produced prints of many imaginative 
 pictures after Titian, Correggio, Carlo Maratti, and other 
 pamters. His business was a flourishing one, for while 
 the personal interest of his portraits ensured their ready 
 sale, the connoisseurs made collections of his prints for 
 their intrinsic merits. Lord Somers, the great Chancellor, 
 was said to admire them so enthusiastically that he would
 
 78 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 always take a parcel of them in his coach, to beguile the 
 tedium of a journey. On the Continent, too, they were 
 highly prized. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, for instance, 
 wrote from Florence, in 1708, to Sir John Percival to 
 thank him for his valuable gift of a book of Smith's 
 mezzotints. The engraver was, in fact, one of the prominent 
 artistic notabilities of the day, and, by the time he felt 
 the inclination to retire from the business of engraving 
 and printselling, he had realised a substantial competence. 
 So he went to spend the remaining years of his long life 
 in quiet comfort near the home of his childhood, and, 
 when he died at the age of ninety, in 1742, he was buried 
 in St. Peter's, Northampton, beside his wife, Sarah, whom 
 he had survived a quarter of a century, and also his children. 
 
 Smith's prints range over a long period of eventful 
 years, and bring vividly before us a great variety of notable 
 personalities of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth 
 centuries. Among them, of course, are William and 
 Mary, Anne, George II., when Prince of Wales, and the 
 princesses. Then, as there were many who, in those Jacobite 
 times, would have none of these, there is the " King over 
 the Water," as the exiled Prince James Stuart, would be 
 toasted surreptitiously over the water-bottle, as well as 
 the Earl of Mar, who led the Highlanders to defeat in 
 1715, and the Jacobite Duke of Ormonde and the Marquis 
 of Annandale, and Lord Cow per, the judge whose duty was 
 to try and sentence the rebel prisoners, although so many 
 of his wife's relatives were among them. Here are the 
 great Duke of Marlborough, and Sarah, his imperious, 
 devoted duchess ; those two other great soldiers, Prince 
 Eugene and the Duke of Schomberg, that fine sailor Sir 
 Cloudesley Shovell, the bland and generous-natured 
 Keppel, first Earl of Albemarle, and that universally hated, 
 profligate, and uncompromising Whig, Thomas, Lord Whar- 
 ton, who set all Anti- Jacobite England lilting his "Lilli- 
 burlero," to the great prejudice of the Stuart cause. 
 
 Here are Henrietta, Duchess of Bolton, who some- 
 times gave herself the airs of royalty, as Monmouth's 
 daughter by Eleanor Needham; Diana, Duchess of St.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 79 
 
 Albans, Nell Gwyn's and Charles II. 's daughter-in-law ; 
 and the Duchess of Graf ton, who stood in the same relation 
 to Charles all of these looming large at the curious Court 
 of George I. ; also, besides a host of Court beauties, that 
 Countess of Macclesfield, who, by her heartless persecution 
 of her unfortunate son, Richard Savage, has been pilloried 
 for ever in the prose masterpiece of Johnson. Then there 
 are Kneller's lovely Mrs. Voss, and the handsome notorious 
 Sally Salisbury, who, in a jealous pique, stabbed her lover, 
 the Hon. John Finch, to the heart with a table knife, and 
 died in Newgate, but not before he had sufficiently recovered 
 to beg her to kiss and be friends, and fly to safety, as Lady 
 Mary Wortley Montagu writes to her sister by way of 
 entertaining gossip. Here too, are the wits, poets, and 
 philosophers, Congreve and Wycherley, "Dick" Steele, 
 Pope, Anthony Henley, Newton, Locke, Martin Folkes, 
 and Robert Boyle ; and the artists, Kneller, Wissing, 
 Isaac Beckett, Murray, the Scotch painter, noted fox his 
 elegant manner and handsome face; Grinling Gibbons, 
 "that incomparable young man" and original genius, 
 whom Evelyn discovered in obscurity and introduced to 
 fame ; Van de Velde, Schalcken, Roestraten, and Sir 
 Christopher Wren, whose chief enjoyment in his old age was 
 to be taken once a year to St. Paul's, to see the greatest 
 monument of his own genius. Music is represented by 
 Arcangelo Corelli, the father of modern violin-music and 
 its playing (a superb print after a portrait painted in 
 Rome by Hugh Howard, an Irish artist, for Lord Edge- 
 cumbe, one of Corelli's pupils) ; Nicolas Cosimo, the violinist, 
 Henry Aldrich, the " Admirable Crichton," Dean of Christ 
 Church, Oxford, who translated the classic authors, designed 
 churches and college-buildings, composed anthems, and 
 whimsically celebrated his extraordinary love of tobacco 
 by " A smoking catch, to be sung by four men smoking 
 their pipes " ; Mrs. Cross, an actress celebrated for her 
 fine voice and her singing of Purcell's music, especially 
 in the part of Altesidora in Don Quixote ; and Mrs. 
 Arabella Hunt, a singer famed for her beauty, personal 
 charm, lovely voice, and exquisite touch on the lute.
 
 8o OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Unhappy in her marriage, she led a life beyond reproach, 
 was a great favourite in society and at Court, as well as 
 among the poets and musicians. Purcell and Blow com- 
 posed songs for her, Kneller painted her portrait, and 
 Congreve sang her elegy in tender and charming verse. 
 Queen Mary was so fond of her and delighted so in her 
 singing, that she gave the fair vocalist a special post at 
 Court ; but one day, when the Queen had desired some 
 music, and Purcell at the harpsichord was accompanying 
 Mrs. Hunt in some of his own songs, Her Majesty offended 
 the master by asking Arabella to sing instead the old 
 Scotch ballad " Cold and Raw " to her own lute accom- 
 paniment. 
 
 Of the theatre Smith shows us two representatives 
 only : Anthony Leigh, of the Duke's company, in his 
 most famous character of the Spanish Friar, in Dry den's 
 play, which Gibber praises ; and the comic William 
 Penkethman, whom the " gods " of Drury Lane and the 
 frequenters of Bartholomew Fair loved as " Pinky," and 
 Dick Steele delighted to commend with kindly word for his 
 ingenious acting as Don Cholerick Snap Shorto de Testy, in 
 The Fop's Fortune. Favoured indeed must have been 
 the low comedian who could win the immortality of genial 
 reference in the " Spectator " and the " Tatler," a satiric 
 allusion by Pope, and his portrait in mezzotint by John 
 Smith.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT (continued). 
 
 John Simon George White How He extended the Technique of 
 Mezzotint John Faber Father and Son Contemporary 
 Portrait-Painters A Panorama of Personality Thomas 
 Johnson Francis Kyte Peter Pelham The First American 
 Mezzotint Peter van Bleeck -Alexander van Haecken and the 
 Male Soprani The Tasteless Courts of George I. and II. No 
 Encouragement for Pictorial Art Decline of Mezzotint The 
 Seeds of Revival sown in Ireland Thomas Beard Johii 
 Brooks Andrew Miller Brooks brings McArdell and Houston 
 to London. 
 
 WHEN Kneller and Smith disagreed, and came to a rupture 
 of their artistic relations, it was necessary for the popular 
 painter to seek another engraver who should interpret 
 him in no less satisfying a manner. This desideratum he 
 found in John Simon, a native of Normandy, who came, 
 as a Protestant refugee, from Charenton to London at the 
 beginning of Queen Anne's reign. One of a family of 
 artists, Simon had been trained to line-engraving, which 
 was still a flourishing art in France, but he found little 
 encouragement for it in London, and the more popular 
 um of mezzotint came easily to his accomplished 
 and. He was a matured artist when, at the age of thirty- 
 two, he commenced the practice of mezzotint about 
 1707 ; but he treated it in a way of his own, with a touch 
 more sensitive than had any of his contemporaries, aiming 
 at refinement of tone, and quiet harmony of effect, 
 rather than brilliancy. The charm of his prints, which
 
 82 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 he published himself, soon attracted the notice of the 
 painters and the connoisseurs, and Simon became one of 
 the most popular, as he was certainly one of the most 
 accomplished and industrious, engravers of his time. 
 Thus he was enabled to enjoy nine years of leisured ease 
 before his death, in 1751, at the age of seventy-six ; 
 but, up to the time he discontinued engraving, his por- 
 traits in mezzotint numbered about two hundred. They 
 are fascinating in their variety of interest, and eloquent 
 of the times. They take us right into the heart of Queen 
 Anne's reign, and then onward among the notabilities 
 of the Early Georgian period. 
 
 Appropriately, we come at once face to face with 
 Newton, with Pope and Prior, Addison and Steele, while 
 Colley Gibber trips towards us, snuff-box in hand, the 
 very Lord Foppington in his own play of " The Careless 
 Husband," and just as the members of the Garrick Club 
 may see him any day in Grisoni's admirable oil-painting. 
 He is wearing a wig that might almost have rivalled the 
 famous periwig of his Sir Fopling Flutter, which was 
 so vastly admired that Gibber was wont to have it carried 
 on to the stage in a sedan chair, so that he might don it 
 in full view of the expectant audience, to their great 
 content. Here are Sir John Vanbrugh, who could build 
 great palaces with a heavy hand, or as easily " bring down 
 the house " with his light touch of comedy ; and Thomas 
 Southern, who wrote plays with the applause even of Dryden 
 in Charles II. 's reign, and lived well into George II. 's, 
 always charmingly a gentleman, always decorously pros- 
 perous, always respected by the best poets of his day, 
 fondly apostrophised by Pope as " Tom, whom heaven 
 sent down to raise The price of prologues and of plays," 
 and welcome everywhere till his death at eighty-six, 
 when the actors still clamoured for the best parts in his 
 plays. Yet, how many of our present-day players have 
 even heard of Oronooko or The False Marriage? Of 
 such is the kingdom of the popular playwright ! 
 
 Here, the centre of a characteristically convivial group, is 
 one of the most popular of his time, jovial Tom D'Urfey, who
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 83 
 
 " made the world merry " with his comedies, and still more 
 so with his lively songs, or, as he called them, " Pills to 
 Purge Melancholy," which he would sing to Charles II. by 
 the hour, while the Merry Monarch, who delighted only 
 in music to which he could beat time, would sometimes 
 hum them himself, leaning familiarly on his favourite 
 lyrist's shoulder, as Addison, one of D'Urfey's best friends, 
 recalls in one of his most genial essays, when pleading the 
 old playwright's claims to a " benefit." A still more remark- 
 able man of music is here in Thomas Britton, who cried 
 small-coal for sale through the streets, and, when he had 
 finished his day's rounds, held concerts at his Clerkenwell 
 lodging, where Handel or Pepusch would preside at the 
 harpsichord, Banister, the violinist, would lead a combina- 
 tion of the best professional and amateur instrumentalists 
 of the day, while the elite among the London music-lovers 
 would crowd into the low-ceilinged room over the coal- 
 cellar to listen and applaud. Britton used to call " Small 
 coal ! " in such perfectly musical tones that one day 
 Woollaston, the painter, who was one of his amateur 
 violinists and flute-players, recognised the unmistakable 
 cry in the street, and, inviting him into his studio, com- 
 menced Britton's portrait just as he was, in his blue smock, 
 with his small-coal measure in his hands the original, in 
 fact, of Simon's print. Other musicians in this company 
 are Attilio Ariosti, a Dominican friar, who, having obtained 
 a special dispensation from the Pope, became a famous 
 performer on the viol d'amore, as well as operatic com- 
 poser, and not only produced Coriolanus, Vespasian, 
 and other Italian operas, in rivalry with Handel and 
 Buononcini, but was engaged, together with these two 
 masters, to collaborate in the opera, Muzio Sccevola, 
 each composing an act to decide their several claims ; and 
 William Corbett, a celebrated violinist and member of the 
 King's band, who led the first opera orchestra at the Hay- 
 market, and then went to Rome, ostensibly to collect 
 musical instruments and manuscripts, but actually, it 
 was said, to watch the " Pretender." 
 
 Simon, by the way, had evidently no fear, in those
 
 84 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 days of mug-house rows, Whig and Tory mob-fights on the 
 slightest provocation, and constant plottings, of being 
 suspected of Jacobite sympathies, for he did not hesitate 
 to engrave portraits of Prince James Edward Stuart, his 
 wife, Maria Clementina Sobieski, and their sons, Prince 
 Charles Edward and Prince Henry, the future Cardinal 
 York ; but the engraver wisely " hedged," for he described 
 Prince James neither as King nor as Pretender. The title 
 of Kings, however, was not withheld from the four Indian 
 chiefs, who came to England on behalf of the Six Nations, 
 to see for themselves whether or no the English were 
 indeed mere vassals of France, as they had been told by 
 the French and, lodging at the house of Arne, the up- 
 holsterer (father of Dr. Arne and Mrs. Gibber), were gra- 
 ciously received by Queen Anne, and, after seeing the 
 sights of London, returned to their native backwoods 
 duly impressed by English manners, fashions, and customs, 
 as Addison humorously set forth in the " Spectator." 
 
 Here are John, Duke of Marlborough, and his daughters, 
 Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgewater, whose personality 
 was crystallised in Pope's line, " An angel's sweetness, 
 or Bridgewater's eyes," and Mary, Duchess of Montagu, 
 who would play for high stakes at the Court of Caroline, 
 Princess of Wales, and, going halves with her Royal mis- 
 tress, think little of winning or losing 600 at a sitting, 
 but shut herself up when she grew old and ugly, much 
 to her friend Lady Mary's surprise. Beautiful Nance 
 Oldfield, too, with her large eloquent eyes, half shut, with 
 the allurement of a woman conscious that she is compact 
 of all the graces, who won from the workroom of a seam- 
 stress to a queendom of the stage, and the honoured pomp 
 of burial in Westminster Abbey, and left as fragrant a 
 memory as any in British dramatic annals, to say nothing 
 of certain love-children, whose descendants represent 
 noble families to-day. Her first lover, the brilliant Arthur 
 Mayn waring, is also here, with the proud look of an 
 almost married man. 
 
 Here is big, brave, burly William, Earl of Cadogan, 
 who worthily succeeded his old leader, Marlborough, as
 
 COLLEY GIBBER. 
 
 After On ton i
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 85 
 
 Commander-in-Chief, and was like to have been carried 
 off from his house in Piccadilly, almost a rural road then, by 
 the Jacobites, and held captive while they stole a march 
 on the army encamped in Hyde Park, then a wild heath, 
 and sei/ed the Tower and the King, if their 1722 plot 
 had not gone the treacherous way of all their plots. 
 
 William, Lord North, too, a good soldier, who lost a hand 
 at Blenheim, and went to the Tower for his Jacobite sym- 
 pathies ; Sir Constantine Phipps, the famous lawyer, 
 who was for ever pleading the innocence of the Jacobites 
 when they were caught in the act and brought to trial ; 
 Philip, Duke of Wharton, " The scorn and wonder of our 
 days, Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise," as the 
 satirist has it ; Simon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, as he was 
 then called, before he had grown to look the wily old scoun- 
 drel that Hogarth saw and drew years later, when the 
 artist supped with him at St. Albans, on his way, a pri- 
 soner, to London and the block. What a company it is ! 
 Prince Eugene ; honest James Craggs, Secretary for War, 
 who, with his " Face untaught to feign, a judging eye, That 
 darts severe upon a rising lie, And strikes a blush through 
 Hfrontless flattery," won a great poet's eulogy that would 
 positively paralyse a modern War Office Chief with sheer 
 amazement ; that interesting man and untrustworthy 
 statesman, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and that other 
 friend of Pope's, Sir Richard Temple ; Charles, Viscount 
 Townshend, and his brother statesman, Sir Robert Walpole ; 
 Charles, Earl of Sunderland, and his charming Countess ; 
 the famous letter-writing Lord Chesterfield, whose cult 
 of stilted politeness has become a proverb, in spite of his 
 repellent ugliness and his " shrill scream," as Lady Cowper, 
 in her Memoirs, describes his speaking voice. Also that 
 bombastic humbug, the " Princely " Duke of Chandos, 
 who, as Paymaster of the Forces, during Queen Anne's 
 wars, contrived to make so much money that nothing less 
 than a state of regal magnificence would content his 
 ambition, or account for his questionable millions ; but, 
 though he built a costly palace " a laboured quarry 
 above ground," as Pope described it had the
 
 86 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 detailed estimate of every day's expenditure engraved 
 on a copper-plate, engaged famous foreign painters 
 to decorate his chapel, and great musicians to make 
 its music, all his " greatness " burst in the South 
 Sea Bubble," and nothing remains of the once boasted 
 Canons but the mordant satire of Pope, and the little 
 painted chapel where Handel played the organ to immortal 
 echoes. 
 
 Here, too, are General Lord Stanhope, who covered 
 himself with glory in Spain, and gave a classic touch 
 to his victory of Almenara by killing the Spanish general 
 of horse with his own hand, in the good old heroic fashion ; 
 and that other and more famous hero of the Spanish War 
 of Succession, Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough. 
 One of the most brilliant and extraordinary men of his time, 
 the friend of wits and poets, he, after driving the French 
 armies out of the Peninsula, and rendering other doughty 
 services to the State, crowned his innumerable gallantries 
 by falling in love with the charming and virtuous prima 
 donna, Anastasia Robinson, and compromising her repu- 
 tation, when he forced Senesino, the male contralto, to 
 declare on his knees that her virtue was above reproach, 
 fought a duel about her with Lord Stanhope, who would 
 not take the affair seriously, and then married her in secret 
 because she declined his love on any other terms. But, 
 with his uncontrollable temper, and inordinate vanity, 
 he made her a " very awful husband," as her friend, Mrs. 
 Delany, told Dr. Burney. Only when he was too ill to go 
 abroad without her, and she refused to accompany him 
 unless he publicly acknowledged their marriage, did the 
 gallant earl at last " prevail upon himself to do her jus- 
 tice," which he did by summoning all his aristocratic rela- 
 tives, and haranguing them to weariness on the virtues of 
 the lady he now declared to be Lady Peterborough, until 
 the poor lady swooned in the midst of the astonished 
 company. What else could an operatic prima donna 
 have thought of doing under the embarrassing circum- 
 stances ? A sudden C in alt could not have startled that 
 assembly of relatives more than the statement that the
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 87 
 
 fair Anastasia was, after all the gossip, a respectable 
 married Countess ! 
 
 Simon's delicate touch in mezzotint was happy in ren- 
 dering the dainty pictorial fancies of Rosalba, Watteau, 
 Jeauret, and Amiconi, but it is in portraiture that he 
 lives for us. Even in his print of " Mary, Queen of Scots," 
 one may recognise a contemporary portrait in masquerade, 
 none other, in fact, than that most delightful and vivacious 
 Maid of Honour, Mary Bellenden, who flouted so refresh- 
 ingly the amorous presumptions of the niggardly George II. 
 and married the man of her heart. 
 
 George White is one of the landmarks in the history 
 of mezzotint, although he did not begin to engrave in that 
 manner until 1714, when he was about forty-three years of 
 age. Bringing to the art the experience of a portrait- 
 painter as well as line-engraver, he saw how the soft and 
 delicate efforts of the mezzotint scraper might be streng- 
 thened and enriched by the help of the graver and the 
 etching-point. He would first etch the subject before 
 grounding the plate, and then, when the mezzotinting 
 was done, he would touch up the darkest places with the 
 graver. It was an innovation which influenced the develop- 
 ment of mezzotint engraving, and extended its technique, 
 and most of the subsequent engravers employed the help 
 of the etching-point more or less, though it is difficult 
 always to detect it. White, like his father, the famous 
 line-engraver, was highly esteemed as a man and an artist, 
 and, when he died in 1731, his last work, the delightful 
 " Laughing Boy," after Franz Hals, was published with 
 some memorial verses, which proclaimed him 
 
 " A friend ! whom none in Friendship could surpass ; 
 An Artist worth all Monuments of Brass ! " 
 
 Many of White's subjects were of literary and artistic 
 interest. There was Dryden, as he sat to Kneller, hold- 
 ing his laureate wreath in his hand, as if he felt he could not 
 conscientiously wear it while flattering the painter in the 
 verses that probably paid for the portrait, and certainly 
 condemned himself as an art-critic. There was Pope, as 
 Kneller saw him, presumably with his " poet's eye in a fine
 
 88 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 frenzy rolling," but really looking through the vanity of 
 the painter at the man himself ; for had not Kneller naively 
 said, " I can't do as well as I should do, unless you natter 
 me a little, Mr. Pope ? " Then there were Allan Ramsay, 
 the genial Scotch poet, wig-maker, bookseller, and father 
 of the painter ; Isaac Watts, of hymn fame ; and Sir 
 Richard Blackmore, that irreproachable physician, who, 
 as he made his professional rounds, wrote epics " to the 
 rumblings of his chariot wheels," as Dryden sneered, was 
 ridiculed by Pope, jeered at by all the rhyming crowd, 
 praised by Congreve and Locke, and respectfully included 
 by Johnson among his " Lives of the Poets." Boling- 
 broke, Sir Robert Walpole, and Lord Godolphin repre- 
 sent the State among White's prints, while Art has her 
 personalities in William Dobson, of Charles I.'s day, 
 Louis Goupy, the miniaturist, Charles Reisen, the gem 
 engraver, Monnoyer, the flower-painter, and Peter Van- 
 derbank, the excellent but unfortunate engraver, who 
 worked with such an excess of artistic conscience that 
 he could not earn enough to live, though his publisher 
 made an easy fortune out of his prints after his death. 
 When one looks at Barton Booth, one thinks of " Cato's 
 long wig, flowered gown, and lacquered chair," and that 
 strange incident of Bolingbroke, in his box at Drury 
 Lane, sending for the great actcr after the first perfor- 
 mance of Addison's play, and giving him a purse of fifty 
 guineas, contributed by a few Tory gentlemen as a mark 
 of their appreciation of Booth's efforts in the cause of 
 public liberty, a gift which spurred the leading Whig 
 playgoers to similar generosity ! Imagine such an inci- 
 dent being possible in our own times, with, say, Glad- 
 stone and Henry Irving in place of Bolingbroke and Booth ! 
 White's engraving sympathies were broad. He did 
 portraits of the celebrated criminals, Colonel Blood, of 
 Crown Jewel notoriety; Colonel Francis Charteris, in the 
 dock ; and Jack Sheppard, who looks anything but a 
 romantic hero ; as well as Abel Roper, the scandalous 
 bookseller, and M. Isaac, the popular dancing-master, 
 who taught John Evelyn's daughter Mary, and gave
 
 WILLIAM DOBSON. 
 
 FROM Tut MCZZOT 
 After W. Dobson. 
 
 GEORGE WHITE.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 89 
 
 his name to a Rigadoon, which was promised by the poet 
 to " live as long As Raphael's painting, or as Virgil's 
 song." Where is that Rigadoon now ? 
 
 In the annals of mezzotint there is no name calling for 
 more respect than that of John Faber, for, not only was 
 his work of intrinsic excellence, but it maintained the 
 dignity and charm of the art through the dark days of its 
 decadence, standing as a link between the brilliant days 
 of John Smith and the rise of the young Irish school of 
 engravers, who, with the eminent James McArdell at 
 their head, wrought so that mezzotint engraving became 
 one of the glories of British art. 
 
 Faber was born in Holland in 1695, and, at three years 
 of age, he was brought to England by his father, who 
 was a miniature painter of some parts, with a turn for 
 engraving. The elder Faber's mezzotinting was never 
 of very fine quality, but in 1707 he started selling his 
 prints in the Savoy, and evidently found a sale for his 
 series of the Founders of the colleges at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, the ancient Greek poets and philosophers after 
 Rubens, and sundry portraits of topical interest. Among 
 these was one of the clever, handsome, and intrepid 
 Jacobite youth, James Sheppard (who had no connection 
 with the notorious Jack, though they both ended at 
 Tyburn), whose vengeful and gratuitous hanging stirred 
 widespread pity, and created an extensive but secret 
 demand for his portrait. 
 
 Young Faber learned mezzotint from his father, and 
 drawing from John Vanderbank, the portrait-painter, who 
 conducted an Academy. His talents must have developed 
 early, for he began to publish prints when he was about 
 seventeen, signing them " John Faber, Junr.," and con- 
 tinuing to do so until his father's death at Bristol in 1721. 
 It is pretty certain that, at some time in the earlier part 
 of his career, he sought to learn from John Smith the 
 secret of the master's touch, and, having acquired this, 
 he developed a style, thoroughly individual and artistic, 
 with which he interpreted the pictorial art of his day. 
 Engraving assiduously during some forty-four years, he
 
 90 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 produced about five hundred prints, which represent 
 most of the contemporary painters in fashionable vogue, 
 from Kneller, who was at the height of his popularity 
 when Faber commenced in 1712, to Reynolds, who was 
 just beginning to be appreciated, and was charging twelve 
 guineas for a head, when Faber engraved three of his 
 portraits the year before the engraver's death in 1756. 
 In the interval Faber lent his art to the service of Richard- 
 son, Hudson, Hogarth, Vanloo, Pope's friend Jervas, 
 Mercier, Dahl, Highmore, Hayman, William Hoare, 
 and a legion of others, many of whose very names would 
 be almost forgotten but for Faber's prints. And in 
 those prints the days of Queen Anne and the first and 
 second Georges pass before us as in a very panorama of 
 personality. 
 
 The theatre opens its doors to us, and we see fasci- 
 nating Peg Woffington, in the character of Mrs. Ford, 
 wearing, of course, careless of anachronism, the contem- 
 porary fashion of " the swelling hoop's capacious round " ; 
 that winningly combustible and genuinely comic actress, 
 Kitty Give, who " pleas'd by hiding all attempts to 
 please," as Phillida, the innocent country girl in Gibber's 
 farce ; and Susanna Gibber, who could melt her hearers' 
 hearts with that inimitable expression of deep pathos 
 which caused Garrick, when he heard of her death, to 
 exclaim, perhaps not without a thought to future quota- 
 tion, " Then Tragedy has died with her ! " Yet it is 
 also on record that he had called her "the greatest female 
 plague " in his theatre, because she was as irresistible off 
 as on the stage, and always got her own way, whether 
 in regard to a new part or a new dress. But here the 
 manager spoke ; in the former instance it was merely the 
 actor. Also we see that great representative of the 
 stilted, mouthing, air-sawing old school of player, James 
 Quin ; the generous, capable Robert Wilks, and that 
 natural actor of still-life parts, Cave Underbill, as Obadiah, 
 Ye Fanatick Elder. 
 
 Here is Handel, looking untroubled by any Buonon- 
 cini faction, but rather as he must have looked at Mrs.
 
 MARGARET <PEG> WOFFINGTON. 
 
 FROM THE MEZZOTINT BV J FABER 
 After . Haytley.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 91 
 
 Delany's musical party, when, as she wrote, " Mr. Handel 
 was in the best humour in the world, and played lessons, 
 and accompanied Strada and all the ladies that sung from 
 seven o'clock until eleven." But Italian opera in England 
 had its ups and downs in those days, as it has had since, 
 and some of its representatives are here. For instance, 
 that extraordinary adventurer, Heidegger, one of the 
 ugliest men ever known, who ruled the opera and the 
 masquerades, or ridottos, as he called them, at the Hay- 
 market for so many years (for a time even in association 
 with Handel), when no opera could be performed without 
 the presence of forty men of the Foot Guards, under an 
 officer, to assist in keeping order, while, in the case of 
 a ball or masquerade, a hundred guardsmen, under a 
 colonel, a captain, and an ensign, were always required 
 to preserve the peace ! Here, too, are Owen McSwiney, 
 who had turns of management at both Drury Lane and 
 the Haymarket, and, leaving his fortune to Peg Woffing- 
 ton, ended his career as Keeper of the King's Mews ; 
 the popular and charming Anastasia Robinson, Lady 
 Peterborough, just alluded to ; Carestini, a fine male con- 
 tralto, whom Handel brought from Italy when Senesino and 
 the rest of his singers went over to the rival manage- 
 ment ; Monticelli, the male soprano, who became almost 
 as great a favourite among opera audiences as the great 
 Farinelli had been before him, received a thousand guineas 
 for the season, and was admitted to intimacy with the Wai- 
 poles, although Sir Robert was wont to describe all musical 
 artists contemptuously as " fiddlers " ; John Beard, the 
 greatest English tenor of his day, who scandalised society, 
 and mightily amused Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, by 
 respectfully marrying Lady Henrietta Herbert, the Earl 
 of Waldegrave's widowed daughter, in spite of her family's 
 threats and prayers, and made her quite a respectable 
 and considerate husband until she died, when he very 
 prudently married Rich's daughter, and became manager 
 of Covent Garden Theatre. Then, here are the talented, 
 erratic Henry Carey, who immortalised himself through 
 11 Sally in our Alley," and seems to have given us our
 
 92 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 National Anthem in 1740, even if he borrowed a few notes 
 of it from Dr. John Bull, who was, of course, the appro- 
 priate composer to originate the air ; and Lavinia Fenton 
 and Thomas Walker, who won such extraordinary popu- 
 larity as Polly Peachum and Captain Macheath in The 
 Beggar's Opera, that he fell a victim to it and died dis- 
 tressfully " from too much love of living," while she, 
 with her salary of thirty shillings a week, became the rage 
 of the town, had to be guarded home o' nights to pre- 
 vent her being mobbed, or run away with, set all the scribes 
 writing about her, and eventually became the Duchess 
 of Bolton, after twenty-three years' rehearsal of the 
 part ! 
 
 As we look over Faber's prints, what historical echoes 
 are in our ears ! The toasts of the Kitcat Club, for in- 
 stance ; for here are all the members (a brilliant company, 
 indeed !) as Kneller painted them, stiffly posturing in 
 their periwigs. The gossip, the scandals, the intrigues, 
 of the Courts, the Prince of Wales's, for choice, since 
 there were more lively doings than at St. James's ; for 
 here is that mordantly amusing cynic, Lord John Hervey, 
 the " Lord Fanny " of Pope's satire, who saw everything 
 that went on, and much that didn't, if it happened to be 
 his humour, who had the art, and surely, too, the nature, 
 to have a Royal Princess die of love for him, and win 
 for his wife the incomparable Molly Lepel as Gay sings : 
 
 "Now, Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well, 
 With thee, Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lcpell." 
 
 Not Court gossip only, but the respectful homage of 
 men of genius, echo around the fascinating Mrs. Howard, 
 later Countess of Suffolk, reputed mistress of George II. 's 
 reputed heart, yet Mistress of the Robes to his Queen ! 
 The Hon. Anne Vane, too, does not escape those gossiping 
 echoes, as a penalty for her tender relations with Frederick, 
 Prince of Wales ; while Ethelreda, Lady Townshend, de- 
 liberately courts them, for reticence of any kind was never 
 dreamt of in her witty philosophy. Here, as the hapless sub- 
 ject of much scandal, is that unfortunate Lady Dorothy
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 93 
 
 Boyle, who was " married, alas ! " as the print has it, 
 to Lord Euston, whose brutal treatment killed her, after 
 he had forbidden her devoted mother the house, and been 
 challenged by her father, as Horace Walpole graphically 
 tells. Here, too, are Kneller's Hampton Court Beauties 
 an unattractive lot, in their conventional attitudes and 
 slovenly attiring ; and here is the Duchess of Hamilton, one 
 of " those goddesses the Gunnings," who so resented the 
 idea that they had come to be made a show of, when the 
 housekeeper, who was conducting the beautiful sisters 
 over Hampton Court Palace, innocently called out, to 
 another party entering the "Beauty-Room," "This 
 way, ladies, to see the Beauties ! " 
 
 The guns of Dettingen and Fontenoy, Sheriffmuir 
 and Preston, Falkirk and Culloden, seem to echo as we 
 look at the Generals, Lord Carpenter, Lord Cathcart, 
 William Blakeney, the Earl of Stair, Wade, Lord Loudoun, 
 in Highland uniform, and the great Duke of Argyll. "The 
 state's whole thunder born to wield, And shake alike 
 the Senate and the field," as well as the veteran Major 
 Faubert, who made soldiers, and turned out many a 
 general, at his famous Military Academy in Leicester 
 Fields. Here, too, are the admirals, Boscawen, Cloudesley 
 Shovel, John Leake, and the unfortunate Byng, who, 
 when the Government murdered him on the quarter- 
 deck, " to encourage the others," would consent to cover 
 his face only lest his fearless eyes might frighten the 
 men appointed to shoot him ; also Admiral Sir Thomas 
 Smith, " Tom of Ten Thousand," as the fleet called him, 
 who presided at Byng's trial, and the " aspen " Duke of 
 Newcastle, who must always bear the obloquy of that 
 national disgrace. 
 
 Faber's prints show a wide range of sympathy and 
 a catholicity of interest. Flora Macdonald is here as well 
 as Duncan Forbes, of Culloden ; that genial group of 
 Jacobite Aldermen known as Benn's Club, and also Sir 
 Watkin Williams Wynne, no less than that uncompro- 
 mising Chief Justice, Sir John Willes ; John Wesley and 
 George Whitefield, the Methodists, as well as the Jewish
 
 94 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Rabbi, Moses Gomes de Mesquita. Here are poets and 
 essayists, and painters, with the dainty Mercier, whose sub- 
 jects Faber interpreted so happily, the haughty, belauded 
 Sir James Thornhill, and the clubbable scenic artist, 
 George Lambert, in their midst ; Lord Perceval, the 
 friend of artists, who lost money enthusiastically in Le 
 Blon's colour-printing venture ; Sir Hans Sloane, whose 
 collections founded the British Museum ; Beau Nash, 
 whose very name recalls a curiously fascinating chapter 
 of English social history ; James Figg, the celebrated 
 pugilist, whose academy in Oxford Road (now Street) 
 attracted all the young " bloods " ; Tregonwell Frampton, 
 an old scoundrel, who kept the Royal running horses at 
 Newmarket from King William's time to George II. 's ; 
 Bampfylde Moore Carew, the George Borrow of his day, 
 whom the charm of the open road lured from his father's 
 vicarage so that he won to be King of the Gypsies ; 
 Benjamin Bradley, who, if he was not actually a smuggler 
 himself, appears to have been the cause of smuggling 
 in others ; Hannah Snell, who went to the wars as a pri- 
 vate soldier, received the ordinary military punishment 
 of 500 lashes, and was wounded in battle, without her 
 sex being discovered ; and Teresia Constantia Phillips, 
 an extraordinary, notorious bigamist, who published 
 " An Apology for her Conduct " in three volumes, and 
 posed to Highmore as a beauty. But, prolific as Faber 
 was in portraiture, being for a time, indeed, without any 
 rival of his own class, he still found time to engrave many 
 charming fancy pictures after Mercier, Pickering, and 
 Franz Hals. 
 
 To a few other mezzotinters, working about this period> 
 we owe some interesting portraits. Thomas Johnson, 
 for instance, has perpetuated the features of William 
 Bullock, the popular comedian of Drury Lane, who shares 
 with his fellow player, Penkethman, the honour of Steele's 
 bantering applause. He also shows us Thomas Britton, 
 tuning his harpsichord, as in Woollaston's second pic- 
 turing of the small-coal man. Then, there was Francis 
 Kyte, who, after his drastic experience in the pillory on
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 95 
 
 conviction of passing a forged note, engraved Aikman's 
 portrait of John Gay, concealing his own identity under 
 the Latin disguise of " F. Milvus." Peter Pelham, 
 too, who, finding insufficient encouragement in London, 
 betook himself, with his wife, his children, and his art, 
 overseas to New England, and established himself in Boston, 
 as portrait-painter, engraver, and subsequently school- 
 master, and there prospered and remained until his 
 death in 1751. At Boston he published, in 1727, the 
 first mezzotint ever done in America. This was a por- 
 trait of the Rev. Cotton Mather, of Boston, who wrote 
 curious books about witchcraft, a vital belief in those 
 days, and nowhere more so than in New England. This 
 was followed by prints of other Boston worthies, such as 
 Thomas Hollis, a London merchant, who gave generously 
 of his wealth to Harvard College, and the presidents of 
 Harvard and Yale, and William Shirley, who, as General 
 and Governor, played a prominent part in the early days 
 of the struggle between France and England for North 
 America. It was before he left England that Pelham 
 engraved the portrait of Mrs. Centlivre, whose plays, 
 The Busybody, The Wonder, and A Bold Stroke For 
 a Wife, long held the stage, and who, after a romantic 
 " past " before she was twenty, including an intrigue 
 in boy's clothes at Cambridge University, and two hus- 
 bands, one killed in a duel all while yet in her teens 
 acted as Alexander the Great at Windsor, and won for her 
 third husband Queen Anne's " Yeoman of the Mouth," or 
 chief cook, and " lived happy ever after." 
 
 Peter van Bleeck was a Dutch portrait-painter who 
 came to England in 1723, the year that Kneller died and 
 Reynolds was born, and he worked here till his death in 
 1764, painting and engraving many capital portraits, 
 among which were some of theatrical interest ; such as 
 Owen McSwiny, with his hair turned picturesquely grey by 
 the cares of opera-management, and Susanna Gibber, 
 as Cordelia, in the storm scene, of course in contemporary 
 costume. There is also a scene from The Alchemist, 
 played by those two excellent comedians, Benjamin Griffin,
 
 96 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 as Tribulation, and Benjamin Johnson, who, oddly enough, 
 was always at his best in Ben Jonson's plays, as Ananias. 
 To Alexander van Haecken, another Dutch engraver, 
 who made London his home at this period he came 
 over about 1735 we owe portraits of those three male 
 soprani of operatic fame, Farinelli, Senesino, and Gizziello. 
 The first of the trio, generally accounted the greatest 
 singer of his time, was the fashionable idol, and not even 
 an Adelina Patti of our day ever had quite his vogue. 
 Society, or the polite world, as it was called, was at his feet, 
 bringing him its offerings of valuable gif ts,wealth, and adula- 
 tion. " One God, one Farinelli ! " cried one of the queens 
 of fashion in an ecstatic moment. Not to have heard 
 him sing was to argue oneself a social nonentity. Hogarth 
 satirised what Mrs. Delany calls the " reigning madness " 
 for Farinelli ; but the singer made 5,000 a year in London, 
 and, when he retired to Spain, his singing cured, as it 
 was believed, the half-demented King Philip V. of his 
 malady after all the physicians had failed, and his talents 
 were secured exclusively for the Spanish Court with a 
 handsome pension. Senesino, more of a mezzo, and 
 Gizziello, a very high soprano, singing in the opposition 
 company under Handel, were both, at different periods, 
 Farinelli's rivals, but, though fine singers, never his 
 equals. They appear to have been emotional enthusiasts, 
 those male soprani, for when Senesino, acting at length 
 in the same opera with Farinelli, after quarrelling finally 
 with Handel, heard his rival for the first time, he was 
 so carried away by the great man's singing, that, although 
 he himself was representing a furious tyrant, and the 
 other his chained captive, he ran up to the singer and in- 
 continently embraced him. When Gizziello first heard 
 Farinelli, he burst into tears and fainted away with 
 despondency, it was said. 
 
 The tasteless and unrefined influences of the Courts 
 of the first and second Georges, reacting on a society 
 where the sense of becomingness was lost in the extrava- 
 gances and caprices of fashion, and gross exaggeration 
 was the rule in manners and costume, could not fail to be
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 97 
 
 discouraging to the fine arts. High art was represented 
 by painted ceilings, " where sprawled the saints of Verrio 
 and Laguerre," or Sir James Thornhill's princes, goddesses, 
 and Virtues jostled each other allegorically through the 
 skies at forty shillings the square yard ! There were 
 many painters to supply the fashionable demand for 
 portraiture, but there was little cultured appreciation 
 of pictorial beauty. Kneller stood for the painters' highest 
 ideal, and, in the words of Reynolds, " to name Van- 
 dyck in comparison with Sir Godfrey was to incur con- 
 tempt." So it was not expected that the fashionable 
 portrait should aspire to be also a beautiful picture. 
 
 When Reynolds, fresh from the study of the masters 
 in Italy, looked about him and saw the stiff and formal 
 productions of the popular English portrait-painters of 
 the day, he said, " They have got a set of postures, which 
 they apply to all persons indiscriminately, the conse- 
 quence of which is that all their pictures look like so 
 many sign-post paintings." The criticism was, per- 
 haps, a little too sweeping, for was not Hogarth looking 
 at Nature with his own eyes, and painting, as he saw, with 
 genius ? But it was, in the main, true, and the average 
 portrait of the period, lacking the artistic essential of 
 beauty, naturally failed to inspire the work of art upon 
 the copper-plate. So the gross, tasteless, inartistic period 
 that immediately followed the Hanoverian succession 
 saw the gradual decline of mezzotint, although Faber, 
 White, and Simon, being masters, continued individually 
 to uphold the dignity of their art, and never fell below 
 their own worthy standard. But this was with them 
 a matter of artistic conscience, else they could easily have 
 satisfied the constant popular demand for prints with 
 work of poorer quality and easier accomplishment. As 
 a matter of fact, the cheap and popular portrait-print 
 of the day had, and was required to have, little or no 
 concern with art. Mezzotint declined from sheer want 
 of encouragement. Among the followers of the declining 
 art, however, were three who, seeking " fresh woods and 
 pastures new," sowed the seeds of its revival. Appro- 
 
 H
 
 98 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 priately, they found those pastures new in the " green isle 
 of Erin." Thomas Beard, an Irishman, who, having 
 made little profit in his own country, had come to London 
 and learned mezzotint, returned, in 1728, to Dublin, where 
 he found encouragement and no competitors. It was 
 evidently Beard's success that, in 1740, induced John 
 Brooks, another Irish mezzotint engraver, to return to 
 Dublin, where, before going to London, he had worked 
 only in the line manner. Brooks was talented, 
 and a boon companion ; so was his friend, Andrew Miller, 
 a Londoner of Scotch parentage, who had learned the 
 art from John Faber. When, therefore, Brooks, finding 
 little scope for mezzotint of quality in London, decided 
 to try his fortune again in Dublin with his new medium, 
 he persuaded Miller to accompany him. This migration 
 had a most important influence on the history of mezzo- 
 tint. 
 
 Brooks, established at the sign of Sir Isaac Newton's 
 Head, Cork Hill, as engraver and printseller, not 
 only attracted attention by the prints he published of 
 his own and Miller's engraving, but, what is more note- 
 worthy, aroused the eager interest of a group of clever 
 and artistic young men. Among these were James 
 McArdell, Richard Houston, Charles Spooner, Michael Ford, 
 and, later, Richard Purcell. Brooks took them all as his 
 pupils and thus he has the credit of forming the brilliant 
 school of Irish mezzotint engravers who revived the art, 
 and brought it back to England in a very healthy con- 
 dition. But, having trained these young engravers to 
 produce saleable prints, Brooks, in his erratic way, turned 
 his own attention to enamelling on porcelain, and, having 
 discovered a new process, decided to return to London, 
 and endeavour to turn this to profitable account. When 
 he left Dublin, in 1746, Brooks made over his printselling 
 business to Michael Ford, while Andrew Miller set up for 
 himself on Hogg Hill, now known as St. Andrew's Street, 
 and did well, as long as his fondness for the bottle did not 
 get the better of him, as in the end it did. But Brooks 
 thought too much of the genius of McArdell and Houston
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 99 
 
 to leave them behind, and so he took them with him to 
 London, introduced them to his old employers among the 
 printsellers, and then, for good and all, severed his con- 
 nection with the engraver's art, to which he had rendered 
 so inestimable a service. Having a plausible Irish way 
 with him, as well as his new enamelling process, he induced 
 Alderman Janssen, in an unlucky moment for the alder- 
 man, to start a factory at Battersea, and entrust him 
 with its management. The habits of drink and of play, 
 however, had grown on him ; he neglected and mismanaged 
 the porcelain business, with the inevitable result of failure, 
 and, in spite of his talents, he drank himself to penury and 
 death. Yet, although it is to be feared that his influence 
 on some of his pupils was not only artistic, Brooks must 
 always be mentioned with gratitude for the part he played 
 in the revival of mezzotint.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE STORY OP MEZZOTINT (continued). 
 
 The Splendid Revival The Brilliant Irish Engravers James 
 McArdell The Master His Influence Interpretations of 
 Reynolds Richard Houston Charles Spooner Richard 
 Purcell Michael Jackson Edward Fisher James Watson 
 John Dixon Thomas Burke Thomas Frye. 
 
 THE revival of mezzotint engraving came at the most 
 opportune moment, for, when the rise of Reynolds and 
 Gainsborough auspicated the great English school of 
 painting, there were great engravers ready to be its 
 interpreters. Of these Brooks's brilliant young pupils 
 were the earliest, and one of them, in the course of his 
 short life, brought the art to its glorious maturity, and 
 became the master of mezzotint par excellence. This 
 was James McArdell, one of the truest and greatest 
 artists who ever handled a copper-plate. 
 
 We have seen him learning his art in Dublin where 
 he was born in Cow Lane (Greek Street, they call it now) 
 about 1729 and coming to London to " commence 
 engraver " in 1747. His pre-eminent talent was imme- 
 diately recognised, when he began to produce plates 
 after Hogarth, Hudson, Allan Ramsay, Dandridge, 
 Liotard, Cotes, and other prominent painters of the day, 
 and he was soon in a position to establish himself as his 
 own publisher at the " Golden Head " in Co vent Garden. 
 But his sense of pictorial beauty was not satisfied by 
 contemporary portraiture, and he turned back to the 
 graces of Vandyck, who now for the first time had full 
 
 100
 
 LADY MARY COKE. 

 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 101 
 
 justice done to him by the art of mezzotint. McArdell's 
 engraving of Vandyck's charming group of the Duke 
 of Buckingham's young sons stamped him at once as 
 the first mezzotint engraver of the day, and the painters 
 were eager for the advantage of his work. It was in 1754 
 that his association with Reynolds began, and so com- 
 plete was the sympathy between the painter and en- 
 graver that, when Reynolds looked at McArdell's mezzo- 
 tint translations of his pictures, he was moved, in his 
 grateful enthusiasm, to say, " By this man I shall be 
 immortalised ! " It was generous praise, but it was not 
 exaggerated ; for, considering the lovely and matchless 
 things McArdell did in the eighteen years of his professional 
 life, with his keen artistic insight, his unerring sense of 
 beauty and character, his quick expansive sympathies, 
 and perfect technical accomplishment, there was no 
 height of beauty, no pitch of power, to which his genius 
 might not have reached. Unhappily, death cut short 
 his career in 1765, before Reynolds had reached his great 
 period of consummate achievement, that period prolific 
 in masterpieces which inspired and influenced a whole 
 school of great engravers. If only McArdell could have 
 lived to engrave a " Mrs. Carnac," a " Duchess of Rut- 
 land," or a " Lady Bampfylde " ! But he engraved 
 thirty-eight of Reynolds's portraits, and among these 
 were some of the most charming of the painter's middle 
 period, while the prints count among the engraver's 
 masterpieces. But not only Reynolds inspired McArdell 
 to his best, for incomparable, too, are his " Mary, Duchess 
 of Ancaster," after Hudson, surely one of the most delight- 
 ful examples of mezzotint at its highest ; the " Mary 
 Lady Coke," after Allan Ramsay, the perfection of dainty 
 and delicate grace ; the sumptuous " Countess of South- 
 ampton," after Vandyck, and the same master's " Lords 
 John and Bernard Stuart," and Lely's "Elizabeth Hamil- 
 ton, Comtesse de Grammont," a superb record of one of 
 the most engaging and vivacious beauties of Charles II. 's 
 Court, and one, moreover, suspected of being virtuous. 
 McArdell was not only a great engraver and an artist
 
 102 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 with fine felicities of intuition, he was a man of lovable- 
 ness all compact. Look at his portrait, engraved from 
 his own drawing by his famous pupil, Richard Earlom : 
 frankness, benevolence, a gentle dignity, and genial 
 strength of character, are eloquent in the face. Reynolds, 
 too, saw and expressed this when he painted McArdell, 
 nearly full face, wearing a plum-coloured coat. His 
 fine, simple nature commanded love and respect for him- 
 self, as his talents compelled admiration. In the studios 
 he was ever welcome, for his sympathy was encouraging, 
 his criticism helpful ; while, at the " Feathers " in 
 Leicester Fields, or " Old Slaughter's " Coffee House in 
 St. Martin's Lane, his genial personality and native 
 humour would be as gladly hailed by the jolly artists, 
 actors, and other good fellows among them James Quin, 
 with his bluff wit who would gather sociably around 
 Hogarth, as by the witty, free-souled, though, perhaps, 
 slightly soberer, company in which Joshua Reynolds in 
 his earlier days would, on occasion, take his relish of 
 convivial life. At Reynolds's, first in Great Newport 
 Street, and later at 47, Leicester Fields (in the very room 
 where now his mezzotints fetch often high prices at 
 auction), McArdell was a favoured and informal visitor, 
 and there he would meet the 'elite of the world of art 
 and letters, and find them interested in his work. 
 
 Northcote tells how one day, for instance, McArdell 
 called on Reynolds to consult him as to the various 
 titles of knighthood he ought to inscribe after Rubens's 
 name on the print of the painter and his wife, which he 
 was just finishing. Johnson happened to be there, and he 
 could not refrain from giving his advice unasked, and 
 excellent advice it was to give the credit of the picture 
 simply to Peter Paul Rubens, since his name was greater 
 than all his titles, and therefore " full sufficient." 
 
 The advancement of pictorial art in England was now 
 really in the air ; exhibitions of pictures were successfully 
 inaugurated, in the first instance to benefit the Foundling 
 Hospital, in which Hogarth took so much interest ; and 
 these infused a spirit of emulation among the painters,
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 103 
 
 which led to their founding the Society of Artists, with 
 its exhibitions, from which, through jealous dissension, 
 sprang the Royal Academy. All this tended to the healthy 
 encouragement of mezzotint, and the industrious, masterly 
 McArdell was justly one of the first to reap the benefit. 
 
 But his own success never affected McArdell's comrade- 
 ship with his old fellow-pupils, Houston, Spooner, and 
 Purcell, who, gifted as they were, but lacking McArdell's 
 strength and dignity of character, were dissipating their 
 fine talents, and drinking and gambling away their great 
 opportunities. That they were his countrymen and old 
 comrades was sufficient for the kindly McArdell ; he 
 suffered them to help themselves out of difficulties by 
 copying his own works, and when they came to the " Golden 
 Head " to ask any service, or seek the convenience 
 of a temporary loan, as they would euphemistically 
 phrase it, he never sent them empty away. Doubtless, 
 too, he tried to influence and help them to respect them- 
 selves for the sake of their art, for artists they always 
 were, however casually and intemperately they might 
 live ; but it was a hard-drinking age, and they were a 
 Bohemian set, with lively eighteenth -century Irish tempera- 
 ments. Nevertheless, they loved McArdell, and it was 
 a bad day for those old friends of his when, on June 2nd, 
 1765, he suddenly died. Three days later they followed 
 him sadly out of the town, along the hedge-lined roads, 
 to rural Hampstead, and laid him to rest there in the 
 quiet churchyard ; but none of them survived him long. 
 
 It is a wonderful company into which McArdell's prints 
 take us, and the ladies are so alluring, and the men so 
 interesting, that one might be tempted to remain with 
 them anecdotically until the end of this volume, were 
 it not compulsory to pass rapidly through the crowd, 
 and merely whisper who's who as we go. 
 
 That dainty, roguish-looking lady, dressed for the 
 Ranelagh masquerade in a hooped satin gown, is Mary, 
 Duchess of Ancaster, Mistress of the Robes to Queen 
 Charlotte, and a popular leader of fashion, although her 
 father was no more than Master of the King's Racehorses,
 
 104 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and (for your private ear) they do say he was never married 
 to her mother. That is Mary, Lady Coke, standing there 
 against the harpsichord, holding the theorbo-lute. You 
 would naturally think she is musical, but she isn't ; she 
 has no ear at all, and borrowed that large lute from Lady 
 Ancrum merely to be painted with, because Lady Ancrum, 
 who can play it, posed with it in the picture Ramsay 
 painted of her, and now Lady Mary insists on taking 
 lessons on her friend's instrument, which she will never 
 play, strum she never so much, and meanwhile doesn't 
 return simply to justify the picture ! She is a most un- 
 comfortable person, always proclaiming herself aggrieved, 
 always quarrelling with somebody certainly her husband 
 treated her contemptibly, and their separation was in- 
 evitable ; but now she is a widow, with an eye to a royal 
 prince, they say " the present envy of her sex, in the 
 possession of youth, health, wealth, wit, beauty, and 
 liberty," as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says, while 
 pitying her extremely for " walking blindfold, upon 
 stilts, among precipices," and believing that only her 
 inborn habit of economy can save her. " She might be 
 happy and respected," says her friend Horace Walpole, 
 " but will always be miserable from the vanity of her 
 views and her passion for the extraordinary." But 
 glance through the four huge volumes of her own diaries, 
 and her trying temperament will reveal itself on every 
 page. 
 
 Those two beautiful, stately young women are Maria, 
 Countess of Coventry, and Elizabeth, Duchess of Hamilton, 
 the famous Gunning sisters. No wonder the Irish beggar- 
 women got into the way of saying, " It's the luck o' the 
 Gunnings I'm wishin' ye," for they were penniless girls 
 in Dublin when Thomas Sheridan, the dramatist's father, 
 lent them the Lady Macbeth and Juliet dresses from 
 his theatre wardrobe, which Peg Woffington used to wear 
 in those days, so that they might be suitably dressed for 
 that presentation at Dublin Castle which inaugurated 
 their wonderful careers. That, in the gauze turban, is 
 Maria, Countess of Waldegrave, Horace Walpole's natural
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 105 
 
 niece, and a famous beauty, whose presentation at Court, 
 after her first marriage, her uncle predicted, was to make 
 the Countess of Coventry distracted with jealousy ; but he 
 did not then foresee that she was going to make a second 
 marriage which would greatly perturb the King himself, 
 and elude the passing of the Royal Marriage Act, for 
 she became the legal wife of George III.'s brother, the 
 Duke of Gloucester, and a regular royal princess ! 
 
 There is Frances, Countess of Essex, daughter of Sir 
 Charles Hanbury Williams, who writes poems, and is 
 mightily proud of his daughter and of the notice the King 
 takes of her. " She coquets extremely with her own 
 husband, which is very lawful," says Mrs. Montagu, the 
 Queen of the Blue Stockings, " and she has the general 
 air of vivacity, which, to those who are herissees with 
 prudery, may displease ; but she is an amiable, fine girl. 
 She wants to have the bon ton, and you know the bon ton 
 of 1756 is un -peu equivoque." Here is the charming 
 Elizabeth, Countess of Berkeley, with a fine forehead 
 but no height of hair, and an expression " mild as a summer 
 sea serene " ; here, too, are Lady Anne Dawson, looking 
 splendid as Diana, with her spear and her hound, and 
 the moon in her hair ; and the gracious Anne, Countess 
 of Straff ord, the popular Lady George Lennox, the serious - 
 minded Griselda, Countess of Stanhope, with goodness 
 beaming from her face under the becoming hood and cap ; 
 pretty Mrs. Bonfoy, Lady Chambers, the distinguished 
 architect's wife, in the engaging shadow of a large Woffing- 
 ton hat ; the placid-looking Lady Fortescue ; Mrs. 
 Horneck, an " exceedingly sensible, well-bred woman," 
 as Fanny Burney will tell you, and mother of " Little 
 Comedy," and " The Jessamy Bride," endeared to us 
 through Goldsmith's affection, and the brush of Reynolds. 
 Beautiful Lady Caroline Russell sits there with her pet 
 spaniel, "in maiden meditation, fancy-free," for she is not 
 yet Duchess of Marlborough. Those two winsome little 
 girls are Lady Elizabeth Montagu, who is to be Duchess 
 of Buccleuch some day, and Lady Charlotte Fitzwilliam ; 
 and that is Lord Edgecumbe's Nancy Day, with her face
 
 106 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 charmingly shaded, to avoid the obligation of a blush 
 when the worthy Exon of the Royal Bodyguard makes 
 her Lady Fenhoulet. There is Lord Kildare, with his 
 lovely and charming Countess, who, through the Duke of 
 Richmond, her father, being still in high dudgeon about 
 the clandestine marriage of his elder daughter Caroline 
 with Henry Fox, gave her not a shilling of dowry, was the 
 means of getting for her husband an English peerage, 
 and a " pinchbeck dukedom," as Horace Walpole called 
 the Leinster title. That pretty girl dressed up as Hebe, 
 and playing at being a goddess with her little brother as 
 Cupid, is Frances Greville, who is going to be the famous 
 political beauty, Mrs. Crewe. We shall meet her anon. 
 But who is that mysterious Lady with the White Turban ? 
 They say the great Marshal Keith could tell ; for he was 
 the hero of her romance, when he carried Russian victory 
 into Sweden, and she was a poor Swedish orphan and a 
 prisoner, whom he protected and his children call her 
 mother. Those two ladies, with each a white rose in her 
 hair, are Prince Charlie's friends, Flora Macdonald and 
 the Lady Mackintosh, who showed such a rousing spirit 
 during the 'Forty-five. But we will drop that subject, 
 for here are their Majesties George II. and the young 
 King George III. and Queen Charlotte, and some of the 
 royal princes and princesses, among them the " Butcher 
 of Culloden." 
 
 Here are those grand old seamen, " admirals all," 
 with a thrill of British pride in the very mention of their 
 names, Anson, Hawke, Boscawen, Tyrrel, Vernon of 
 Portobello, Pocock, and Sir Charles Saunders, who led 
 the fleet at Quebec in loyal and victorious co-operation 
 with Wolfe. And here is another hero of Quebec : George, 
 Marquis of Townshend, that fine soldier, on whom the 
 command of the British Army devolved when \Volfe 
 fell, and General Monckton (who also is here) was badly 
 wounded, and there was still much to do for victory. Sir 
 Peter Halkett, who fell with Braddock, is of the com- 
 pany ; so also are the veterans Blakeney, who has led 
 the Inniskillings through many a hard fight, and Lord
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 107 
 
 George Sackville, who was dismissed the service after 
 Minden ; Benjamin Franklin, who practically inspired 
 American independence, and Lord Give, the hero of our 
 Indian empire. 
 
 Here, most welcome, is that delightful, incomparable 
 gossip, Horace Walpole, among his books. That he 
 expressed a momentary annoyance with McArdell for 
 letting it be known that he was about to join this com- 
 pany of the great mezzotinted may be attributed to the 
 vanity of modesty, or perhaps he wanted to surprise his 
 friends with gifts of his portraits in mezzo tinto. Here, 
 too, is Samuel Richardson, posing to be adored, holding 
 in his hand a letter just received, perhaps from Lady 
 Bradshaigh, while his pen, rampant in the ink-pot, 
 is expectant for the vain little novelist's " dearest " 
 reply. Here is that noble old sailor, Captain Coram, 
 who proved that charity " hath her victories no less re- 
 nowned than war," by establishing the Foundling Hos- 
 pital, and impoverishing himself through his benevolence, 
 so that his portrait was the one Hogarth declared he 
 painted " with most pleasure." Here are the famous 
 Rabbis David Nieto and Aaron Hart, to testify that Jews 
 may now be Englishmen by Act of Parliament, while 
 Lord Mayor Sir Crisp Gascoigne, standing for justice, 
 and Elizabeth Canning for perjury, recall a historic 
 sensation of the law courts that moved the mob to stupid 
 lawlessness. 
 
 Of course McArdell takes us to the theatre, and brings 
 David Garrick on to the scene as Hamlet, Lear, the 
 Auctioneer in a comedy of Foote's, and with Mrs. Cibber 
 in Venice Preserved. Also Mrs. Pritchard, the great 
 Lady Macbeth, who, as Dr. Johnson declares, has never 
 read the tragedy through ; but then, did he not describe 
 her to Mrs. Siddons as a " vulgar idiot " in common life, 
 and only inspired when she set foot on the stage ? Leigh 
 Hunt read her talents in the face in her portraits, and, 
 to look at McArdelTs print, one may readily believe the 
 eulogists of her day. We see James Quin in his great 
 character of Falstaff, and elegant Harry Woodward as
 
 io8 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Ye Fine Gentleman in Garrick's topical satire Lethe; 
 Beard the tenor, and Charles Blakes, who sells hats and 
 hosiery by day and acts French fops by night. Here 
 come laughing echoes from the opera, for this is Lampe, 
 who composed The Dragon of Wantley; and this is Geminiani, 
 the violinist, whose ruinous passion for pictures must 
 have been gratified, in his less extravagant moods, by the 
 works of art that McArdell produced in his mezzotint 
 transcripts of pictures by Rembrandt and Vandyck. 
 Just before his death, McArdell was engaged in engraving 
 Reynolds's portraits of Lord Cathcart, the celebrated 
 general, and Lady Cathcart, with her little daughter Jane, 
 afterwards Duchess of Athol, on her lap. It was appro- 
 priate that these two plates should be finished by the 
 dead engraver's gifted friend, Richard Houston, and no 
 doubt Reynolds was gladly acquiescent. 
 
 When Houston commenced his career in London 
 at the same time as McArdell, no engraver ever showed 
 fairer promise. There was a quality in his work that 
 none had yet attained, a painter's quality which, inspired 
 by the beauty of wonder in actual human things, had 
 kinship with the genius of Rembrandt, and interpreted 
 that mighty master with a special sympathy and under- 
 standing. Houston started, with every prospect of 
 success, as his own publisher at Charing Cross, near 
 Drummond's Bank, and at first he had the just ambition 
 of his talents, producing plates which, while instinct 
 with artistic individuality, equalled anything that even 
 McArdell had then done. Writing in 1762, Horace Wai- 
 pole said : " Houston, McArdell, and Fisher have already 
 promised by their works to revive the beauty of mezzo- 
 tint." But, though Houston was capable of the finest 
 things within the scope of his art, his love of pleasure 
 was apt to divert his artistic energies, so that his finest 
 efforts were the results of sporadic impulses, which, as 
 the stress of dissipation aggravated his tendency to 
 indolence, gradually became less frequent. Houston 
 engraved with a fine pictorial sense ; his scraper, as with 
 magic, compelled the grounded copper to reveal its
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 109 
 
 mysteries of light and shade. He had the moods oi the 
 artist, when his work would express his joy in art ; but 
 in the intervals the spendthrift intervals which grew 
 longer and longer between those moods he was the 
 idler, stuffing his stolen leisure full of any pleasures that 
 temptation might offer, and never counting the cost. 
 So, debts began to fetter him, difficulties accumulated, 
 until he found it impossible to maintain his independent 
 position as an engraver. He was obliged to give up his 
 own publishing business, and work for the printsellers, 
 a situation in which his constitutional tendency, to arrears 
 in work and advances in payment soon placed him heavily 
 in Robert Sayer's debt ; and Sayer, whose shop was in 
 Fleet Street, convenient to the Fleet Prison, knew how 
 to put the screw on his dilatory engravers. But, even then, 
 Houston's engraving had always a touch that was un- 
 mistakably Houston's, and none others. He applied 
 this touch with appealing charm to Zoffany's picture of 
 the printseller's young son whipping a trout-stream. 
 And who would remember Edward Penny's " Death of 
 General Wolfe " but for Houston's mezzotint, which pre- 
 ceded Woollett's magnificent line-engraving after West 
 by four years, and profited the publisher exceedingly ? 
 A jovial intemperance might reduce him to a toper in 
 the taverns, a lavish improvidence might send him for 
 temporary lodging to the debtors' prison, but the artist 
 was native in Houston, and would not be gainsaid. 
 Wherever and however he might squander his time, the 
 copper-plates he would keep the printsellers waiting 
 for, even though they might fall below his own highest 
 technical possibilities, would bear always the hall-mark 
 of the work of art. Look at his charming print, after 
 Zoffany, of old James Thornton, one of the King's gardeners 
 at Kew, done for Sayer in 1770. Houston treated this, 
 even in his degenerate days, with as much reverence 
 as if it had been a Rembrandt, and never was old age 
 interpreted on copper with finer truth, never were a 
 painter's touch and vision more sympathetically translated. 
 Houston died in 1775 at the age of fifty-four. With
 
 no OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 his gifts, he might have achieved anything, but, as it 
 was, he left us some mezzotints that count among the 
 prizes for the collector. Whoever possesses himself of 
 fine impressions of " The Syndics of the Cloth Merchants," 
 the " Man with a Knife," or the " Woman Plucking a 
 Fowl," all after Rembrandt, may feel the true satisfaction 
 of a collector, while he may rejoice in a mood of lighter 
 connoisseurship if he have also the four " Times of the 
 Day " and the " Domestic Amusement " series, after 
 the Watteau-mannered Mercier, most engaging among 
 Houston's daintier efforts. 
 
 Houston's portraits include several very noteworthy 
 personalities General Pascal Paoli, the famous Corsican 
 patriot, for instance, who came an exile to London after 
 his splendid struggle for his country's independence, and 
 was admitted through Bos well to the friendship of John- 
 son and his circle ; General Stringer Lawrence, one of 
 the heroic pioneers of our Indian Empire ; the Marquis 
 of Granby, whose military prowess won him such ubiquit- 
 ous popularity that his head figured on more public-house 
 signboards, perhaps, than any other British commander. 
 General James Wolfe, too, wearing a mourning band for his 
 father, and carrying a rifle as he leads his men to the 
 attack a print of exceptional interest, since it represents 
 an original painting by J. S. C. Schaak, through the medium 
 of a drawing by the owner of the original, Captain Hervey 
 Smith, "a very active and intelligent officer of the Light 
 Troops," as General Townshend described him in his "Rough 
 Notes on the Siege of Quebec." Then there are Voltaire, 
 Admiral Byng ; Wesley and Whitefield, of course ; William 
 Pitt, John Wilkes, with his counsel ; Henry Pelham, 
 the Prime Minister, with his secretary ; and that honest, 
 sensible, if not brilliant, statesman, the Marquis of Rock- 
 ingham, of whom they made the couplet : 
 
 "The truth to declare if one may without shocking 'em 
 The nation's asleep, and the Minister Rockingham." 
 
 Of course, the King and Queen are prominent, and 
 so, too, are the Gunning family, father, mother, and
 
 CAROLINE, DUCHESS OF 
 MARLBOROUGH, AND CHILD. 
 
 FROM TMC MIZZOTINT BY R HOUSTON 
 After Sir Jothua ReynoMs. P./f.A.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. in 
 
 daughters, before and after the latter were " countessed 
 and double-duchessed." Here we meet again the beau- 
 tiful Maria, Countess of Waldegrave and Caroline Russell, 
 now Duchess of Marlborough, both happy young mothers, 
 and each revelling with her child in an ecstasy of caress ; 
 also Elizabeth, Countess of Northumberland, holding her 
 coronet, which she is about to change for that of a duchess, 
 of whom, when some surprise was expressed at the young 
 Queen Charlotte appointing her one of the Ladies of the 
 Bedchamber, witty Lady Townshend said, " Quite right. 
 The Queen knows no English ; Lady Northumberland 
 will teach her the vulgar tongue." And here is Penelope, 
 Lady Ligonier, Lord Rivers 's daughter, whose amour 
 with Count Alfieri, the profligate Italian poet, made such 
 a lively scandal. Before the divorce, Lord Ligonier 
 fought a duel with Alfieri in Hyde Park, but when he 
 found the poet was a poor swordsman he took the generous 
 revenge of sparing him, and was, for his pains, the subject 
 of a ribald pamphlet, while the printshops offered his 
 wife's portrait for the curious. Did she regret her generous 
 husband and her Italian poet in the after-years, when 
 she married a trooper in the Blues at Northampton, and 
 heard, perhaps, that Alfieri was the lover of Prince Charles 
 Edward's widow ? Or did she remember merely the tales of 
 her husband's gallantries while she was still a faithful wife ? 
 Here are three of Sir Joshua's favourite beauties : 
 pretty witty Kitty Fisher, the German stay-maker's 
 alluring daughter, who was loved by many, " toasted *' 
 by many more, the talk of the town, the intimate of 
 princes yet legally Mrs. Norris, who, not satisfied 
 with the natural beauty of her face, which Reynolds 
 delighted to paint, tried to improve it by painting it 
 herself, and died of the cosmetics ; the charming Harriet 
 Powell, singing to a bird Dibdin's pretty ballad, " Say, little 
 foolish fluttering thing," as Leonora in The Padlock, before 
 she became the Countess of Seaforth ; and lastly, Elizabeth 
 Hartley, the pathetic actress, whose lovely face, golden 
 auburn hair, exquisite figure, and witchery of personality, 
 stood her in stead of genius. Her beauty was apt to
 
 ii2 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 disarm criticism, but, as old Moody, the actor, said, " She 
 talks lusciously, and has a slovenly, good-nature about 
 her that renders her prodigiously vulgar," and her answer 
 to Reynolds's compliment, as he was painting her, was 
 naive enough : " Nay, my face may be well enough for 
 shape, but sure 'tis as freckled as a toad's belly." She 
 was the heroine of a much-talked-about scene at Vaux- 
 hall, when she imagined herself insulted by the stares of 
 a party of Macaronies, and one of her friends, a well- 
 known clergyman, challenged the offenders to fisticuffs 
 on the spot, a contretemps that produced the usual crop 
 of scandalous pamphlets for the diversion of the town. 
 
 The success of McArdell and Houston induced Charles 
 Spooner also to leave Dublin, where, having entirely 
 forsaken line-engraving for mezzotint, he had been working 
 for Michael Ford, and try his fortune in London. He 
 joined his old companions in 1752, and they promptly 
 put him in the way of obtaining commissions. But the 
 temptations of London were too much for his intemperate 
 habits, and his talent found very unequal expression, while 
 the printsellers found him thoroughly untrustworthy. 
 He never fulfilled his early promise. McArdell managed 
 to get the best out of him, but, when McArdell died, 
 Spooner's life seemed to lose its anchor, and it drifted 
 rapidly among the breakers of dissipation, where it was 
 hopelessly wrecked. He died in 1767, and so tenderly 
 did he cling to the memory of his dead friend, that at 
 the last he begged to be buried beside him in Hampstead 
 churchyard. 
 
 Strangely enough, it was at Hampstead, in the same 
 year, that there died the subject of one of Spooner's 
 most interesting prints. This was Nancy Dawson, 
 who first attracted admiration when setting up skittles 
 in a Marylebone tavern, then came out as a dancer 
 at Sadler's Wells, and subsequently took the fancy of 
 the town to an extraordinary degree by the charm and 
 novelty of her dancing at Drury Lane and Co vent Garden. 
 She became one of the most popular " toasts " of the day, 
 and was petted, admired, and imitated by everybody.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 113 
 
 Her portraits adorned the printshop windows. " The 
 Jovial Life, Amorous Exploits, and Singular Adventures 
 of the Celebrated Miss Nancy Dawson " was greedily 
 read, as well as " Genuine Memoirs," and the " dramatic 
 history " of herself and Ned Shuter, the actor she loved. 
 They danced " Miss Dawson's Hornpipe " on the stage, 
 on the village green, and in the ballroom, as a country 
 dance, and young ladies played it on the harpsichord ; 
 while everywhere they were singing : 
 
 " Of all the girls in our town, 
 The black, the fair, the red, the brown, 
 That dance and prance it up and down, 
 There's none like Nancy Dawson." 
 
 And the tune that was made 150 years ago in honour 
 of a naughty, good-hearted dancer is now sung by little 
 children when they play, " Here we go round the mul- 
 berry bush." 
 
 Spooner did several prints of fancy subjects, among the 
 best being "The Studious Fair," after Miss Benwell, which 
 is said to be a likeness of Queen Charlotte of course in 
 her young days ; but among his portrait-prints are several 
 subjects of interest, though many of these are copies from 
 other engravers, such as Houston's " Lady Selina Hastings," 
 after Reynolds, and General Wolfe. 
 
 Richard Purcell's is another sad story of wasted talent. 
 He came to London from Dublin a little later than his 
 friend Spooner, and, in the midst of the small band 
 of clever young Irish engravers, he was always the 
 witty companion, always the first to suggest an adjourn- 
 ment from the studio or the workshop to the tavern, 
 the coffee-house, the pleasure gardens, or any place 
 where play, gallantry, or convivial entertainment might 
 be found. His mezzotints showed an individual touch, 
 and his best work was excellent when he did it, 
 but distractions and temptations were many ; wine, 
 women, and play made excessive claims upon his time, 
 and he seemed unable to resist them. Debt, conse- 
 quently, put a coil around him, from which he never 
 i
 
 ii 4 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 got free ; the sponging-house was his frequent lodging, 
 and he never hesitated to mortgage his future work to 
 the printsellers for the imperative convenience of the 
 payment in advance. In time, Sayer realised that he 
 held more of these mortgages than Purcell was ever likely 
 to redeem, and, taking advantage of this, to ensure his 
 being always able to find the disreputable engraver when 
 he wanted his work, he had the witty, clever, improvident 
 hedonist put as a debtor into the Fleet Prison, simply 
 as a matter of business precaution. Once there, poor 
 Purcell never won back his independence, but, always 
 in the power of Sayer, he was obliged to work for him 
 or starve a debtor in the Fleet might easily starve in 
 those days if he had no money with which to satisfy 
 the extortionate turnkeys. So, when Purcell was copying 
 other engravers' plates for the grasping Sayer, he signed 
 them with an alias, C. or P. Corbutt, and perhaps the 
 other printsellers did not identify the engraver with 
 the Purcell who owed them work. Reduced to be a mere 
 copyist when he had had the power and opportunity to 
 win success as an original engraver, Purcell lost all care 
 for reputation, and sank lower and lower, until, not yet 
 thirty years of age, he died in very miserable circumstances, 
 in the same year as McArdell. Many of his copies of 
 McArdelPs, Houston's, and James Watson's prints have a 
 quality of their own, especially those after Reynolds 
 and Allan Ramsay. 
 
 The most interesting of Purcell's original prints 
 is, perhaps, that of Mrs. Laetitia Pilkington, " one of 
 the wits," as Mrs. Delany described her, after meet- 
 ing her in Dublin, and a friend of Swift, whom she 
 professed to have heard recite every word of Butler's 
 " Hudibras " by heart. A burlesque satirical play of hers, 
 called The Turkish Court; or, the London 'Prentice, was 
 acted in Dublin, but when Swift gave her and her hus- 
 band introductions to Pope, Bolingbroke, and others of his 
 great friends in London, she seems to have profited little. 
 Drink reduced her to distress and discredit, as it did 
 the engraver of her portrait.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 115 
 
 Like his friends and compatriots, Houston, Purcell, 
 and Spooner, Michael Jackson had an excessive fondness 
 for conviviality, which was good neither for his art nor 
 his printselling business, even though he had Rembrandt's 
 Head for his sign. Of course he engraved Nancy Dawson 
 and Peg Womngton, but we are indebted to him for a 
 print of his handsome, gifted countryman, Spranger 
 Barry, as Macbeth, an actor who worthily rivalled Garrick 
 and was thought in some parts Romeo, for instance 
 even to excel the greater man. Garrick himself described 
 him as the most exquisite lover he had ever seen on the 
 stage, but, after seeing each of the two rivals as Romeo, 
 a lady, with the subtlety of feminine intuition, thus 
 charmingly distinguished between them. "Had I been 
 Juliet to Garrick's Romeo, so impassioned was he, I should 
 have expected that he would have come up to me in the 
 balcony ; but had I been Juliet to Barry's Romeo, so 
 tender and so seductive was he, I should certainly have 
 jumped down to him ! " 
 
 A later recruit to the Irish group in London, but one 
 of a refreshingly different character from the intemperate 
 engravers just referred to, was Edward Fisher. Born in 
 1730, his early years were spent as apprentice to a hatter 
 in Dublin, but, since to him the head itself rather than 
 its covering was the centre of interest, he decided to give 
 up the hat-trade and become an engraver of portraits in 
 mezzotint. His decision was wise, for, as an engraver, 
 Fisher had in him the root of the matter. He could see 
 and feel the beauty of pictorial expression, and, coming 
 to London, he soon learned, in the studio of McArdell, 
 the true way of translating the painter's art to the copper. 
 In his earlier working years in London, Fisher lodged 
 at the house of a Mrs. King, in Leicester Fields, 
 and one of his fellow-lodgers was Theodore Gardelle, 
 a French miniature-painter in good practice, and a 
 member of the Club at "Old Slaughter's" in St. 
 Martin's Lane, of which Hogarth was the presiding spirit. 
 Doubtless the two became acquainted, and it is more 
 than probable that the sociable Frenchman would give
 
 n6 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the artistic young Irishman a convivial glimpse of the 
 bright-souled company of which he enjoyed the freedom. 
 So Fisher was welcomed among the painters and the 
 actors and coffee-house wits ; but it must have been 
 something of a shock to him when, one day in 1761, his 
 fellow-lodger, Gardelle, was arrested for murdering their 
 landlady a woman of easier virtue than temper, and, in 
 spite of his ingenuously elaborate explanations, was hanged 
 in the Haymarket, at the top of Panton Street. The town 
 was horrified ; for all the circumstances of the murder 
 were shocking, and the hanging close at hand, without the 
 troublesome journey to Tyburn, was, of course, a just 
 concession to the neighbours. But Fisher does not seem 
 to have allowed the gruesome incident to move him 
 from his dwelling-place, for there he remained many years. 
 The fact was, it was close to Reynolds's, and he was engrav- 
 ing some of the master's finest pictures of that period. 
 
 It was most likely to McArdell that Fisher owed his 
 introduction to Reynolds, and to both painter and en- 
 graver the association proved of the greatest advantage. 
 If it be true, as it has been reported, that Reynolds found 
 fault with the excessive care Fisher expended upon the 
 finish of his plates, especially in those portions of the 
 pictures which the painter himself considered subordinate, 
 it was probably because Reynolds was himself developing 
 a freer, bolder style than had characterised the pictures 
 he painted while freshly under the influence of his Italian 
 studies, such, for instance, as the caref ully-fmished " Lady 
 Cathcart and her child," and he wanted to bring the 
 engraver's scraper into closer sympathy with the freedom 
 of his own brush. But Fisher's splendid prints fully justify 
 him to the connoisseur of to-day. In them we see an 
 artist interpreting an artist, as, indeed, we must always 
 see in all engraving that is worth looking at. 
 
 Fisher was fortunate in his subjects, and, among the 
 score or more of portraits he engraved after Reynolds, were 
 several of exceptional interest, offering full scope for the 
 delicacy as well as the boldness of his touch. What could 
 be more truly representative of the Reynolds of that period
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 117 
 
 than Fisher's sumptuous full-length prints of those three 
 of Queen Charlotte's ten bridesmaids, Lady Elizabeth 
 Keppel, in the act of decorating the statue of Hymen, 
 Lady Elizabeth Lee, or Harcourt, as she was at that date, 
 and Lady Sarah Lennox, or Bunbury, as she was so soon 
 afterwards, sacrificing to the Graces ? How alive they 
 are 1 Walpole thought them " beautiful figures " at the 
 Royal wedding, but, " with neither features nor air, Lady 
 Sarah was by far the chief angel." And she might have been 
 the Queen-bride herself if she had cared soon enough, or had 
 been less than the true and fine-spirited girl she was, and 
 had played her cards well for did she not hold the King 
 in her hand ? As one looks at this splendid print, and 
 imagines how its contemporary publication must have 
 excited interest and admiration for the story of the 
 young King's love was no secret all the romance of Lady 
 Sarah's life, with its irony of circumstances and its pathos 
 of consequences, comes poignantly to mind. In imagina- 
 tion one follows this bewitching great-granddaughter of 
 Charles II. and his French mistress from that humiliating 
 scene of her King-lover's wedding, when, hiding, with 
 marvellous self-command, all the wounds of her disap- 
 pointment, she helped to bear the train of her unattractive 
 Royal rival, with the King's yearning eyes never off her face, 
 and was obliged to correct the mistake of a half-blind old 
 courtier who saluted her for the new Queen ! One sees her 
 wedded lovelessly to Sir Charles Bunbury, who never 
 understood her, until after his indifference had driven her 
 to a lover's arms, and he had divorced her, only to want 
 and beg her back ; and then one follows her to Ireland, 
 where at Celbridge House, in the County Kildare, one sees 
 her the devoted, economical wife of Colonel Napier and 
 the beloved mother of great soldier sons. Finally, there 
 is the sightless old age, with the tears of sympathy for the 
 blind, mad old King, who might have been the husband 
 of her lovely youth. 
 
 Among Fisher's other prints, after Reynolds, we have 
 the seductive Kitty Fisher, playing at Cleopatra, dropping 
 a pearl into a goblet ; the beautiful Mrs. Trapaud, who,
 
 ii8 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 as Miss Plaistow, came over from Ireland with the 
 Gunnings, and married General Trapaud ; the familiar 
 " David Garrick between Comedy and Tragedy " ; and 
 the exquisite " Hope Nursing Love," in which, for the 
 illustration of his allegory, Reynolds painted the face of 
 Miss Morris, a young lady who, when suddenly impover- 
 ished, thought to earn her living as an actress, but broke 
 down from sheer nervousness when she made her appear- 
 ance as Juliet at Co vent Garden, and died a few months 
 afterwards, just as her portrait was being admired at the 
 first exhibition of the Royal Academy. To Fisher we owe 
 a print of that first portrait Reynolds painted of his truly 
 gallant friend, Admiral the Hon. Augustus Keppel, which 
 really clinched the artist's reputation as a painter of 
 portraits that were essentially pictures, but is only one 
 of a number of presentments which mark the relations of 
 mutual admiration and friendship between the painter and 
 the sailor. Then, there is Lord Ligonier, that fine old veteran 
 of Marlborough's campaigns, and of Dettingen and Fonte- 
 noy, who saved the British army at the disastrous battle 
 of Laffeldt by a cavalry charge which was a stroke of 
 military genius ; he is, characteristically, on horseback, 
 and, of course, a battle is in progress. The Rev. Laurence 
 Sterne, head on hand, in an attitude of thought, is 
 here in Reynolds 's wonderful portrait, with humour and 
 intellect keen in his face, and character in every touch, 
 even to the slight tilt of his wig ; but, then, didn't Horace 
 Walpole say that the head of the author of " Tristram 
 Shandy " was turned topsy-turvy with success ? 
 
 But there are other interesting prints of Fisher's which 
 are of other painters' inspiring. There is Vanloo's Colley 
 Gibber, sitting by a table with a paper in one hand, while 
 his daughter, recognising the mood of composition, puts 
 a pen into the other ; there is Cotes's portrait of Paul 
 Sandby, the water-colour painter, who introduced aqua- 
 tint into England, sketching out of window a charming 
 print ; and, after Worlidge, there is William Haward, the 
 young actor, who, while he was writing a tragedy called 
 King Charles L for Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, was
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 119 
 
 locked up by the manager in a garret during so many 
 hours a day, and not allowed his liberty until he had 
 repeated through the keyhole a stipulated number of new 
 lines, and then he was solemnly compared with Shakespeare. 
 Eliza Farren, the charming actress who became Countess 
 of Derby, made a picturesque figure for the painters, but 
 this print of her in the character of Hermione, after Zoffany, 
 is not the picture the generous painter held back so that 
 his younger competitor, Thomas Lawrence, should have 
 the field to himself, as Mrs. Papendiek pleasantly records. 
 Benjamin Franklin, William Pitt, George III., and Mark 
 Akenside, the medico-poet, are also here in Fisher's 
 gallery. He died in 1785. 
 
 When McArdell and Houston carried the grand manner 
 of mezzotint back to England, there was a little boy in 
 Dublin feasting his eyes on the prints in the shop windows 
 of Michael Ford and Andrew Miller and the other print- 
 sellers, and, intelligently wondering how they were done. 
 James Watson was a boy of real artistic instincts allied 
 with strong character, and, with the development of his 
 graphic powers, came the resolve to be an engraver in 
 mezzotint. Wisely he determined to seek his training 
 under the masterly guidance of McArdell ; so, leaving his 
 younger brother William in Dublin, to spend his time 
 between portrait-painting and flute-playing, he came 
 to London, and presented himself at the sign of the Golden 
 Head in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. There must 
 have been immediate sympathy between master and 
 pupil, for young Watson learned his art quickly, and 
 never ceased to make progress. 
 
 Very early in his career he was entrusted with the 
 inspiring task of engraving pictures by Reynolds, of which 
 he did fifty-six in all, and not one of that master's inter- 
 preters on copper realised his pictorial intentions with a 
 sweeter suggestion of their harmonies, a more gracious 
 perception of their beauty. So sensitive and scrupulous 
 an artist was Watson that, rather than issue an engraving 
 which he felt was not going to satisfy his own critical 
 sense, he would never hesitate to sacrifice his work and
 
 120 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 begin a fresh plate. When, therefore, at the age of twenty- 
 two, he began showing his engravings at the exhibitions 
 of the Society of Artists, it was quickly seen that a new 
 artist had arrived among the engravers, and the Society 
 welcomed him as a member, and the painters were glad 
 of him as an interpreter. 
 
 In 1764 he became his own publisher, choosing the 
 engravers' favourite sign of the Golden Head to distin- 
 guish his shop in Craven Buildings, Drury Lane ; but 
 later he moved further westward, and in 1775 he gave 
 up the printselling business, and devoted himself entirely 
 to his art. He was an assiduous worker, and, being a man 
 of strong domestic affections, his life seems to have run on 
 even lines. He married while very young, and was a 
 father before he was twenty-one. There was always 
 an atmosphere of refinement, culture, and love of beauty 
 about the home-life of James Watson. His famous 
 daughter, Caroline, will be met with among the stipple- 
 engravers. Under her father's sympathetic training she 
 developed artistic gifts of a very high order, and was the joy 
 and pride of his life. His son, James Edward, distin- 
 guished himself at the Bar, but the engraver lived only 
 long enough to see him start on the road to success. 
 
 There was another member of the family who also 
 enlisted James Watson's helpful interest. This was his 
 wife's sister, Elizabeth Judkins, who was inspired with 
 a love of mezzotint by her brother-in-law's works and a 
 desire to learn the art, which till then no woman had been 
 known to practise. Watson gladly taught her, and so 
 apt a pupil did she prove that, before long, she was able 
 to produce a few plates of really fine quality, her rendering 
 of Reynolds's " Mrs. Abington," the actress, being quite 
 a masterpiece. Watson published her prints while he was 
 in the business, but when he retired Elizabeth Judkins 
 ceased to engrave for public sale. She was held in great 
 affection by the Watson family, and both her brother- 
 in-law and her niece, Caroline, gave material expression 
 to this in their wills. 
 
 Watson was only fifty when he died at his house in
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 121 
 
 Fitzroy Street, on May 20, 1790, but his talent and in- 
 dustry had won him substantial comfort, and he was 
 able to leave property to his " dearly beloved " son and 
 daughter. No stone now marks his grave in the old 
 Marylebone Cemetery, but his true memorial is in the 
 enduring beauty of his engraving and the increasing value 
 that the connoisseur sets upon his prints. 
 
 And these prints are invested with a social interest 
 of peculiar fascination, for they seem to wake all the gossips 
 of their day to instant echoes. Here, for instance, are 
 the Earl and Countess of Pembroke with their young son, 
 and one remembers Horace Walpole describing the Countess 
 at George III.'s Coronation as looking " the picture of 
 majestic modesty." Then, only the following year, 
 comes the nine-days' wonder of the Earl's elopement with 
 Miss Kitty Hunter, which he did, as he explained, by way 
 of trying to make his wife hate him. Walpole, of course, 
 dresses up the details with the sauce piquante of his wit, 
 telling how the Earl, having invited his wife's family and 
 others to dinner, excused himself from joining them, 
 threatened to murder the servants if they told his wife, 
 and then eloped in the disguise of a sailor with a black wig. 
 But when, some time afterwards, the Earl and his wife 
 understood each other, the Countess humoured her erratic 
 husband by running away with him to be reconciled. 
 
 Then, there is Reynolds 's famous Holland House picture 
 of Lady Sarah Lennox, leaning out of a window, while her 
 cousin, Lady Susan Strangways, is handing a dove up 
 to her, and young Charles James Fox, an old-looking 
 boy of thirteen or fourteen, is standing by. Immediately 
 one thinks of Walpole's delightful account of the 
 juvenile theatricals at Holland House, when Lady Sarah 
 and Lady Susan played the women, "acting with so much 
 nature and simplicity that they appeared the very things 
 they represented." It was Jane Shore they played, 
 and " when Lady Sarah was in white, with her hair about 
 her ears and on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was 
 half so lovely and expressive." 
 
 And we turn to the prints of Lady Susan O'Brien and
 
 122 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 her husband, William O'Brien, the handsome actor, both 
 after Cotes, and hear the echoes of the startled gaspings 
 of scandalised society in April, 1764. For this was the 
 Lady Susan Strangways through whom George III. 
 had first practically proposed to Lady Sarah. And the Lord 
 Ilchester's daughter to marry an actor ! " Even a foot- 
 man were preferable." How she used to meet her lover 
 at Miss Catherine Read's studio, until they were dis- 
 covered (the painter, as a matter of fact, grew frightened, 
 and spoke her fears to Lord Cathcart, who told the unsus- 
 pecting but irate father) and how Lady Susan confessed 
 all, and promised to break off the affair after a final 
 leave-taking, and how that leave-taking meant only her 
 taking French leave, and marrying her handsome actor 
 at St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, when she was sup- 
 posed to be breakfasting with her cousin, Lady Sarah, 
 makes romantic reading to-day, yet in that day it was 
 merely a scandal. 
 
 But the romantic episode, the personal paradox, or the 
 piquant anecdote, told or untold, seems to hover alluringly 
 about these beautiful impressions of beautiful women, 
 and one would fain linger awhile to compare, with the fancies 
 that each suggests, the living story as the chroniclers 
 have it. Here is Elizabeth, Duchess of Manchester, 
 with her tiny son ; she bore her husband several children, 
 yet here she is masquerading as Diana in the act of dis- 
 arming Cupid. Was there any repressed love-affair in 
 the secret of this picture, one likes to wonder, or was it 
 simply Sir Joshua's pictorial caprice ? Yet Allan Cun- 
 ningham solemnly asks " what claim a Duchess of Man- 
 chester, with her last-born in her lap, could have to 
 the distinction of Diana ? " He evidently did not under- 
 stand the painter's subtle art of compliment. Any pretty 
 woman might be a goddess if Sir Joshua's fancy willed 
 it so, and surely a pretty duchess has a prescriptive right 
 to the title, especially if she chooses this way of making 
 it known to one particular mortal that she has succeeded 
 in disarming Cupid. A copy of Watson's print may have 
 borne the message who knows ? Here is Mrs. Henry
 
 ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF MANCHESTER. 
 
 After Sir Joihua Kryno/tls, P.P. A.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 123 
 
 Bunbury, the comic artist's wife Catherine Horneck 
 that was Goldsmith's " Little Comedy " for ever. What 
 a crowd of delightful Goldsmithian domestic pictures 
 arise at the very name and face of her ! To look at this 
 charming picture of Georgiana, Countess Spencer, with 
 her little girl, is to think furiously ahead, for that little 
 girl, " splendour's fondly fostered child," as Coleridge 
 called her, is the future famous Duchess of Devonshire, 
 who set the whole social world of her day agog for gossip, 
 because, being beautiful and .of high degree, and "nursed 
 in pomp and pleasure," she dared to sound with no un- 
 certain touch the whole gamut of woman's experience. 
 
 Who is this fair and joyous creature in this most joyful 
 picture ? Oh, happy Reynolds, to see a Milton's ideal 
 in a lady who comes to your studio to be painted ! Surely 
 it is Euphrosyne, carrying " heart-easing Mirth," as she 
 trips it "on the light fantastic toe" to the sound of "soft 
 Lydian airs"! Yet might we not say happy husband 
 as well as happy painter ? for this Euphrosyne is Mrs. 
 Hale, the wife of General John Hale, Governor of London- 
 derry, and she bore him twenty-one children ! This 
 delicious child with the wistful eyes, and the lambkins 
 waiting to play with her, is little Miss Price, and art has 
 immortalised her at that, but Burke 's Peerage will show 
 you that she was the great-grandmother of the present 
 Marquis of Salisbury. This charming little girl so 
 busy with her pencil is Helena Beatson, niece of Catherine 
 Read, the painter, and the future wife of an Indian Governor. 
 
 But here is a crowd of titled beauties awaiting deferen- 
 tial recognition : the Duchess of Ancaster, Lady Charlotte 
 Johnston, Lady Scarsdale with her son, Countess of Walde- 
 grave with her daughter, Barbara, Countess of Coventry, 
 Viscountess Molyneux, and Countess Cornwallis, Lady 
 Stanhope, the Duchesses of Buccleuch and Maryborough, 
 each with her child, Countesses of Cork and Carlisle, Lady 
 Margaret Bingham, Anne, Lady Fortescue, and Lady 
 Almeria Carpenter, in whose latest modish fancy Fashion 
 reads always her latest law. Here, too, are Miss 
 Julia Bosville, who became Countess of Dudley, and
 
 i2 4 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the beautiful Miss Greenway, who married one of the 
 Napiers, and Mrs. Collier, as Ccelia why not Lesbia ? 
 lamenting her dead sparrow. Here are Queen Char- 
 lotte, her unfortunate sister-in-law, Caroline, Queen of 
 Denmark, and Anne Luttrell, Duchess of Cumberland. 
 The daughter of an Irish peer, she had married a Mr. 
 Horton, and, when left a widow, she had to choose between 
 being Mrs. Smith, with leve, and the Duchess, with 
 Royal rank. She preferred to be the King's sister-in-law, 
 much to the King's annoyance, to which he gave emphatic 
 expression by the Royal Marriage Act. She danced 
 divinely, was witty, and " had languishing eyes, which 
 she could animate to enchantment if she pleased, and her 
 coquetry was so active, so varied, and yet so habitual, 
 that it was difficult not to see through it, and yet as diffi- 
 cult to resist it." Two beautiful ladies from France are 
 also here : Madame de Pompadour and Queen Marie 
 Antoinette. 
 
 Here are those pervading Phrynes whose charms 
 the painters delighted to honour : Kitty Fisher ; Nelly 
 O'Brien, who entertained " next door this side the Star 
 and Garter " in Pall Mall ; Polly Kennedy, whose volup- 
 tuous charms seem to have been persuasive enough to save 
 her brothers from the fatal consequences of murdering a 
 watchman ; Anne Elliott, posing as Juno ; and Nancy 
 Parsons, the Bond Street tailor's fascinating daughter, 
 who ran away with a West India captain, named Hoghton ; 
 then reappeared as Mrs. Horton, was distinguished by 
 " Junius " as " the chaste and virtuous mistress of our 
 present Prime Minister " (the Duke of Grafton, who is 
 also here in mezzotint), and next was celebrated by 
 Horace Walpole as " the Duke of Grafton's Mrs. Horton, the 
 Duke of Dorset's Mrs. Horton, everybody's Mrs. Horton," 
 and finally flattered and coaxed " poor simple Lord May- 
 nard," very much her junior, into making her his 
 Viscountess. 
 
 Here from the theatre come David Garrick and Harry 
 Woodward, Mrs. Spranger Barry, Nancy Dawson, the 
 dancer, and the famous Mrs. Abington, whom Reynolds
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 125 
 
 chose to represent the Comic Muse in spite of his friend 
 Garrick hating her. She was the original Lady Teazle, 
 and, though she had begun life by selling flowers as well 
 as her favours and was known in St. James's Park as 
 " Nosegay Fan," her natural grace and artful eloquence 
 made her a queen of comedy, and a leader of fashion for the 
 first ladies in the land, who copied her dresses as she 
 imitated their manners. But here is a crowd of notable 
 men, headed by George III., and the Royal Dukes, Cum- 
 berland and York. Generals, admirals, statesmen, are 
 here with names that spell great history ; like Rodney and 
 Howe, John, Duke of Argyll, the Marquis of Granby, and 
 Sir Jeffrey Amherst, in armour that he never wore when 
 he helped to win North America from the French. Here 
 are the young Marquis of Tavistock, who married Lady 
 Elizabeth Keppel, and left her so suddenly and early a 
 widow, to her great grief ; the Hon. Augustus John Hervey, 
 whose marriage with the notorious Miss Chudleigh, who 
 bigamously became Duchess of Kingston, led to the great 
 scandal of her trial, for the entertainment of the fashionable 
 world ; and Sir Charles Bunbury, George Grenville, Tom 
 Paine, James Paine, the architect, and his son ; Dr. Busby 
 of Westminster School, the Rev. James Beattie, John 
 Burton, the harpsichord-player, and Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 himself, who is the presiding genius of this company 
 of James Watson's, though his great rival Gainsborough 
 reveals himself nobly in three subjects. 
 
 There was a certain glamour of personality about 
 John Dixon, who was yet another of the Irish engravers, 
 and an exceedingly talented one. He had been working in 
 Dublin as an engraver on silver, when his artistic ambitions 
 were aroused, and he began studying at the Art School of 
 the Royal Dublin Society, under Robert West, the his- 
 torical painter. Whether his studies were pursued very 
 systematically we do not know, but he was accounted a 
 very handsome young man, and there was a good deal 
 of life going on in the Irish capital in those days. Any- 
 how, he managed to run through a small fortune, and 
 then, in 1765, when he was about twenty-five, he came
 
 126 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 to London, and started mezzotinting. His skill was 
 undoubted, his touch had the sense of the painter, 
 his tone was rich, and as a translator he was 
 faithful to his original. The first print of his 
 to attract general admiration appears to have 
 been the fine " Garrick as Richard III.," after Nathaniel 
 Dance, and commissions to engrave several of Rey- 
 nolds's portraits followed, as a matter of course. He 
 became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, 
 and for some ten years he followed his profession with 
 success. He took pupils, too, and among them was his 
 gifted young countryman, Thomas Burke, who learned 
 mezzotint only to prove how he could excel in it, as in 
 his exquisite " Telemachus at the Court of Sparta," 
 after Angelica Kauffman, and then neglected that method 
 to become supreme in the easier stipple. But Dixon was, 
 as I have said, a very handsome man, and when, after 
 ten years' work in London, a lady with a large fortune 
 some say a widow showed an inclination not to say him 
 nay, he did not undervalue his prospect of leisure and 
 luxury, so he " made a leg," took snuff with an air, dropped 
 carefully on to one knee, and vowed and protested he 
 should die within the week if she would not have him. 
 Of course, the lady " took pity on the poor wretch " as 
 she put it to a confidante and henceforth Dixon ceased 
 to be a professional engraver though he rocked and 
 scraped now and again for pastime, or, maybe, to escape 
 the excessive solicitude of his wife when in the " vapours." 
 But he kept his carriage, and lived fashionably for awhile 
 near Ranelagh, and subsequently at Kensington, where he 
 died in 1780, or perhaps later. 
 
 Dixon's prints show us some beautiful Reynolds por- 
 traits. There is the " Elizabeth, Countess of Pembroke, 
 and her son," of which it has been well said that this is 
 " one of the purest and sweetest that even Reynolds ever 
 painted," for in it the lovely sense of mother-and-child 
 sympathy is so tenderly suggested and it was only the 
 year before the Earl's elopement with Kitty Hunter ! 
 There is that exquisite picture of sisterly companionship,
 
 ELIZABETH. COUNTESS OF 
 PEMBROKE, AND SON. 
 
 FROM THE MEZZOTINT nv J DIXON 
 After Sir Joahui Reynold*. P.R.A.
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 127 
 
 " Elizabeth and Emma Crewe " ; there is Mrs., afterwards 
 Lady, Blake (Sir Charles Bunbury's sister) disporting 
 as Juno and receiving the cestus from Venus ; and, besides 
 another Nelly O'Brien, there is the superb full-length 
 of the Duchess of Ancaster. Then there are William 
 Robertson, the famous historian, whom nobody seems to 
 read nowadays ; and Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer in the Earl of Chatham's last Ministry, a man 
 of splendid talents, " the delight and ornament of the 
 House, and the charm of every private society," as Burke 
 said, in his affection for the man. But what must that 
 great statesman have thought in his heart of the Minister 
 who, in what Macaulay justly calls his " boundless vanity 
 and presumption," fatuously proposed the tax that pro- 
 voked the American Colonies to fight for their indepen- 
 dence ? America's citizens of to-day must look at that 
 face in Dixon's print with curious feelings. 
 
 Dixon engraved two very interesting plates of theatrical 
 subjects. One is Zoffany's picture of a scene in The 
 Alchemist, in which David Garrick appears in his famous 
 character of the stupid and selfish Abel Drugger, Burton 
 playing Subtle, and the inimitable John Palmer is Face. 
 This was the first picture which Zoffany exhibited at the 
 Royal Academy, and Reynolds bought it at the painter's 
 own price one hundred guineas ; but, later on, the Earl 
 of Carlisle took a fancy to it, and offered Reynolds twenty 
 guineas more than he had paid. Sir Joshua accepted this, 
 and promptly sent the difference to Zoffany, saying he 
 thought that in the first instance the picture had been sold 
 below its real value. The other theatrical print is of 
 William Powell, the tragedian, of whose acting Dibdin 
 said it was " strong nature, luxuriant as a wilderness," 
 with " a thousand beauties and a thousand faults." Among 
 the fancy subjects that Dixon engraved was Reynolds's 
 terrible " Count Ugolino and his Sons in Prison." 
 
 Of all the artists practising mezzotint at this period, 
 there was no personality more interesting than Thomas 
 Frye's, none whose artistic gifts were more versatile. 
 Engraving, as a matter of fact, represented only one
 
 128 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 field in which his talents were active. Born near 
 Dublin, in 1710, he began the study of art at a very early 
 age, and, coming over to London while still a very young 
 man, he commenced painting portraits in oils, in crayon 
 and in miniature, an excellent groundwork for the practice 
 of mezzotint. He was accompanied by his friend, Michael 
 Stoppelaer, a witty, good-natured Irishman, who, realising 
 that he could never be a good painter, soon gave up the 
 brush, and became an actor at Co vent Garden, where, 
 though he never rose above the First Gravedigger in 
 Hamlet, he won a humorous reputation for his Irish Bulls. 
 Frye, however, was industrious at his easel, and, 
 in 1734, a portrait he painted of Frederick, Prince of 
 Wales, attracted so much attention that portrait-paint- 
 ing became for him an easy and profitable means of 
 livelihood. But it did not suffice for hio aitistic energies. 
 His interest was enlisted in a project for making porce- 
 lain, an industry which in England, up to that time, had 
 scarcely reached beyond the experimental stage. So 
 wholeheartedly did he give himself and his talents up to 
 the enterprise that his name must always have an honoured 
 place in the history of English porcelain. In conjunction 
 with Edward Heyleyn, of Bow, Thomas Frye, described 
 as of " West Ham, Essex, painter," took out a patent in 
 1744, and the famous Bow factory was started, with 
 Frye as its manager. But the composition of the porcelain 
 was too costly, and it was only after four years devoted 
 to further experiments that Frye was satisfied with the 
 results, and secured a second patent. Beautiful things 
 were produced at the Bow factory, and there are treasured 
 pieces of tea-table ware of pure but translucent paste, 
 with embossed ornament, and panels with Oriental scenes 
 delicately painted in under-glaze blue, on which one may 
 find the monogram of Thomas Frye the same monogram, 
 in fact, that he used to sign his mezzotints. For fifteen 
 years Frye's whole artistic being was wrapped up in the 
 work and fortunes of the Bow factory, and he even trained 
 his two daughters to assist in painting porcelain ; but 
 his body was not equal to the continuous strain, and,
 
 THE STORY OF MEZZOTINT. 129 
 
 when, at length, he retired from the management in 1759, 
 he was broken in health and fortune, while his days, at 
 the same time, were sadly troubled by the dissolute conduct 
 of his son. 
 
 Nevertheless, Frye, with his big, brave, patient nature, 
 had plenty of energy in reserve, and, after partially re- 
 storing his health by a tour in Wales, painting portraits as 
 he went to pay his way, he settled in Hatton Garden, 
 and added mezzotint-engraving to his other artistic activi- 
 ties. In this he felt bound to strike out a new path. 
 Not content to follow in the way of other engravers, he 
 drew a number of fancy portraits, with heads almost life- 
 size, and these he mezzotinted with rare power. On a 
 very large scale, however, the charm of mezzotint is apt 
 to be elusive, and, admirable as are those large heads of 
 Frye's, as, for instance, the " Girl holding Pearls," and the 
 " Man with Chin on Hand," their exceptional size suggests 
 their being regarded rather as tours de force than as examples 
 of the beauty of mezzotint. But Frye was one of those 
 artists of strong personality who must always go their own 
 ways ; and this very vigour of originality added value 
 to the kindly, helpful influence he exercised on his pupils 
 and the young artists who would go to him for advice. 
 They were ever sure of getting from him not only the 
 encouraging word, but the practical showing of the way. 
 His very industry was an example, and this in spite of a 
 constitution ruined by arduous and anxious years at the 
 Bow factory, and the burden of gout and corpulency 
 so bravely and cheerfully borne through laborious days 
 up to the date of his death April 2, 1762.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 
 
 William Pether John Finlayson Valentine Green Reynolds's 
 "Beauties" Robert Dunkarton Thomas Watson William 
 Dickinson John Jones Richard Earlom Giuseppe March! 
 John Dean James Walker William Doughty. 
 
 IT might be said, with some show of truth, that William 
 Pether shines with the reflected light of Joseph Wright 
 of Derby ; but this would be to take a flippant view of a 
 very sound and original artist. Popularly, perhaps, 
 he will always be chiefly known and valued for the brilliant 
 manner in which he interpreted, through the medium of 
 mezzotint, the wonderful candlelight effects in the pictures 
 of that very remarkable painter ; but Pether's mastery 
 of the most subtle contrasts of light and shade, and his 
 insight into the very heart of their mystery and poetical 
 suggestion, made him equally great as an interpreter 
 of Rembrandt. 
 
 Pether came from Carlisle, where he was born about 
 1738, and he came armed with the courage of his indi- 
 viduality. He needed the courage, for his individuality 
 was strong, and his artistic equipment not yet equal to 
 its expression, but he had great natural gifts, and these 
 were sufficient to win him the encouragement of a Society 
 of Arts premium in 1756. He painted portraits in oil and 
 miniature, and these combined a sense of vitality with 
 grace of design, but he was not content until he could 
 engrave his owii pictures ; so, when Thomas Frye settled 
 in Hatton Garden, Pether became his pupil. 
 
 130
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 131 
 
 The association of master and pupil was of the happiest. 
 Frye, with his strong personality and original ideas, had 
 just the right magnetic attraction to draw out what was 
 best and most individual in young Pether's artistic nature, 
 and, under the master's stimulating influence, the pupil 
 developed into an engraver of excellence and distinction. 
 Pether engraved the heads that Frye drew and painted, 
 and they entered into a business partnership, which, 
 however, was soon unfortunately broken by Frye's death. 
 
 Of two of these portraits a pretty story is told. The 
 young King George III. was lately married, and, of course, 
 there was a great demand at the printshops^for portraits in 
 mezzotint of himself and his bride. Frye was determined 
 to get their likenesses one way or another, and, when 
 he learned that they were going to the theatre, he also 
 made his way thither with his sketch-book. The theatre 
 was very crowded, and it was exceedingly difficult even 
 to snatch views of the Royal pair, but Frye persisted, 
 although he was suffering severely it was, indeed, a 
 few months before he died. Presently the King caught sight 
 of the artist, whose face, perhaps, revealed his physical 
 pain, as well as his artistic anxiety, and, realising Frye's 
 purpose, he drew the young Queen's attention to it, and 
 they both considerately kept their faces turned towards 
 the artist until he bowed his gratitude, and shut up his 
 sketch-book. The results were happy, and Pether's 
 engraving was worthy of them. Another particularly 
 interesting portrait for which Pether was indebted to the 
 vivid pencil of Frye, was that of Richard Leveridge, an 
 aged bass singer and composer of convivial songs, among 
 which " The Roast Beef of Old England " has achieved 
 a classic popularity. In his youthful operatic days he 
 sang songs which the great Purcell had specially composed 
 for him, and created parts in the operas of Clayton and 
 Buononcini, but, when Italian singers came to oust the 
 English from the Italian opera, he was reduced to play- 
 ing in Rich's pantomimes at Lincoln's Inn Fields, parts 
 like Pluto, Faustus, Merlin, which needed only a roaring 
 bass voice and a long beard, until, finding himself theatri-
 
 I 3 2 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 cally superannuated, he started a coffee-house in Tavis- 
 tock Street, Covent Garden, where he sang his own drink- 
 ing songs to "good company," backed himself, for a hun- 
 dred guineas, old as he was, to sing a bass song against 
 any man in England, and lived merry Bacchanalian 
 days until he was nearly ninety. 
 
 It was in 1763 that Pether became a member of the 
 Free Society of Artists, and began to show his engravings 
 at the exhibition, but it was through his cousin, Abraham 
 Pether, of Chichester, the landscape-painter who loved 
 best the pictorial witchery of moonlight, that he became 
 acquainted with those three interesting members of the 
 Society the Brothers Smith, of Chichester, whose por- 
 traits he painted in a charming domestic group, and en- 
 graved with the happy touch of personal sympathy. Of 
 these three painter-brothers, William, George, and John 
 sons of a man who wooed the world as both a baker and a 
 cooper, and heaven as a Baptist minister it was George 
 who won distinction as a landscape-painter and actually 
 beat Richard Wilson in competition for the First Pre- 
 mium of the Society of Arts, his picture being accorded 
 the distinction of Woollett's engraving. There must have 
 been close artistic sympathy between the Smiths and the 
 Pethers. George Smith, who was the master of Abraham 
 Pether, was an excellent 'cellist, and played at all the local 
 concerts, while the Pethers were also musical. Abraham 
 was devoted to the organ when he was not engaged in 
 painting or scientific research, and another member of the 
 family was a well-known maker of harpsichords ; indeed, 
 it was from the latter's shop in Long Acre that the print 
 of the Brothers Smith, of Chichester, was published. 
 That Pether had a happy gift of original portraiture 
 may also be seen in the mezzotint of his own features, as 
 well as the portrait of the celebrated soprano vocalist 
 Miss Harrop, who used to sing in the oratorios at Drury 
 Lane, and became the wife of Joah Bates, manager and 
 conductor of the Great Handel Festival at Westminster 
 Abbey and the Pantheon in 1784. 
 
 Pether's portrait-prints of interest include also Sarah
 
 THE BROTHERS SMITH OF CHICHESTER. 
 
 After W. Pethtr.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 133 
 
 Porter, who was Queen of the Touters at Tunbridge 
 Wells in the middle of the century ; Jeremiah Meyer, the 
 miniature painter ; Louis XVIII. and his wife when they 
 were Comte and Comtesse de Provence, after Madame 
 Le Brun ; and Edward Colston, the philanthropist 
 of Bristol, where Pether spent his last years, and died 
 in 1821. But, when one thinks of Pether, it is none of 
 these that come to the mind's eye, but his magnificent 
 translations into mezzotint of the " Jew Rabbi," the 
 " Standard Bearer," the " Officers of State," and " Saskia," 
 Rembrandt's first wife, from the magic brush of the 
 master of Amsterdam, and " A Philosopher giving a 
 lecture on the Orrery," the "Artist drawing from the 
 Statuette of the Gladiator," and "The Alchymist," after 
 Wright of Derby. All these give William Pether rank 
 among the greatest English engravers. 
 
 Of the life of John Finlayson we know practically 
 nothing more than that he was born in 1730, joined the 
 Free Society of Artists, was twice awarded premiums by 
 the Society of Arts, scraped some charming and interesting 
 mezzotints, and died in 1776. For the rest, his prints 
 must speak. Some of them, such as the Miss Emily 
 Wynyard and Lady Melbourne, after Reynolds, are of 
 exceptional size, but perhaps his most engaging prints 
 are from Catherine Read's portraits of the Gunning 
 sisters. One looks calmly at this winsome Duchess of 
 Hamilton and Argyll, and thinks of those seven hundred 
 persons waiting all night about a Yorkshire inn to see her 
 drive away in the morning, and the fashionable mob 
 at the King's Drawing Room clambering on chairs to see 
 her presented. One wonders, too, what there was in the 
 face of Mary, Countess of Coventry, to need protecting 
 from an admiring mob with a sergeant's guard of soldiers. 
 But then one recalls Mrs. Delany's description of her 
 after that "feast" of a visit: "She is a fine figure, and 
 vastly handsome, notwithstanding a silly look sometimes 
 about her mouth ; she has a thousand airs, but with a 
 sort of innocence that diverts one." Could it have been 
 the " sort of innocence " ? " She has a thousand dimples
 
 i 3 4 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and prettinesses in her cheeks, her eyes a little drooping 
 at the corners, but fine for all that." Finlayson's prints 
 would suggest that the secret of the Gunning spell must 
 have been in the " all that." In all beauty it is the elusive 
 charm that commands. 
 
 Finlayson seems to have had particular sympathy with 
 the theatre, or, perhaps, it was to the accident of his asso- 
 ciation with Zoffany that we owe his interesting theatrical 
 prints. When Zoffany, after a seven years' absence from 
 England, found his portrait-painting connection had 
 dwindled, he sought subjects for pictures among his friends 
 of the stage, as Mrs. Papendiek tells us. So we have scenes 
 from famous plays of the period : Samuel Foote's The 
 Devil Upon Two Sticks, which drew the town to the 
 Haymarket, with the inimitable Foote himself as the 
 President and the innately comic Thomas Weston as 
 Dr. Last ; Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife, with Garrick 
 as Sir John Brute in woman's clothes, and Parsons 
 and others as the Watchmen ; the popular comic opera, 
 Love in a Village, with Ned Shuter, of whose wit and 
 humour so many capital stories are told, as Justice Wood- 
 cock, Beard as Hawthorn, and Duns tall as Hodge. Then 
 we have Reynolds's David Garrick, as Kiteley in Every 
 Man in His Humour ; and, from the opera, Anna Zam- 
 perini, in the once universally popular La Buona Figli- 
 uola, the chere amie, by the way, of the Hon. George 
 Hobart, who was then dabbling in operatic management, 
 and opposing Mrs. Cornelys's " Harmonic Meetings " 
 really operas in disguise at Carlisle House. Tenducci, 
 too, the famous castrato or male soprano, "a thing from 
 Italy," as Smollett describes him in " Humphry Clinker." 
 " It looks for all the world like a man, though they say 
 it is not. The voice, to be sure, is neither man's nor 
 woman's ; but it is more melodious than either, and 
 it warbled so divinely that, while I listened, I really thought 
 myself in Paradise." 
 
 Now we must salute one of the very princes of mezzo- 
 tint. Valentine Green was born on October 3, 1739, 
 in the picturesque old village of Salford, near to the historic
 
 ELIZABETH. DUCHESS OF HAMILTON AND BRANDON 
 AND DUCHESS OF ARGYLL 
 
 Aftrr C Read.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 135 
 
 little market- town of Evesham, in Worcestershire. His 
 father was a local dancing- master, who, having a mind 
 stored with knowledge of more than the figures of the 
 minuet and the measures of the country-dance, devoted 
 his leisure hours to educating his son, and preparing him 
 for the study of law in the office of the town clerk of Eves- 
 ham. Unlike art, however, the law can scarcely be said 
 to represent a natural bent ; but, from the point of view 
 of a career, it presents itself often as merely the line of 
 least resistance to the opportunities or exigencies of 
 circumstance. This accounts for so many distinguished 
 engravers of old entering upon the study of law and giving 
 it up for art. Presumably it was the case with Valentine 
 Green. When the dancing-master placed his son in the 
 office of Mr. Phillips, the lawyer, he doubtless thought 
 with some pride that he was launching the boy on a career 
 which should raise him in the social scale, and give him 
 local standing of high respectability. But art will have 
 its own. 
 
 To please his father, young Green bore with the uncon- 
 genial work of the attorney's office as long as he could, 
 while, to satisfy his own natural instinct for artistic ex- 
 pression, he would hurry away from his musty parchments 
 and prosy tomes, to linger fondly with his sketch -book amid 
 the spots of picturesque appeal in and about Evesham. 
 There was nothing tedious and dry-as-dust about the 
 beautiful old church, or the Norman archway leading to it, 
 the Elizabethan town-hall, or the pretty rustic village 
 peeping among the wooded bluffs across the quiet-flowing 
 Avon. The artist was always insistent in Valentine 
 Green, although it was only gradually that he found his 
 true bent, and came into his kingdom. Sometimes 
 business would take him to the county-town, and there 
 he would see the beautiful porcelain produced at the 
 Worcester Tonquin Factory, and look with wonder at the 
 delicate impressions of line-engravings which at that period 
 formed so much of its decoration. One day his eagerness 
 to share in the doing of these wonderful and beautiful 
 things led him to seek Robert Hancock, the potter and
 
 136 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 engraver, who had introduced the method of decorating 
 porcelain with transfer-prints, and he offered himself 
 as apprentice. Valentine's defection from the law was 
 a great disappointment to his father, although it is not 
 likely that the equity of Evesham was eclipsed by it ; 
 but certainly the world is richer by many things of beauty. 
 
 At the Worcester factory Hancock taught him line- 
 engraving, and soon young Green had the satisfaction 
 of seeing his own engravings, with those of his master, 
 and his fellow-pupil James Ross, printed for transfer to 
 the porcelain ; and proud he must have been to show the 
 dainty results to his father, and so justify his chosen way. 
 But his work at the factory did not exhaust his activities, 
 and his love of picturesque antiquity, which he had imbibed 
 as a child while playing about the ancient priory at Salford, 
 bore fruit in a " Survey of the City of Worcester," with 
 illustrations from his own pencil, engraved by Hancock. 
 This book, originally published in 1764, reappeared, in 
 extended form, thirty-two years later, when Green had 
 long been a famous engraver, with Royal appointments 
 and academic honours, and had fallen on times of trouble 
 and anxiety. It was then called " The History and Antiqui- 
 ties of the City and Suburb of Worcester," and the critics 
 of the day paid tribute to the scope and value of Green's 
 antiquarian research, as well as his artistic appreciation 
 of architecture. 
 
 But, while the young artist was engraving for the porce- 
 lain, and studying the local antiquities, he was still seeking 
 for his true expression, when Hancock, who had learnt 
 mezzotint, possibly from our old Irish friend Brooks, 
 while at the Battersea enamel-works, initiated Valentine 
 Green into the method. From that time Green's career 
 was determined, and his artistic individuality found 
 itself through the medium of the rocking-tool and the 
 scraper. By continual experiment, he perfected his 
 technique, and arrived at his own style, which, with its 
 harmonious adaptability to subject, its rich velvety 
 softness of shadow, and exquisite delicacy and subtlety 
 of middle tints, expressed that true feeling for beauty
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 137 
 
 which was to interpret masterpieces of the painter's 
 art through masterpieces of the engraver's. 
 
 Thus equipped, Green came to London in 1765. It 
 was a most opportune arrival, for that year McArdell died, 
 and left room for a first-rate engraver. That year, too, 
 saw a Royal Charter given to the Incorporated Society 
 of Artists of Great Britain, a body which promptly wel- 
 comed Green's engravings at its exhibitions, and, a year 
 later, elected him one of its Fellows. This brought him 
 into association with the painters, and he was soon en- 
 graving after Cotes, Gainsborough, Romney, Benjamin 
 West, Falconet, Wright of Derby, Catherine Read, Edward 
 Cunningham, or Calze, as he styled himself. Then, in 1769, 
 Green is said to have done a plate of Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
 " Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy," so familiar in 
 Fisher's charming print. The demand for Green's engra- 
 vings was now so considerable that he was encouraged 
 to establish himself as his own publisher in Salisbury 
 Street, Strand, and he was launched on a career of pro- 
 digious industry and brilliant achievement second to none 
 in the history of mezzotint. 
 
 For the next twenty years success attended him at 
 every step. The immense popularity of his large mezzo- 
 tint of West's " Regulus returning to Carthage," which 
 had been painted expressly for George III. and sent to 
 the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, and the high 
 and general praise it received, led not only to his engraving 
 many of the works of the King's favourite painter, but 
 to his being appointed in 1773 Mezzotint Engraver to His 
 Majesty. A couple of years later he received a similar 
 appointment from Charles Theodore, the Elector Palatine, 
 future Duke of Bavaria, an appointment, however, which 
 eventually proved very unfortunate for Green. The 
 year 1775 also saw him elected Fellow of the Society of 
 Antiquaries, and Associate Engraver of the Royal 
 Academy, one of the first six of that class, which 
 had been instituted in 1769 only as a partial con- 
 cession to the agitation of Sir Robert Strange, who 
 strenuously urged the claims of the engravers to equal
 
 138 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 academic recognition with the painters, sculptors, and 
 architects. 
 
 Valentine Green was now one of the most popular and 
 prosperous engravers of the day, and it was chiefly to the 
 relatively high prices and extensive sale of his prints 
 after the classical and Scriptural pictures of Benjamin 
 West, that he owed the state of prosperity which enabled 
 him, in 1780, to commence his superb series of full-length 
 mezzotints after some of Sir Joshua Reynolds's most 
 gracious and beautiful portraits of lovely ladies. Yet it 
 is these that nowadays give him his high place among 
 the great mezzotint engravers, and make his name occa- 
 sionally echoed in the sale-rooms by bids of such magnitude 
 that even the dealers are constrained to applaud. He 
 had, of course, already done some of the finest and loveliest 
 plates after Sir Joshua, and his scheme of engraving a 
 series of Reynolds's " Beauties of the Present Age," as he 
 called them in his prospectus, on the plan of Lely's and 
 Kneller's " Beauties," was one after Green's own heart, 
 and all the artist in him was employed in it. These en- 
 gravings were originally issued at fifteen shillings each, or 
 twelve shillings to subscribers. They now fetch many hun- 
 dreds of pounds and even a thousand, as a proof of the 
 " Duchess of Rutland " did a few years ago at Christie's 
 (while Reynolds charged the Duke only two hundred 
 guineas for the picture). Consequently they are flaunted 
 everywhere in cheap reproductions, and debased in coloured 
 counterfeit, at more than their original price, for the decep- 
 tion of the unwary, since they are among the chief glories of 
 mezzotint, and undoubtedly Valentine Green's masterpieces. 
 Essentially an artist, with broad sympathies and fine 
 judgment, Green had not been content to look only at the 
 pictures that could be seen in English studios and galleries, 
 but he had made tours abroad, to enlarge his outlook 
 by studying the art of other countries. So he brought 
 to the interpretation of Sir Joshua's art not only a refined 
 and masterly style that was in perfect harmony with 
 the master's beauties and graces, but a cultured intelligence 
 that could respond to the very soul of the work and read
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 139 
 
 the mind of every picture. No other engraver has seen more 
 surely that in the high head-dress lies chiefly the intel- 
 lectual charm of a Reynolds portrait, none has more ex- 
 quisitely suggested the gracefully undulating line of the 
 roots of the hair as the shore of the head, swept by the 
 receding waves of the lofty coiffure, with its idea of mental 
 dignity. 
 
 It was this greatness in the interpretation of great 
 art that induced Valentine Green to accept with 
 such alacrity the Elector Palatine's offer to grant, to 
 himself and his son Rupert, the exclusive privilege of 
 engraving, for their own profit and at their own expense, 
 any of the famous collection of pictures in the Gallery of 
 Diisseldorf. It was an enterprise that flattered Green's 
 artistic ambition, and he thought he saw a fortune in it. 
 All Europe, he believed, would buy engravings of those 
 famous pictures, while his own reputation, already 
 respectable in Continental cities, would proportionately 
 increase. He entered upon the undertaking with the 
 enthusiasm of the artist, but without the forethought of 
 the man of business. It was splendid to send artists to 
 Diisseldorf to make copies of the pictures from which he 
 and other eminent engravers were to work, but it was a 
 costly proceeding, and Green had omitted to calculate 
 the cost in relation to probable income. The result was 
 disastrous. Green embarked upon the Diisseldorf enter- 
 prise in 1789, the year his wife died, and by 1798, when 
 the city was bombarded by the French and the picture 
 gallery destroyed, the failure was complete and irretrievable, 
 and the brilliant, sanguine engraver practically ruined. 
 His subsequent career appears to have been a struggle, 
 for he was no longer young, and fortune did not smile. 
 He continued to engrave, in aquatint as well as mezzotint, 
 up to about 1807, but he had suffered a severe blow in 
 the death of his son, who had been publishing in partner- 
 ship with him, and he needed all the comfort that his second 
 wife could afford. His last years were solaced by the 
 easy post of Keeper to the British Institution from its 
 foundation in 1805, and there was no longer any need
 
 140 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 for him to shift impecuniously from lodging to lodging. 
 He died in St. Albans Street, on June 29, 1813, in his 
 seventy-fourth year. What Green looked like, he himself 
 has enabled us to see by engraving the portrait his friend 
 Lemuel Abbott painted of him in his prime ; and a large- 
 natured face it is, full of sensibility and the generous 
 simplicities of character. 
 
 Nowadays, fashion in print-collecting makes one apt 
 to lose sight of the artistic versatility and vast industry of 
 Valentine Green, to forget him as the translator of Rubens, 
 Raphael, Vandyck, the Carraccis, Procaccini, Giordano, 
 Van der Werff, in the Diisseldorf Gallery ; to ignore him 
 as the engraver of J. G. Huck's scenes in the lives of 
 English Queens, or as the mezzotint interpreter-in-chief 
 of Benjamin West's once popular picturings of classic 
 story, except, perhaps, when the tender " Cupid stung by 
 a Bee " charms us to remembrance. As the engraver of 
 Joseph Wright's " Philosopher showing an Experiment 
 on the Air Pump," however, Green's genius proclaims itself 
 above any fashion in taste. 
 
 But it is with the gracious beauties of Reynolds that 
 one associates Valentine Green at his highest, for his 
 exquisite mezzotints assist the master's canvases to 
 stamp upon the period an impression of decorous, lofty 
 and graceful life, oblivious of the hoop-petticoats and 
 all the excrescences of contemporary costume, the gaming 
 excesses and all other enormities of the fashionable manners . 
 Someone has prettily said of the women in these Rey- 
 nolds portraits, pure, noble, serene, benevolent, as the 
 painter presents them : " They seem as if they would 
 care for nothing we could offer them, if our deepest rever- 
 ence were not with it. We stand before them, like Satan 
 before Eve, ' stupidly good ' . . . careless what may 
 have been the name or fame, family or fortune, of such 
 lofty and lovely creatures, yea, careless of their very beauty 
 for the soul that shines through it." Now, apart from 
 technical quality, it is just this mental, this spiritual, 
 influence of Reynolds 's art that we find reflected in Valen- 
 tine Green's copper-plates.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 141 
 
 It is not when we look at the lovely Duchess of Rutland, 
 in her pictorial perfection of rhythmic elegance, that we 
 think of her grumble that Sir Joshua made her try on a 
 dozen dresses before he selected that " bedgown " in which 
 to paint her. In sight of Georgiana, Duchess of Devon- 
 shire, in her panoply of beauty and charm, we forget all 
 about the gambling stories, the butcher's kiss at the 
 Westminster election, the social extravagances and 
 amorous indiscretions, but we remember Coleridge's 
 lovely poetic tribute to the woman and the mother, and 
 the appreciation of Fanny Burney's womanly insight. 
 In the charming group of the Ladies Laura, Maria, and 
 Horatia Waldegrave, we see the beauty of sisterly sym- 
 pathy, but not the influence of disappointed love, which 
 the late Tom Taylor thought he recognised in the faces 
 of these beautiful grand-nieces of Horace Walpole, who 
 was so inordinately pleased with their decorous, unemo- 
 tional behaviour in the face of jiltings and sudden death, 
 almost as pleased as when each consoled herself with 
 an eligible lord. Who could imagine the lovely Lady 
 Elizabeth Compton in the still fashionable hoop and flounces 
 which, doubtless, she really delighted to wear when she 
 was not posing for Sir Joshua ? or Lady Betty Delme" 
 going to her sittings at 47, Leicester Fields, about the 
 time of the Gordon Riots, with her head monstrously 
 hooded in a huge calash, after the preposterous fashion ? 
 
 No; it is in a "dream of fair women" that one is lost 
 as one looks at these prints. We read of the social 
 charms of Mary, Countess of Salisbury, who became the 
 first Marchioness, and died in the fire at Hatfield, but here 
 she takes all the graces of body and spirit ; so, too, do 
 Anne, Viscountess Townshend, Jane, Countess of 
 Harrington, Charlotte, Countess Talbot, Louise, Countess of 
 Aylesford, Lady Louisa Manners, Miss Sarah Campbell, 
 Lady Henrietta Herbert, Lady Jane Halliday. And no less 
 finely does the scraper of Green render Gainsborough's 
 stately and opulent portrait of Anne.Duchess of Cumberland; 
 Reynolds's fanciful group of the young Duke of Bedford 
 and his brothers; the winning little Earl of Dalkeith,
 
 142 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 with his pet owl and his dog, and the sweet little Lady 
 Caroline Howard ; Benjamin West's Drummond brothers, 
 in their college gowns ; or Dance's interesting present- 
 ment of the handsome Miss Martha Ray, whose murder 
 by her frenzied lover, the Rev. James Hackman, in the 
 vestibule of Covent Garden Theatre, has become historic 
 by reason of the romantic circumstances rather than the 
 lady's notorious relations with the celebrated Earl of 
 Sandwich, who ruled at the Admiralty, and whose por- 
 trait, after Zofiany, Green also mezzotinted. 
 
 In the engraver's gallery noteworthy personalities 
 crowd. Nelson (after Abbott), Rodney, Hotham, Hood, 
 Bridport, and other renowned admirals ; the Elector 
 Palatine ; George Washington, and those other leading 
 spirits of the American War of Independence, General 
 Greene, Henry Laurens and the Rev. Samuel Cooper ; 
 William, Duke of Clarence, Queen Charlotte and the Royal 
 children ; Garrick, as Gainsborough painted him, caressing 
 a bust of Shakespeare, and also with Mrs. Pritchard 
 in Macbeth (after Zoffany) ; Mrs. Yates as Melpomene, 
 Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, Samuel Reddish, 
 the actor who married the great George Canning's mother, 
 and died in a mad-house ; Ozias Humphry, the miniature 
 painter (an exquisite translation of Romney) ; Benjamin 
 West and his family, Maria Cosway, whose pretty pictures 
 Green engraved, John Boydell, Sir William Chambers, 
 Lemuel Abbott, Reynolds, and, appropriately, Joseph 
 Gulston, the prince of print-collectors. 
 
 But Valentine Green's life-work was far too extensive 
 and important for me to attempt any detailed account of 
 it within the limits of this volume ; besides, Mr. Alfred 
 Whitman's valuable " Catalogue Raisonne," the result of so 
 much expert knowledge and patient research, is easily 
 available. 
 
 Robert Dunkarton was a Londoner, born in 1744, 
 and a pupil of Pether, from whom he learned both paint- 
 ing and mezzotint engraving. The prizes of the successful 
 portrait-painter at the time that Dunkarton " commenced 
 artist " tempted him to essay that branch of art, but it
 
 MARY HORNECK. r THE JESSAMY BRIDE.' 
 
 FROM THE MEZZOTINT BY R DUNKAIITON 
 After Sir Joshua Reynold*. P.K.A.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 143 
 
 would seem that his success was not commensurate 
 with his ambitions or his necessities, for he ceased to 
 exhibit his portraits at the Royal Academy and else- 
 where after 1779, and probably discontinued painting, 
 whereas he was faithful to the copper-plate for over forty 
 years. Through mezzotint he won a distinguished place 
 among the engravers of the period, and some of his plates 
 rank among the gems of the art. Most popular of these is 
 the bewitching Mary Horneck the " Jessamy Bride," 
 as Goldsmith named her in a day-dream, and loved always 
 to call her in the Persian dress and turban. Sir Joshua 
 left her the picture at his death ; she was then the wife 
 of Colonel Gwyn, the King's handsome equerry, and, 
 as Fanny Burney said, " very soft and pleasing, and still 
 as beautiful as an angel." 
 
 Exceptionally brilliant is the Lord Lifford, after Rey- 
 nolds, while finely mezzotinted, too, are Lord Amherst, 
 Henry Addington, Lord Lyttleton, John Penn, Jonas 
 Hanway, the philanthropist an " angelic being," Walpole 
 called him who first carried an umbrella in the London 
 streets, James Brindley, the engineer, and William Shield, 
 the eminent composer, whose songs, " The Wolf " and 
 " The Thorn," used to flatter the topnotes of our great- 
 grandfathers. Of particular interest are Dunkarton's prints 
 of Mrs. Elizabeth Billington, the great English singer of 
 European fame, and Anne Catley, the popular singing 
 comedienne of most eccentric celebrity, and a life-story 
 that ranged from very humble birth, through diverse 
 scandals and adventures (duly pamphleted) to reputable 
 and prosperous married retirement. Then, exquisite are 
 Dunkarton's Romney prints, " Sisters contemplating on 
 Mortality," " Melancholy " and " Mirth." 
 
 In the first flight of the great mezzotint-engravers of the 
 eighteenth century was Thomas Watson, the son of a 
 printseller in the^Strand. He was in no way related to 
 James Watson, although their work had qualities in 
 common, qualities of beauty and strength that mark the 
 masters, and it has been suggested by Mr. Gordon Goodwin, 
 the trustworthy biographer of both, that they may have
 
 144 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 had the same master in McArdell. Thomas, however, 
 was the junior of James by some ten years, and, if he 
 studied with the great Irish engraver at all, it must have 
 been when he was quite a boy, for he was not born until 
 1750. Moreover, it is probable that whoever taught him 
 was also the master of his life-long friend, William Dickin- 
 son, whose engraving was distinguished by the same 
 combination of delicacy with richness and breadth of 
 effect. But, whether or not McArdell had actually any 
 part in the teaching of these great engravers, his influence 
 was over all their beginnings. He showed them the way 
 to greatness, and they followed it, each according to his 
 individual temperament and artistic tendency. 
 
 Thomas Watson's way was full of charm, for he was 
 keenly alive to beauty wherever he saw it ; and he saw 
 it in the " animated canvases " of Lely as well as in the 
 gracious pictures of Reynolds. This love of beauty found 
 early vent on the copper-plate. When, in his father's 
 shop, young Watson would see the mezzotints brought for 
 sale, as they were published by the various engravers 
 of the day, they would look so easy of accomplishment. 
 But his father, perceiving the bent of his graphic talent, 
 would encourage him to experiment with the scraper, 
 and copy the best prints, in order to realise the difficulties, 
 and so find for himself, through patient effort, the way to 
 freedom of touch. The facility came readily, for young 
 Watson's vision was quick to seize a happy unity of effect, 
 and he was only eighteen when he commenced engraving 
 for publication, while a year later his name appeared in 
 the catalogue of the inaugural exhibition of the Royal 
 Academy. He sent a drawing of an old man after Rem- 
 brandt, which subsequently he engraved, and for the next 
 few years he was in the habit of showing his engravings 
 at the exhibitions of the Society of Artists. 
 
 In 1770 commenced his association with the art of 
 Reynolds, which produced some of the most exquisite 
 mezzotints in existence. Surely nothing that the art can 
 show excels the " Lady Bampfylde." in combining the 
 perfection of technical accomplishment with the true
 
 MRS. CREWE. 
 
 After Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 145 
 
 genius of translating beauty from one art-language to 
 another. This is generally regarded as Thomas Watson's 
 masterpiece, and it has made the highest price ever re- 
 corded for an engraving, namely, twelve hundred pounds ! 
 Yet Watson did other no less lovely and perfect things. 
 The " Mrs. Crewe," for instance a work of art of sheer 
 beauty, complete in itself. We need not think of the 
 blaze of social and political triumph in which this brilliant 
 and beautiful woman sparkled in her day ; the echo of 
 the famous toast, " True Blue and Mrs. Crewe ! " cannot 
 disturb the quiet peace of this Ste. Genevieve but, look- 
 ing at Watson's print, we can hear Fanny Burney's " She 
 is certainly, in my eyes, the most completely a beauty 
 of any woman I ever saw." What extraordinary sym- 
 pathy, what perfect understanding, Reynolds had the 
 gift of establishing between himself and his engravers ! 
 In the charming " Polly Kennedy," the Irish Phryne, 
 in whose face Sir Joshua found a grace and dignity that 
 inspired him to his best, as he himself admitted to one of 
 her lovers, Watson gives us the very touch and spirit of 
 the painter. So, too, in the " Lady Melbourne and Son " ; 
 the Montgomery sisters Hon. Mrs. Beresford, Hon. 
 Mrs. Gardner, and the Marchioness of Townshend as 
 the " Graces sacrificing to Hymen " ; the " Warren 
 Hastings," " David Garrick," " Bartolozzi," and " Earl 
 of Errol " the " noblest figure I ever saw," as Horace 
 Walpole described the gigantic Lord High Constable 
 of Scotland at George III.'s Coronation ; the winsome 
 " Strawberry Girl " and the melancholy " Resignation." 
 The influence of Reynolds on Daniel Gardner's portraits is 
 felt, of course, in Watson's mezzotint of the delightful 
 " Lady Rushout and Children." But the engraver's 
 touch and vision were equally happy in interpreting the 
 dainty charm of Drouais's " Madame Du Barri," the 
 delicate witchery of Joseph Wright's " Miss Kitty Dress- 
 ing "by candle-light ; the dignity of Prud'homme's 
 " Viscount Mahon " ; and the affected airs and graces 
 of Lely's "Windsor Beauties." Of these Watson en- 
 graved six, and he did nothing finer ; indeed, : the 
 K
 
 146 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " Countess of Ossory " must rank among the masterpieces 
 of the art. 
 
 Like most of the great engravers of those days, Thomas 
 Watson had his printselling business, and this he carried 
 on in New Bond Street, at first alone, and later, from 1779, 
 in partnership with his friend Dickinson. This association, 
 however, lasted but two years, for Watson died in 1781, 
 in his thirty-first year. 
 
 William Dickinson and Thomas Watson were the 
 Damon and Pythias among the engravers, but Dickinson 
 was the elder. Yet I fancy it was the earnest influence 
 of Watson that drew his senior's buoyant temperament 
 into the right artistic channel. He had commenced his 
 career in a light-hearted, humorous mood, engraving 
 the social caricatures of Harry Bunbury, and content 
 with the applause and profit of popular laughter. At the 
 age of twenty-one, however, he began to take himself 
 seriously as an artist. His younger friend was pledged 
 to mezzotint, so Dickinson essayed a portrait in that 
 medium, and the Society of Arts awarded him one of its 
 premiums. This was in 1767, and six years later, so 
 much admiration and success had his work commanded 
 meanwhile, he was able to establish himself at McArdell's 
 old shop in Henrietta Street, and publish his own prints, 
 as well as some of Watson's, whose sympathetic co-opera- 
 tion was essential to his undertaking, and eventually led 
 to their partnership. 
 
 Dickinson's powers were now fully matured, and he 
 was doing fine things, things that touched the heights 
 of beauty in mezzotint, and extended the dainty charm 
 of stipple. It was, however, through the nobler art, 
 of course, that Dickinson won his distinguished place among 
 the great engravers. And, while he had Watson at hand 
 with generous appreciation and suggestive criticism, 
 he appeared to revel in artistic accomplishment, and his 
 touch on the copper-plate seemed almost like the caress 
 of a lover, a tender, reverential caress. But Watson's 
 early death greatly affected Dickinson, and, although he 
 continued his printselling business in the same Bond Street
 
 ELIZABETH STEPHENSON. 
 
 FROM TMF. Miz/OTiNT DY W DiCKiNSO 
 After fau. *. W. Peters, ft. A.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 147 
 
 house for some thirteen years afterwards, he never ceased 
 to miss the sympathy of his friend's artistic enthusiasm, 
 while his own impulse to the fresh and fine endeavour 
 flagged often for lack of it. In 1794, however, he deter- 
 mined to break with his old associations, which, with 
 Watson's place empty, had lost their charm for him, 
 and their stimulus to artistic ambition; he migrated 
 to Paris. There he could feel himself the artist once 
 again, and there, after awhile, he resumed his engraving. 
 He never again made his home in England, but in Paris 
 he died in 1823, at the age of seventy-seven. 
 
 The best of Dickinson's rich and exquisite mezzotints 
 must always be among the prizes for the collector. Reynolds 
 inspired most of the finest the Countess of Derby, for in- 
 stance ; Lady Charles Spencer caressing her horse ; Diana, 
 Viscountess Crosbie ; Lady Taylor ; Dr. Percy, of the 
 " Reliques " ; Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist ; Charles, 
 Duke of Rutland ; Mrs. Pelham feeding her chickens ; 
 and Admiral Rodney. Then, there is the famous Duchess 
 of Gordon a woman of marvellous energy and indomitable 
 spirit, who imposed her imperious will upon Fashion 
 through sheer force of personality, and, as the ardent 
 supporter of Pitt, opposed her political charms to Fox's 
 Duchess of Devonshire's ; made dancing the rule at the 
 fashionable rout as a counter attraction to the faro 
 table, and, in a fervour of patriotism, set out for Scotland 
 in the depth of winter, to raise volunteers with the hope 
 of counteracting Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga. 
 
 The famous picture of the beautiful and enchanting Mrs. 
 Elizabeth Sheridan as St. Cecilia at the organ, from which, 
 as Lord Mount Edgecumbe said, one might gather " some 
 idea of the peculiar expression of her angelic face," is, of 
 course, one of Dickinson's loveliest mezzotints (Thomas 
 Watson, by the way, made a charming stipple of it). 
 Yet he did nothing sweeter in feeling, or more exquisite 
 in its pictorial completeness, than the print of " Miss 
 Elizabeth Stephenson," the future Countess of Mex- 
 borough, after Peters, whose dainty pencil also designed 
 the seductive " Lydia " and the engaging "Country
 
 148 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Girl " (Mary Dickinson). But, irrespective of their 
 artistry, Dickinson's prints present several personalities 
 of interest. The three tragic actresses, Mrs. Siddons, 
 in the year of her first London triumph, Elizabeth Hartley, 
 as Elfrida, and Mrs. Yates, as Medea ; Garrick ; Tenducci, 
 and his mimic, Charles Bannister, whose wit won him 
 as much popularity as his singing and his acting ; Napoleon 
 Buonaparte ; Catherine the Great ; George III. ; the 
 Horneck sisters, Mrs. Gwyn and Mrs. Bunbury, acting 
 in the Merry Wives at Windsor ; the Duke of York ; 
 the wise-looking Lord Thurlow ; Sir John Fielding, the blind 
 magistrate ; Samuel Wesley, the composer of fine anthems ; 
 those three celebrated Lord Mayors, Brass Crosby, whose 
 fight for civic freedom and imprisonment in the Tower 
 secured the liberty of the Press; the notorious John 
 Wilkes, and Matthew Wood ; Mrs. Imhoff, whom Warren 
 Hastings married under such curiously romantic circum- 
 stances ; and the handsome Lady Grosvenor nee Harriet 
 Vernon whose amour with the Duke of Cumberland 
 led to a trial for divorce in 1770, which cost the Duke 
 10,000 in damages, and sent the public to the print- 
 sellers, clamorous for her portraits, although, a couple 
 of years later, Lord Grosvenor made a substantial settle- 
 ment upon her, and, immediately he died, she became 
 the wife of General George Porter. 
 
 John Jones was a virile engraver, with a keen and 
 penetrating sense of character, who delighted in bold 
 and brilliant contrasts of light and shade, and these were 
 qualities which marked him out for special eminence as 
 the interpreter of men's portraits. But he was far from 
 agreeing with Pope's cynicism that " most women have 
 no characters at all," and, when he engraved their por- 
 traits, he interpreted their feminine charms with the 
 refinement of candour rather than the subtlety of flattery. 
 In fact, he saw what was fine and true in portraiture, 
 whether of men or women, as frankly as he saw it in life, 
 and so Reynolds and Gainsborough, Romney, Downman, 
 and Raeburn valued him, and were alike glad to avail 
 themselves of his truthful engraving. His virility had
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 149 
 
 always charm, his delicacy never lacked power, and he 
 found artistic expression with equal facility in mezzotint 
 and stipple. 
 
 Jones was born about 1745, but he does not seem to 
 have commenced engraving until he was nearly thirty, 
 sending his first prints to the exhibition of the Incorporated 
 Society of Artists in 1775. But, whatever his previous 
 occupation, it was surely something that tended to the 
 development of an artist, for his copper-plates revealed 
 from the first the certain touch and insight of artistic 
 maturity. They soon attracted the attention of the 
 painters, and in 1778 he became one of Sir Joshua's inter- 
 preters. 
 
 Jones lived in Great Portland Street, happy in his work, 
 happy in his married life, and there, in 1786, his wife pre- 
 sented him with a son his only son who in after years 
 became known as George Jones, R.A., the painter of 
 battles. George Steevens, the Shakespearean editor and 
 Johnson's friend, stood godfather to the boy, for there was 
 a sentimental bond of sympathy between the engraver 
 and the man of letters, which led to friendship. Jones 
 engraved various portaits of Miss Frances Kemble, and 
 Steevens was in love with her pretty face and her womanly 
 charm. He tried to influence the public to regard her 
 as a first-rate actress, and, of course, Jones's prints were 
 helpfully persuasive, but the theatrical fates never intended 
 that Miss Kemble should share the glories of her sister, 
 Mrs. Siddons, and her famous brother John, although 
 her niece, Fanny Kemble, could recall her " charming, 
 thrilling voice " on the stage. She was, however, " one 
 of the sweetest companions in the world," according to 
 her great sister ; and so, too, thought Steevens, wanting 
 her for wife. But, in spite of her retiring into private 
 life, after docilely marrying, not Steevens, but Francis 
 Twiss, a " most respectable man," as Mrs. Siddons described 
 him, though there were others to depreciate his abilities, 
 her face has been immortalised by the art of Reynolds 
 and Downman, and the interpretation of John Jones. 
 
 In those days it was the custom for every prince to
 
 I 5 o OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 have his own official engraver, and, from 1790 until his 
 death in 1797, Jones was entitled to describe himself as 
 " Engraver Extraordinary to the Prince of Wales, and 
 Principal Engraver to the Duke of York." What dignity 
 this was supposed to confer upon the engraver I do not 
 know, probably it carried merely some privileges in the 
 matter of obtaining subscriptions to the publications, 
 for dignity is a quality that Jones's prints possess in a 
 marked degree, but it is the dignity of pictorial beauty. 
 
 Here, for example, are Reynolds's Hon. Mrs.Tollemache 
 (afterwards Countess of Dysart), as Miranda, with Caliban 
 for contrast ; Romney's Duchess of Marlborough the 
 lovely Caroline Russell (Jones also mezzotinted the Duke) ; 
 and Gainsborough's Madame Giovanna Baccelli, the cele- 
 brated dancer of the Pantheon and the Opera. What 
 living grace is in the rhythmic movement here, yet what 
 a restful dignity withal ! And how the dancer charms 
 as woman ! If in Paris she did perform with an 
 audacious suggestion of her friend the Duke of Dorset's 
 Order of the Garter decorating her head, in London she 
 wore her popularity decorously, received most reputable 
 ladies in her dressing-room at the Opera House, and lived 
 benevolently and highly respected in Mayfair. But so 
 many of Jones's subjects had the dignity of personality, as 
 well as pictorial quality, to inspire the engraver Edmund 
 Burke, for instance ; William Paley, of the " Evidences 
 of Christianity " ; William Pitt ; John, Earl of Westmor- 
 land, in his robes as " Lord Lieut. -General and General 
 Governor " of Ireland all translating the very touch of 
 Romney ; Reynolds's Lord Erskine, Charles James Fox, 
 Admirals Lord Hood and Sir Edward Hughes, Francis, 
 Lord Rawdon (Earl of Moira, and first Marquis of Hastings), 
 fine general and statesman, Johnson's Bos well, and Caleb 
 Whitefoord, Goldsmith's " Rare compound of oddity, 
 frolic and fun " ; Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, after 
 Gardner, and Warren Hastings, after Seton. 
 
 Jones seems to have been in close sympathy with the 
 theatre, for, in addition to the Baccelli and the several 
 plates of Frances Kemble, he did noble prints after both
 
 GIOVANNA BACCELLI. 
 
 FROM THE MfZZOTINT BY JOHN JONES 
 
 Aflrr T. Gc/n6orou(,/>. R A.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 151 
 
 Gainsborough's and Romney's portraits of James Hender- 
 son, that fine actor who inspired the affectionate friend- 
 ship of those two great painters Romney's depicting him 
 as Macbeth with the Witches ; and a delightful one of 
 the sunny-hearted, bewitching, irresistible, Mrs. Jordan as 
 Hippolyta, after Hoppner. Then there are Anne Cattley, 
 as Euphrosyne, Sestina from the opera, and Lewis, the 
 stage-fop par excellence, with his " invincible airiness 
 and juvenility," as Leigh Hunt says, as the Marquis, in 
 Mrs. Inchbald's farce, The Midnight Hour. Three 
 interesting prints are those known as the Marlborough 
 theatricals, illustrating the amateur performances in the 
 private theatre at Blenheim in September, 1787, when 
 various younger members of the Spencer family, with Lord 
 William Russell, Hon. Richard Edgecumbe (who, as the 
 Earl of Mount Edgecumbe, published his reminiscences 
 of the Opera), and Miss Peshull, the vicar's daughter, played 
 at being actors for the nonce, and provided a nine days' 
 wonder for the county. But Richard Tattersall, who 
 founded the famous horse-auction, and Thomas Price, 
 who kept the " Farthing Pie House " in Marylebone, and 
 sang a good song, and cracked a joke with the best of them, 
 found quite as sympathetic a welcome on John Jones's 
 copper-plates. So, too, did Bigg's pretty, homely, genre 
 pictures, " Black Monday, or the Departure for School," 
 and " Dulce Domum, or the Return from School," as 
 well as Reynolds's " View from Richmond Hill " a view, 
 by the way, which Charles Fox declared Sir Joshua never 
 really enjoyed, for, as he used to say, " the human face 
 was his landscape." 
 
 With Richard Earlom we find the art of mezzotint taking 
 a wider pictorial range. What line and stipple could do, 
 he considered mezzotint could also accomplish ; so he 
 extended its scope. In his hands we find the scraper 
 greatly assisted by the etching-point, and, with a most 
 effective felicity, translating the famous Fruit and Flower 
 Pieces of Van Huysum into masterpieces of mezzotint, 
 as well as the " Marriage a la Mode " series of Hogarth, 
 the various "Market" pictures of Snyders, the "Black-
 
 152 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 smith's Shop " and " The Forge " of Wright of Derby, 
 the scenes of contemporary social life by Brandoin, the 
 animated portrait-groups of Zoffany, and even Hobbema's 
 landscapes, while as easily it interpreted Vandyck, Rubens, 
 Velasquez, Rembrandt, and a host of old Italian and 
 Dutch masters. 
 
 As an artist on copper Earlom was thus one of the most 
 original and interesting of his period. And his artistic 
 evolution was remarkable. His father was the parish 
 clerk of St. Sepulchre's, and lived in Cow Lane, Smithfield, 
 where Richard was born in 1743. The lower part of the 
 house was occupied by the workshops of a prosperous 
 coachmaker, and one day there was entrusted to him a 
 job that led to the making of an artist. There was a heavy 
 rumble of wheels in the narrow street, and it stopped at 
 the coachmaker's door. Little Richard Earlom looked 
 out of the upper window, and saw a wonderful coach 
 with pictures on it ! Coaches like this did not come along 
 Cow Lane every day, and it demanded closer inspection 
 on the instant. It was the Lord Mayor's state coach, 
 which had come to be repaired ; but what filled the boy's 
 eyes with admiration were the decorative panels painted 
 with allegorical subjects by Cipriani. These he feasted 
 upon, hour after hour, and, while the coach remained on the 
 premises for its repairing, he managed to copy the designs. 
 All untaught as he was, these copies served to reveal a 
 natural talent, and a consultation between his father 
 and the coachmaker led to the parish clerk taking his little 
 boy to the Italian painter, so lately settled in London, 
 and offering him as pupil. With Cipriani Earlom made 
 rapid progress, and, by the time he was fourteen, he had 
 won a premium from the Society of Arts. Thus encouraged, 
 he worked with extraordinary industry, and, having attained 
 a happy skill in draughtsmanship, and a neat and facile 
 touch with the etching-point, he set about learning 
 mezzotint. He is generally credited with having taught 
 himself the art, but Mr. Gordon Goodwin, in his informing 
 memoir of McArdell, claims Earlom as a pupil of that 
 master, whose portrait he engraved with such fine
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 153 
 
 sympathy. Anyhow, Earlom developed his own style, and 
 used the etching-point before grounding his plates to an 
 extent beyond the practice of any other mezzotint engraver 
 as far as one can judge. How much Earlom used it 
 would, perhaps, be scarcely believed without comparing 
 a proof of the preliminary etching of Van Huysum's 
 Flower Piece with the finished mezzotint, as one may do 
 in the Print Room at the British Museum. 
 
 It was in 1765 that John Boydell first saw Earlom's 
 work, and gave him employment. An artist himself, Boy- 
 dell was then building up that famous printselling business 
 which stimulated and encouraged the art of engraving 
 in England with such splendid results. He commissioned 
 the young artist to make drawings of pictures in the 
 Houghton collection for the engravers to work from 
 an experience which was of the greatest value to one who 
 was himself to become an engraver of painters' master- 
 pieces ! This was the beginning of a long and mutually 
 advantageous association, and it was for Boydell that 
 Earlom later engraved, in the chalk manner, the " Liber 
 Veritatis " of Claude Lorrain in warm bistre. In mezzo- 
 tint, etching, stipple, Earlom's industry was unceasing 
 and amazingly productive, while his sincerity as man and 
 artist everywhere won respect. He was in his eightieth year 
 when he died at his house in Exmouth Street, Clerkenwell, 
 on October 9, 1822, thirty-three years after his son, on 
 whose youthful artistic promise he had founded so many 
 bright hopes. 
 
 Earlom found strong appeal for his scraper in the viva- 
 cious art of Zoffany ; consequently we owe to him excellent 
 prints of several very valuable pictures by that painter. 
 There are "George III. and his Family"; the "Life 
 School of the Royal Academy," with its vividly interesting 
 portrait-group of the original thirty-six members ; and 
 the three celebrated Indian pictures painted during 
 Zoffany's seven years' sojourn in the East : "The Embassy 
 of Hyderbeck to Calcutta," " Tiger Hunting in the East 
 Indies," and " Colonel Mordaunt's Cock-Fight at Lucknow." 
 In the centre of this is the wealthy Colonel Martin, who
 
 154 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 came home to England, fell in love with pretty Cecilia 
 Zoffany, and retired to the seclusion of his castle in Kent 
 because she refused him. Then there are the interesting 
 surgeon, John Heaviside, whose Friday evening assemblies 
 attracted the medical men and scientists to his museum 
 of anatomy and natural history in Hanover Square ; and 
 that admirable, sententious comedian Thomas King, with 
 the beautiful, voluptuous Sophia Baddeley, as Lord 
 Ogleby and Fanny Sterling their best parts in a scene 
 from The Clandestine Marriage. John Kemble, as 
 Coriolanus, after Bourgeois, Beachey's Nelson, Gains- 
 borough Dupont's Pitt, and the unfortunate Admiral 
 Kempenfelt, did not inspire Earlom's artistry to such 
 exquisite result, perhaps, as did Vandyck's charming 
 James Stuart, Duke of Richmond, with his noble hound, 
 or the distinguished Due d'Arenberg. 
 
 But the engraver struck the note of contemporary interest 
 in Charles Brandoin's " Exhibition of the Royal Academy 
 in Pall Mall in 1771," and " The Inside of the Pantheon 
 in Oxford Road." Most characteristic is the glimpse 
 he gives of that famous haunt of fashion, which looms so 
 large in the social records of the period, and now is dedicate 
 to Gilbey's wines ! There, in what Lord Mount Edge- 
 cumbe calls " the largest and most beautiful room in 
 London, and a very model of fine architecture " Wyatt's 
 chef-tV ceuvre there are the men and women of the time 
 in their "School for Scandal" costumes and manners. 
 There are the pillars of artificial giallo antico, the ceilings, 
 the dome, which Walpole thought so fine, though Fanny 
 Burney said the room had more the appearance of a 
 chapel than a place of diversion, and felt she " could not 
 be as gay and thoughtless there as at Ranelagh, for there 
 is something in it which rather inspires awe and solemnity 
 than mirth and pleasure." Yet there were those who 
 felt very differently. When the frequent scandals and 
 excessive license of the masquerades at the Pantheon 
 had compelled a movement to exclude any women of 
 questionable or tainted reputation from the society that 
 would be select, and Mrs. Baddeley was refused admission
 
 THE INSIDE OF THE PANTHEON 
 IN OXFORD ROAD. LONDON 
 
 After C. Brandom.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. I55 
 
 on one occasion, fifty young men of rank and fashion, 
 with drawn swords, surrounded her chair, and, escorting 
 her to the portico, fought a way for her into the ballroom, 
 and there compelled the managers to apologise to the 
 beautiful offended actress. Apparently they were not 
 impressed by the " awe and solemnity " of the place ! 
 
 When Reynolds returned from Italy in 1752, he brought 
 with him a Roman youth of seventeen, named Giuseppe 
 Filippo Liberati Marchi. This youth lived in Reynolds's 
 house, acting as his assistant, preparing his palette, and 
 forwarding the backgrounds and draperies of his pictures. 
 Later, Giuseppe imagined he knew enough to start as a 
 por trait-painter on his own account ; but he failed, and 
 was glad to return to Reynolds. He learned mezzotint, 
 however, and, thanks to his knowledge of painting and 
 his studio intimacy with the master's methods, he became 
 a most accomplished and artistic engraver. Moreover, 
 his work had the advantage of Reynolds's constant super- 
 vision. 
 
 Perhaps the best known of Marchi 's prints are the 
 " Oliver Goldsmith," which in " proof " state is always a 
 collector's prize ; the charming " Mrs. Elizabeth Hartley," 
 the actress, with her child, in a landscape setting ; and 
 the beautiful " Mrs. Bouverie and Mrs. Crewe " all, of 
 course, after Reynolds. The same painter's " George 
 Colman," the playwright, and " Samuel Dyer," the 
 scholar and member of the Literary Club, whom Johnson 
 held in such high respect, were also mezzotinted by Marchi, 
 whose own skill in portraiture may be seen in the " Prin- 
 cess Isabella Fortunee Czartoryska," a lady with a very 
 romantic and varied history, including a Russian Am- 
 bassador. A really fine print, after Reynolds's able 
 pupil, John Berridge, is a portrait of Evan Lloyd, the 
 Welsh parson-poet and friend of Garrick, who wrote a 
 famous " Epistle to Garrick," and several clever satirical 
 I>ocms. This is quite equal to the " Goldsmith," and 
 exceedingly rare. 
 
 One of the most artistic engravers of those days was 
 John Dean, who lived from 1750 to 1798. He was a
 
 i 5 6 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 pupil of Valentine Green, and he seems to have imbibed 
 a good deal of his master's exquisite sense of beauty and 
 delicacy. His prints have always the charm of refine- 
 ment, with a quality of feeling that is the engraver's 
 own. He was equally successful in translating Gains- 
 borough, Romney, Reynolds, and Hoppner. 
 
 One of the best and most interesting of Dean's prints 
 is Gainsborough's portrait of Mrs. Dalrymple Elliott, 
 whose career was luridly adventurous. Married very 
 young to Dr. Elliott, she was divorced for love of Lord 
 Valentia, a married man. Her next lover was the Earl 
 of Cholmondeley ; but when George, Prince of Wales, 
 looked amorously upon her, she could not find it in her 
 heart to be cruel to him. (Their daughter married Lord 
 Charles Bentinck.) Next she made her home in Paris 
 with the Due d'Orleans Philippe figalite and naturally 
 during the Terror she found her way into a French prison. 
 There, under the shadow of the scaffold, De Beauharnais 
 made love to her, although Josephine was also in the 
 prison. On her release, Mrs. Elliott refused the chance 
 of marrying Buonaparte ! Her own Journal of her life 
 during the Revolution is alluring. 
 
 Among the persons of Dean's prints there are also 
 the lovely Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Derby, who 
 inherited the Gunning beauty, and was worthily pictured 
 by Romney ; Gainsborough's Earl of Abercorn ; Reynolds 's 
 Mary, Lady Cadogan, Lady Gertrude Fitzpatrick ("La 
 Collina"), and little Master Watkin Williams Wynne, 
 as the Infant St. John ; James, Earl of Charlemont, 
 after Livesey ; Hoppner's wife Phoebe ; and, after Mather 
 Brown, Mrs. Margaret Martyr, a popular actress and 
 singer, as the Enchantress in a pantomime. Dean was 
 successful in his mezzotints of children, and some were 
 from his own designs. " The Widow," after George 
 Morland, and Opie's " Card-players," are also noteworthy. 
 
 Another distinguished pupil of Valentine Green was 
 James Walker, who, had he remained at home instead 
 of going to Russia, as Engraver to the Empress, might 
 have taken his place among the greatest engravers.
 
 THE GREAT DAYS OF MEZZOTINT. 157 
 
 Indeed, his prints after Romney are not to be beaten among 
 the mezzotints of their period. Full of artistic beauty, 
 and instinct with the spirit of the original, are, for example, 
 the " Miss Frances Woodley," " Lady Isabella Hamilton," 
 " Mrs. Musters " the beauty with the heartache and 
 " Caroline, Countess of Carlisle." Among other interest- 
 ing prints of his are " Sir Eyre Coote," " Comte de Grasse " 
 the gallant French admiral who came, a prisoner, to 
 London after his defeat by Rodney, when the King 
 graciously returned his sword ; and " William Jackson," 
 the celebrated composer and organist of Exeter, a man of 
 versatile accomplishment, Gainsborough's friend, and a 
 talented landscape-painter and writer on art, whom 
 Fanny Burney describes as " very handsome," and some- 
 times so " absent " that he used to forget everything about 
 him, while at others his expressions would be very violent. 
 Jackson of Exeter was a personality in his day, and he 
 has his place in the history of English opera. 
 
 William Doughty, a Yorkshireman, was a pupil of 
 Reynolds, living in his house and working in his studio 
 for three years. Then he tried his fortune as a portrait- 
 painter in Ireland, but Ireland had already as many 
 portrait-painters as she could support, so he returned to 
 London in a state of great depression, and endeavoured 
 to cheer himself by marrying one of Sir Joshua's maid- 
 servants, who rejoiced in the name of Joy. He had been 
 doing some excellent mezzotints after Sir Joshua, but he 
 wanted to paint. He had not been a pupil of Reynolds 
 to be only an engraver. So he sailed with his wife for 
 Bengal, where he knew Rajahs and Nabobs would shower 
 gold upon him in return for his art. But Doughty was 
 a luckless person. The ship was captured by a French 
 and Spanish squadron, and he was taken, a prisoner, to 
 Lisbon, where he died. His mezzotints are all that are 
 left of him, but Zoffany made a fortune in India shortly 
 afterwards.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 
 
 John Raphael Smith His Influence William Ward James Ward 
 John Young John Murphy Gainsborough Dupont 
 Jonathan Spilsbury Charles Howard Hodges Charles 
 Townley Johann Gottfried Haid Johann Jacobe Joseph 
 Grozer George Keating Thomas Park Robert Laurie 
 Henry Hudson Francis Haward Josiah Boydell Thomas 
 Gosse John Watts Samuel William Reynolds William Say 
 Charles Turner George Clint Philip Dawe and his Sons. 
 
 THERE is no name that fills a brighter or more important 
 page in the history of mezzotint engraving than that of 
 John Raphael Smith. It stands for the sovereignty of the 
 art ; it is synonymous with masterpieces. Not that every 
 " J. R. Smith " signature labels a masterpiece ; it may, 
 in fact, distinguish merely a " pot-boiler " even in 
 spite of the glamour of an exceptional four-figure record 
 at Christie's, and countless auction-instances of prices far 
 in excess of the sums paid to immortal painters for the 
 original pictures which the engraver translated. But 
 this is to say only that, while Smith was an artist who 
 could be supreme in his expression through the medium 
 of which he was most thoroughly the master, he was also 
 a full-blooded lover of life and its good things, its comforts, 
 luxuries, convivialities, its generosities, flatteries, even its 
 pleasant sins and he did not allow his artistic conscience 
 to hamper the business capacity with which he provided 
 for the indulgence of his will to live and enjoy. Instinct 
 made John Raphael Smith primarily an artist, ex- 
 perience and circumstance grafted on to the artist the man 
 
 158
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 159 
 
 of the world, the man of affairs, the man of pleasure and 
 the result was one of the most remarkable and vividly 
 interesting personalities in the art-world of that wonderful 
 latter half of the eighteenth century. 
 
 John Raphael Smith was born in Derby in 1752. His 
 father, known as Thomas Smith, of Derby, was a landscape- 
 painter of more than local repute, whose picturings of the 
 lovely hills and dales of the Derbyshire Peak, as well as 
 other scenic beauties of England, were engraved by Vivares, 
 and published by Boy dell. Thomas Smith was an artist 
 according to his conventional lights for Gainsborough 
 had yet to send his great message of natural landscape- 
 painting forth to the world and he maintained his family 
 by sedulous work, while, to show that his artistic ideals 
 drew their inspiration from the great masters, he proudly 
 named his two sons Thomas Correggio Smith and John 
 Raphael Smith. With such names, of course, they were 
 expected to be artists. And Thomas Correggio did his poor 
 little best to answer the parental expectations. He began 
 early to excite the neighbours' wonder by drawing and 
 daubing their likenesses, and later flattered himself that 
 he had lived up to the obligation of his name, when, in the 
 course of time, he managed to eke out a livelihood by 
 painting portraits in miniature, and even exhibiting them 
 at the Royal Academy. 
 
 John Raphael, however, had, up to the mature age of 
 ten, shown no disposition to emulate his father's, or even 
 his elder brother's, graphic energies, although the parental 
 rod had not been spared in the effort to instil into him a 
 proper sense of artistic duty. He had a certain natural 
 facility with the pencil, and he used it in a childish, way- 
 ward fashion, but he could not, or would not, draw as his 
 father insisted he should. So he was given up as hopeless 
 from the Raphael point of view, and, at ten years of age, 
 just as if he had been no more than an ordinary inartistic 
 John Smith, he was apprenticed to a local linen-draper ! 
 But, it may be remembered that exactly one hundred years 
 before the birth of this disappointing second son of Thomas 
 Smith, of Derby, there had been born a John Smith
 
 160 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 without the inspiring Raphael who had become the 
 greatest mezzotint-engraver of the seventeenth century. 
 The coincidence was propitious. 
 
 That, during the five years of his apprenticeship he 
 learned to be a good linen-draper, expert in all the tricks 
 of the trade, his subsequent commercial success would 
 sufficiently indicate. But those years were not altogether 
 empty of artistic development. The natural facility with 
 the pencil began to be allied with skill in the rendering of 
 vision. In his leisure moments he would draw portraits 
 of his companions, sketch the casual incident, and even 
 commence surreptitiously to experiment with graver and 
 copper-plate. When his apprenticeship was over, and 
 his father had died, he turned his back on Derby and his 
 face toward London, and here he sought service in the 
 trade he had learned. 
 
 London must have been a wonderland to the emancipated 
 boy of fifteen, fresh from the shop and the repressive home 
 in the Midland town. Here was life in all its moods, 
 and all its hues and shades ; here were men and 
 women who understood the thrill and the joy of living ; 
 here was fashion, here was gaiety, here was beauty. 
 Here were pleasure gardens, exhibitions of pictures, print- 
 shops, with their windows full of wonderful mezzotints. 
 And the beautiful faces of the prints might be seen in the 
 living flesh, by daytime on the Mall in St. James's Park, 
 by night going to Ranelagh and the masquerades, or at 
 dawn coming weary-eyed from the gaming-tables. For 
 pleasure was here, and laughter, and these made a toy of 
 the sunshine, and mocked at the stars. 
 
 Young Smith saw all this as he walked the London streets, 
 saw with dazzled eyes and spirit enchanted, and his desires 
 leaped forth toward the new glittering world he gazed upon. 
 He too must enjoy, he too must know all the pleasure and 
 the laughter and the beauty. London must open her 
 voluptuous arms to him, as well as to those beautiful 
 laughing women and gay, heavy-eyed gallants. So the boy 
 from Derby resolved. He knew that he had the capacity to 
 enjoy, and within him somewhere the power to command
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 161 
 
 his pleasure, to order his destiny. But it was not as a 
 linen-draper's assistant that he could hope to gain the 
 fleshpots, and at the same time satisfy the golden dreams 
 of his spirit. 
 
 It is a truism that, under any circumstances, the artist 
 will out, and when John Raphael Smith, on his way to and 
 from the draper's shop, looked into the fascinating print- 
 shop windows, and saw the mezzotints of the masters, 
 art spoke her definite message, and laid her bidding upon 
 him. Who, if any, gave him his practical initiation into 
 the art of mezzotint has so far remained a mystery. 
 There were those in London who would give a helping hand 
 to the son of Smith, of Derby, and he may have got a hint 
 from this engraver, a technical suggestion from that ; but 
 somewhere, somehow, the boy picked up the secret of the 
 grounding and the scraping. Experiment went ever hand 
 in hand with practice, and he learned his technique from 
 plate to plate. By the time he was seventeen he had 
 scraped and published his first mezzotint a portrait of 
 Pascal Paoli, the Corsican patriot-general, to whom London 
 was then giving a popular welcome and a refuge. This 
 was in 1769, the year that saw the first exhibition of the 
 new Royal Academy, and heard much talk of art and native 
 artists and the ready sale of his first print induced young 
 Smith to throw up his situation at the drapery shop, 
 and answer the call of art. 
 
 The call of Nature he also answered. Among the picture 
 dealers to whom he offered his single print, and the inesti- 
 mable service of his untutored pencil, was a certain Croomc, 
 who had one fair daughter. Hannah was young, and John 
 Raphael was barely seventeen, a comely, engaging youth, 
 poor, but, of course, a genius very different from the 
 drink-sodden men who were accustomed to bring their 
 picture-wares to her father ; so her heart went out to 
 him, and before the end of the year she was a mother and 
 Mrs. John Raphael Smith. 
 
 Married and a father at seventeen, the boy found the 
 struggle to live was hard ; but life was full of joyous possibili- 
 ties, and worth the struggle. So he scraped his mezzotints, 
 L
 
 1 62 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and sold them as he could, kept his eyes open and his wits 
 alert for any chance, painted with oils and drew with crayons, 
 made happy-go-lucky friends, loved his wife and brought 
 children into the world and kept always a cheerful heart. 
 Smith had never regarded the Raphael portion of his 
 name as an obligation to high art, but now he took it to 
 mean Milton's " affable archangel " " the sociable spirit," 
 which was more comfortable for his temperament. For 
 he was none of your lonely dreamers among the imaginative 
 altitudes of art ; he was sociable before everything, and the 
 contemporary, as well as the gregarious, instinct was strong 
 within him. For him art meant a happy link with the 
 pleasant people of his own time, and the means to be one 
 with them. As an engraver of pictures he never answered, 
 even if he heard, as did his famous contemporaries, Strange, 
 McArdell, Houston, Pether, Earlom, Valentine Green, and 
 others, the call of the great dead masters. We never find 
 him, at any period of his career, animating his copper- 
 plates with any message of beauty from Rembrandt or the 
 great Flemings, Titian and his brethren of Italy. For 
 him the living beauties of Reynolds, Romney and Gains- 
 borough were urgent, and lifted his art to its heights ; 
 while, for the rest, his own vivacious pencil, the homely 
 idylls 'and rusticities of Morland, the alluring prettinesses 
 of Peters, the light comedies of Bunbury, and the weird 
 fantasies of Fuseli, together with the robust compositions 
 of Wright of Derby, the popular classicality of Benjamin 
 West, and the elegant portraiture of Hoppner, Lawrence, 
 Cosway, and Opie, went far to provide the pictorial fare 
 with which his copper-plates fed the hungry and 
 easily satisfied public. 
 
 I cannot agree with Mrs. Frankau in regarding it as 
 pathetic and deplorable that Smith should ever have been 
 apprenticed to a linen-draper, and, even if her strenuous 
 and vivifying biography of the artist did not convince 
 one of the value to his career of that particular trade- 
 training, there are several of his prints that would them- 
 selves do so. Many famous engravers have wasted valuable 
 years in alien occupations, although, perhaps, the self-
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 163 
 
 repression has made for character. John Raphael Smith, 
 as a boy in the Derby shop, learned to differentiate fabrics, 
 observe tints and textures,_take note of the ever-varying 
 trend of fashion, and, when he came, still a tradesman, to 
 London, and saw the difference between the fine ladies 
 of the county-town and those of the metropolis, his eye had 
 the training to distinguish between the belated fashions of 
 Derby society and the very latest of the London beau ntonde, 
 while his native artistic instinct added the appreciation 
 of pictorial becomingness. And this was surely no small 
 equipment to begin with, for an artist who was to picture 
 contemporary fashion, and "catch the manners living," as 
 he did in his prints of " Bagnigge Wells," " Chalybeate 
 Wells at Harrogate," " Promenade at Carlisle House," 
 " Spectators at a Print Shop," " A Lady Waiting," and 
 others of his original designs drawn from the fashionable 
 life of the passing hour. 
 
 Would J . R. Smith have been a greater artist had he been 
 without the support of the trade to which he was willing 
 enough to return when art could not support the stress of 
 his mundane needs ? There is nothing, I think, to show 
 that he would. On the other hand, it would seem that 
 the self-satisfaction of prosperity urged him to his best. 
 As a matter of fact, his finest mezzotints, the things which 
 have given him his distinguished place in English art-history, 
 were done when he was most prosperous, and able to " warm 
 both hands at the fire of life." But art was affording a 
 poor living for himself and his family when he went back 
 to his trade, and, with the assistance of old Angelo, the 
 famous fencing-master, and other friends who believed 
 in him and sympathised with his loyal, patient little wife, 
 opened a shop at Exeter Change in the Strand. Smith was 
 only twenty, and if he had ever had any ideals that could turn 
 an attic into a palace of art, and the creaking stairs into a 
 golden ladder of dreams, those ideals had vanished, for they 
 were never of his soul. He was essentially practical, of the 
 world worldly, but his worldliness was ever bright and 
 good-humoured, flowing with the milk of human kindness, 
 and also the generous red wine of boon-companionship.
 
 164 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 So John Raphael Smith's heart was gladdened by the 
 prospect of the drapery-shop, amply stocked with all the 
 most becoming requisites of capricious fashion, with his 
 mezzotints modestly peeping from amid lace ruffles latest 
 from France, Italian lappets, the new German collars, Turkey 
 handkerchiefs, Persian gloves worked with gold, lilac and 
 pale blue satins, and sacques tassel-trimmed to the latest 
 mode. And, as fashionable patronage came to the shop, 
 and good friendly company, after his own sociable heart, 
 made merry in the parlour, and his wife proved a valuable 
 help-meet, prosperity smiled upon him. Then he opened 
 a printshop close by, in Exeter Court the first of several 
 during his London career, each larger than the other, as he 
 grew in importance and here he engraved his plates, and 
 here he had a studio for portraiture in pastel and miniature. 
 
 He worked hard, engraving the anonymous pot- 
 boiler as well as the signed masterpiece, which really 
 needed no signature to proclaim it his, so great in its 
 individuality was his style become, so distinguished his 
 touch ; and between the printshop and the drapery he 
 flourished exceedingly. The wits hobnobbed with him 
 as an equal ; artists, actors, men and women of pleasure, 
 were his companions. He was welcomed as a personality 
 at the clubs and the coffee-houses ; his love of pleasure 
 found fuller and more various vent. His domesticity 
 suffered, but he lived gaudy days. Yet was he ever 
 practical, and those gaudy days would always be paid for 
 by spells of work of unusual fruitfulness, when a " Mrs. 
 Carnac," a " Mrs. Musters," a " Gower Family," a " George, 
 Prince of Wales," or a " Colonel Tarleton," would be the 
 glorious result. Now, too, with his eye on the market, he 
 turned his hand to the easy and popular stipple-manner, 
 and found much profit in it. 
 
 And now happy-go-lucky George Morland came into 
 Smith's life, and their association was a momentous 
 event in the annals of British art. Smith, with his 
 stronger character, obtained an extraordinary influence 
 over the irresponsible painter, and stimulated him to an 
 amazing fertility. But this was an influence exerted less,
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 165 
 
 perhaps, through artistic sympathy, than through a 
 common love of pleasure. Smith and Morland caroused 
 together, and enjoyed revels of dissipation, but Morland 
 painted always, and Smith suggested subjects, bought 
 his pictures, and engraved them, or engaged others, his 
 pupils and assistants, to engrave them William and James 
 Ward, for instance. And, thanks to the prolific and facile 
 genius of the painter, and to his own commercial shrewd- 
 ness, Smith turned the Morland Gallery into a gold mine. 
 
 The public was crazy for Morland, and Smith, who 
 had made over his drapery business to his brother-in-law 
 on advantageous terms, we may be sure now started, 
 so to speak, a factory for supplying the market chiefly 
 with prints after Morland. And some of these were printed 
 in colours, and some were coloured by hand, and among 
 the hands that did this journeyman's work were those 
 that were to paint for immortality. Joseph Mallord 
 William Turner coloured prints for J. R. Smith in those 
 days ; Thomas Girtin too. Smith's factory furnished 
 the markets of Europe and America, and for a time all 
 went well. Smith prospered more than ever, although 
 Morland was dissatisfied with his share. But the painter 
 died in a sponging-house, and European complications 
 restricted the print-trade within less profitable limits. 
 
 Smith engraved no longer ; but still he successfully wooed 
 fashion and popularity with the portrait in oils and pastel. 
 His artistic influence, however, continued through his pupils, 
 William and James Ward, Peter de Wint, William Hilton, 
 John Young, Charles Howard Hodges, S. W. Reynolds. 
 His daughter, Emma, is said to have shown talent in her 
 exhibits at the Royal Academy ; and the artistic gifts 
 of Francis Chantrey and Copley Fielding were discovered 
 and encouraged by John Raphael Smith. In the last 
 years of his life he seems to have been impelled by the 
 wander-spirit. His wife was dead, his trading was over. 
 London was no longer necessary to him. He had said 
 good-bye to the art of which he was master monarch, 
 perhaps ; his paint-brush and his pastels could take him 
 whither he would. The North Country called him, and he
 
 1 66 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 was now in Yorkshire, now in Cumberland ; at last, in 
 Doncaster, in 1812, the great engraver died. 
 . J. R. Smith's prints may be said in a sense to present 
 an epitome of the times. They certainly illustrate various 
 phases of the taste of the town. There are the Morland 
 favourites, such as " Selling Fish," " Return from Market," 
 " Peasant and Pigs," " A Conversation," " African Hos- 
 pitality," and none knew better than Smith how to inter- 
 pret in attractive form these efforts of Morland 's genius. 
 Then there are the seductive designs of the Rev. Matthew 
 Peters, R.A., " Love in her Eyes sits playing," " Sylvia," 
 " Hebe," and " The Fortune-teller " ; the lovely " Serena " 
 and " Nature " (Lady Hamilton), of Romney ; the en- 
 chanting " Bacchante," and " Madonna Col Bambino," 
 the "Schoolboys," "Bacchus," and "The Student," of 
 Reynolds; " Almeria," after Opie; Walton's "Fruit 
 Barrow " ; Lawrenson's " Lady at Haymaking," Single- 
 ton's " Lady coming from the Circulating Library," Smith's 
 " Lady in Waiting," the " Proverb " series, and others 
 of his own popular designs, in which he sought to catch the 
 fancy of the moment for the moment's profit. Even 
 the curious taste that responded to the gloomy appeal of 
 Fuseli's weird imaginings was catered for in the " Belisane 
 and Parcival." 
 
 But the masterpieces of John Raphael Smith are his 
 translations of great pictorial records of personality. I 
 have mentioned the chief of these, but, apart from the 
 question of artistic triumphs, among J. R. Smith's mezzo- 
 tints one is in the company of some of the most interesting 
 personalities of that most attractive period. Beautiful 
 women, of course, are there. And who would not wish to 
 meet Louisa, Lady Stormont, Mrs. Stables and her 
 daughters, Mrs. Carwardine and her child, when Romney 
 paints them ? Or the lovely companions Reynolds gave 
 to his " Mrs. Carnac " and his " Mrs. Musters," such, 
 for instance, as the Hon. ,Mrs. Stanhope, Mrs. Payne 
 Galway with her son ; the winsome little Lady 
 Catherine Pelham Clinton, and Sir Joshua's niece, Theo- 
 phila Palmer (" Offie ") ? But here we meet, also,
 
 COL. TARLETON 
 
 FHOM TMI MC72OTINT BY JOHN 
 
 Aftrr Sir Johu,l R, nol,l-.. P H A
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 167 
 
 women whose charm was other than personal beauty. 
 Lady Beaumont, that gracious and sympathetic friend 
 of artists and authors ; the Hon. Mrs. Darner, Walpole's 
 accomplished friend, who won reputation as a sculptor ; 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, the witty and delightful "Queen 
 of the Bluestockings," a social leader of authority, who 
 wrote sparkling letters full of the relish of life, as well as 
 " Dialogues of the Dead," and entertained the chimney- 
 sweepers on May Day ; Elizabeth Carter, another " Blue- 
 stocking," of whom her friend Johnson said that she " could 
 make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus from the 
 Greek, and work a handkerchief as well as compose a 
 poem." 
 
 Then the men an interesting company. The brilliant 
 John Philpot Curran, of whom O'Connell said, " There 
 never was so honest an Irishman " ; Buonaparte, First 
 Consul ; Philippe Egalite ; George Morland ; Carlini, 
 Bartolozzi, and Cipriani, the Italian trio of Royal Acade- 
 micians ; Erasmus Darwin, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir John 
 Fielding, " Longitude Harrison," the clockmaker (John 
 Smith, by the way, mezzotinted Tompion, the father of 
 English clock-making, who was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey) ; John Dollond, the great optician ; Lord Eldon, 
 Edward Jenner, of vaccination fame ; James Heath, 
 the engraver ; the Princes of Orange with their sister ; 
 Admirals Duncan, St. Vincent, Hyde Parker, and Hugh 
 Palliser ; George, Prince of Wales ; the notorious Dr. 
 Dodd, who was hanged ; Richard Arkwright ; Gibbon's 
 friend Holroyd, first Earl of Sheffield ; the gallant Colonel 
 Tarleton, painted by Reynolds, as " Peter Pindar " 
 facetiously said, seemingly in the act of " pulling on his 
 boot so tight." 
 
 Theatrical prints being greatly in vogue in those 
 days, J. R. Smith naturally kept his copper-plates in 
 touch with the theatre. So we have most desirable prints of 
 Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Mary Robinson (Poor " Per- 
 dita," whom the painters loved even better than her Florizel 
 did) ; Mrs. Crouch, the lovely singer ; Anne Catley ; the 
 inimitable comedian Tom King and his wife, the Irish
 
 168 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 hornpipe dancer ; Harriet Powell, Madame Schindlerin, 
 a weak-voiced German singer foisted upon the opera 
 audiences by Rauzzini ; Giovanna Baccelli and Mdlle. 
 Parisot, the dancers ; the Bannisters, Charles and John, 
 father and son, delightfully witty creatures ; James 
 Dodd, " the most perfect fopling ever placed upon the 
 stage," as Sheridan said ; and who does not know him 
 in Charles Lamb's " Old Actors " ? Harry Woodward ; 
 Charles Holland (" Next Holland came, With truly tragic 
 stalk ; He creeps, he flies A hero should not walk " so 
 the " Rosciad ") ; James Love (the father of George 
 and Sir Nathaniel Dance) ; Francis Waldron, Wm. Parsons, 
 the original Crabtree and Sir Fretful Plagiary ; and Mrs. 
 Pope, the charming actress, who was said to be so like 
 Lady Sarah Lennox that, when in her advancing almost 
 old age, George III. once again saw her acting, he turned 
 wistfully to the Queen and said, " She is like Lady Sarah 
 still." 
 
 William and James Ward were the two most eminent 
 of John Raphael Smith's pupils for engraving. They were 
 the sons of a fruit-salesman, whose bibulous habits seem 
 to have clouded their early years. William, who was 
 born in 1766, spent five years at Merchant Taylors' School 
 before he began his apprenticeship with Smith, although 
 James, who was the younger by three years, unfortunately 
 had his schooling cut short, and, at a very early age, was 
 put to wash bottles for a living in a Thames Street ware- 
 house. And there, on a site which had often heard the 
 carousing wit and laughter of Ben Jonson and his circle, 
 the boy read surreptitiously " Don Quixote " and " Pil- 
 grim's Progress," and dreamed himself the hero of every 
 virtue even on Three Cranes Wharf. 
 
 But the drunken father was converted to teetotalism, 
 and died after a month of it. Then matters improved 
 for the sons, and young James was also apprenticed to 
 J. R. Smith at the instigation of William. The two 
 brothers, however, differed entirely in temperament and 
 character, and what suited William did not suit James 
 at all. William was patient, steady-going, plodding, con-
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 169 
 
 tented ; he was modest about his own abilities, satisfied 
 with what Smith taught him, grateful for the progress he 
 made, and he became a very fine engraver. So he realised 
 his ambition. James, on the contrary, was always in a 
 state of mental revolt. He certainly possessed the finer, 
 larger genius of the two, but his self -consciousness, which 
 gradually developed into an overpowering, virulent 
 egotism, was impatient of everybody who did not recog- 
 nise and contribute to the development of the extra- 
 ordinary powers he was convinced he possessed. 
 
 James Ward must certainly have been a very remark- 
 able boy, but the pity of it was that he thought himself 
 remarkable, and was aggrieved to the roots of his being 
 when he was not treated as such. Now, J. R. Smith, in 
 the plenitude of his powers and popularity, was hardly 
 the man to trouble himself much about discovering germs 
 of genius in his junior apprentices, and James Ward 
 consequently resented receiving so little direct instruction 
 from the master, and rebelled against the menial domestic 
 services which, in those days, were expected from young 
 apprentices. But, with his ambition fired by Smith's 
 neglect of his genius, he set himself to learn those essentials 
 of pictorial art which he considered he ought to have been 
 taught drawing and the principles of design even as, 
 later, he devoted himself to the mastering of anatomy 
 in order to rival and surpass George Morland, who refused 
 to take him as pupil. 
 
 However, William Ward, seeing how things were 
 with his young brother, as soon as his own apprentice- 
 ship was over, induced Smith to transfer James's indenture's 
 to him. Now, while he himself worked, partly on his own 
 account, partly as Smith's assistant, he did all in his jx>wcr 
 to fostei his brother's undoubted talents. 
 
 Meanwhile, William Ward, now beginning to flourish 
 in a modest way, had taken a cottage in the pretty rustic 
 village of Kensal Green, and there he lived pleasantly 
 with his mother, sisters, and brother James. But in an 
 adjacent cottage was George Morland with his sister, 
 and an intimacy sprang up between the Wards and the
 
 170 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Morlands, which culminated in William Ward and Morland 
 marrying each other's sister. The connection had impor- 
 tant artistic results. Many of the best engravings of 
 Morland's pictures those most prized by the collectors 
 of to-day were done by his brothers-in-law. Also, it 
 was certainly first to the inspiration, then to jealous 
 rivalry, of George Morland, whose too convivial indul- 
 gences James, himself an ascetic and restless religionist, 
 loathed and despised, that English art owes the great 
 animal painter, James Ward. 
 
 William and James Ward, who were in partnership 
 for a time as printsellers in Newman Street, won to high 
 rank among the mezzotint-engravers of the end of the 
 eighteenth century, and William was content. Not so 
 James, although he was appointed " Painter and Engraver 
 to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales." When once he had 
 tasted of praise for his painting, he was no longer satis- 
 fied to be regarded primarily as an engraver. None 
 knew his powers as he did. He would make the world 
 acclaim him the great painter he believed himself to be. 
 He lost himself in admiration of his own genius, his own 
 virtues, his own piety. The world must admire equally. 
 He must ensure this, even if he had to make sacrifices. 
 When the Royal Academicians were opposing his election 
 as a painter, although they were quite willing to elect him 
 an Associate-Engraver, as they did William and even 
 his great admirer, Hoppner, voted against him he re- 
 solved to engrave no more. So he sacrificed commissions 
 to the extent of 2,000, and that at a time when he and 
 his wife were living luxuriously, and money was needed. 
 
 But henceforth James Ward's life, which vibrated 
 irascibly through ninety years, belongs, with its achieve- 
 ments, its disappointments, and its quarrels, to the history 
 of painting. His career as an engraver ended more than 
 fifty years before he died. 
 
 James Ward was the mezzotint interpreter par ex- 
 cellence of John Hoppner. His finest prints are after that 
 painter, and perhaps the two most delightful are "Juvenile 
 Retirement," a group of the children of the Hon. John
 
 JUVENILE RETIREMENT. 
 
 DOUGLAS CHILDREN. 
 
 FHOM THF MCZ/OTINT ev Jxwrs W' 
 Kftrr Jo/i.i Huvonrr. K.A
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 171 
 
 Douglas, and " Children Bathing," in which Hoppner 
 has depicted his own children. After Reynolds, Ward 
 was most successful with the charming " Mrs. Billington " 
 and " Richard Burke," that young man of brilliant promise, 
 whose early death just after succeeding to his illustrious 
 father's seat in Parliament made Edmund Burke into a 
 lonely, disconsolate old man. But this print pleased him 
 so greatly that he presented Ward with the copyright. 
 Of course, in his prints after his own " Fern Burners," 
 " Lion and Tiger Fighting," " Poultry Market," " Guinea 
 Pigs," and the horse subjects, Ward was entirely himself. 
 
 William Ward died in 1826, after steel-plates had 
 been introduced, and the engraver's art was on the 
 decline ; but his finest work had been accomplished before 
 the end of the eighteenth century, such as the Morland 
 prints, and the "Daughters of Sir Thomas Frankland," 
 after Hoppner, which was his masterpiece in portraiture, 
 and is so familiar in icproduction. 
 
 William Ward engraved a large number of portraits 
 after Hoppner, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Lawrence, John 
 Jackson, William Owen, Opie, Martin Archer Shee, Dance, 
 Masquerier, J. R. Smith, and others of the portrait-painters, 
 but not many of the subjects are of vital interest to- 
 day. Perhaps the most interesting are George Morland, 
 Sir David Wilkie, Mrs. Pope, the actress, Listen, the 
 comedian, those three political agitators, William Cobbett, 
 John Home Tooke, and Sir Francis Burdett, and Thomas 
 Coke, Earl of Leicester, who was born in 1752, when 
 George II. was reigning, the year that Handel went blind 
 and Sir Joshua Reynolds came to London, when " Tris- 
 tram Shandy " and " The Vicar of Wakefield " were not 
 yet written, and the Seven Years' War had not begun. 
 He married for the second time when he was over seventy, 
 and his son is the present aged Earl of Leicester ! 
 
 It is, however, by his mezzotints after Morland that 
 William Ward chiefly wins the hearts and purses of the 
 collectors of to-day, while to the makers of honest repro- 
 ductions, and the fakers of fraudulent ones, he has been 
 a gold mine. Among these prints the favourites, perhaps,
 
 i 7 2 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 are " Effects of Extravagance and Idleness " and " Fruits 
 of Early Industry and Economy " ; " Alehouse Poli- 
 ticians," " The Angler's Repast," " The Pleasures of Re- 
 tirement," " Inside of a Country Alehouse," " Stable 
 Amusement," " The Sportsman's Return," " Jack in 
 the Bilboes," " Visit to the Boarding School " and " Visit 
 to the Child at Nurse," " Sailors' Conversation," 
 "First of September Morning," and "Evening," "The 
 Carrier's Stable," " The Country Stable." Popular, too, 
 are " The Birth of an Heir " and " Christening the Heir," 
 after Bigg, " The Blind Beggar," after Owen, " Outside 
 of a Country Alehouse," and " The Haymakers," after 
 James Ward. 
 
 Another of John Raphael Smith's distinguished pupils 
 was John Young, who was, however, senior to the Wards, 
 having been born in 1755. He was a man of high attain- 
 ments and sterling character, with a fine pictorial sense 
 in his treatment of the copper. " Engraver on Mezzotint 
 to the Prince of Wales " from 1789, he succeeded Valentine 
 Green as Keeper to the British Institution. His finest 
 prints were after Hoppner, and among these were the 
 charming Lady Charlotte Greville, the Howard sisters, 
 Mrs. Gwyn and Mrs. Bunbury, Lady Anne Lambton and 
 her children, Viscountess Hampden, Francis, Earl of 
 Moira and the Marquis Wellesley, besides several charming 
 things with fancy names. Young also engraved Beechey's 
 " Sir David Wilkie," some interesting theatrical portraits 
 by Zoffany, and some fancy subjects by his friend, that 
 talented, unfortunate artist, Richard Morton Paye. 
 
 John Murphy (1748), a capital mezzotint engraver, 
 who also used the stipple-point, was another of Ireland's 
 valuable gifts to the art, but he worked in London. Be- 
 sides historical and scriptural subjects after West, North- 
 cote, Guercino, and other painters, he did some meritorious 
 portraits of personal interest. 
 
 Gainsborough was not an easy painter to translate 
 to the copper, but in his nephew and pupil, Gainsborough 
 Dupont, he had an ideal interpreter. For, in learning 
 painting from his illustrious uncle, Dupont had imbibed
 
 THE FRUITS OF EARLY INDUSTRY 
 AND ECONOMY. 
 
 FHOM TMI MtnoTiNT BY W WARD 
 Aftrr Ororg, Morland.
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 173 
 
 much of the spirit, as well as the manner, of the 
 great painter. So, when interpreting his uncle's pictures 
 through the medium of mezzotint, he could convey with 
 his scraper the meaning and value of every touch of 
 the brush. Unfortunately, Gainsborough Dupont died in 
 1797, at the age of thirty, or what a Gainsborough gallery 
 he would have left us ! As it is, however, we owe to 
 him some very valuable mezzotint renderings of his 
 uncle's pictures. There are the fine full-lengths of 
 George III. and Queen Charlotte ; the three Princesses 
 the picture about which Gainsborough finally quarrelled 
 with the Royal Academy because they would not break 
 their rules to hang it at the height proper for its just 
 effect ; Lord Rodney, General Conway, Walpole's cousin, 
 friend, and correspondent, the lovely Mrs. Sheridan, 
 the Duke of Clarence, Rev. Richard Graves (the 
 " Spiritual Quixote)," Lord Frederick Campbell, who 
 married the widow of Lord Ferrers, whose hanging 
 for the murder of his valet was one of the sensations of 
 the century ; and the celebrated Colonel St. Leger, 
 George, Prince of Wales 's wildest friend, " the hero of 
 all fashion," as Walpole described him. That famous 
 dinner which he shared with six other young bloods 
 in 1751, the extravagant cost of which was the talk of 
 the town, and " with good people produced the appre- 
 hension of another earthquake," would seem very mild 
 in comparison with the " modern instances " of certain 
 American plutocrats. But " Handsome Jack Sellinger " 
 founded the Hell-Fire Club, of notorious memory ; the 
 great race at Doncaster perpetuates his name, and alx)ut 
 the ancestral estates in Ireland the peasantry arc still 
 convinced that whenever they see a phantom coach drawn 
 by headless horses, with headless coachman and foot- 
 man, it is the spirit of the famous Colonel St. Leger that 
 is taking the air. 
 
 Jonathan Spilsbury was a portrait-painter, and a 
 mezzotinter of considerable merit. His print of Mrs. 
 Catherine Macaulay, after Catherine Read, introduces 
 us to the personality of a woman who loomed large in
 
 174 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the literary life of her day. It must be long, I imagine, 
 since anyone read her once famous History of England, 
 but Walpole and Gray thought highly of it, although 
 Johnson humorously snubbed her republican ideas of 
 equality by suggesting, at her dinner table, that her 
 footman, a " very sensible, civil, well-behaved fellow- 
 citizen," should be invited to sit down with them. But 
 it may encourage some of our popular lady-writers to-day 
 to read, in one of Mrs. Delany's letters, " The great Mrs. 
 Macaulay hardly knew the meaning of the word grammar 
 until she was thirty years old, and now all her productions 
 go to the press uncorrected." 
 
 Charles Howard Hodges was one of J. R. Smith's 
 pupils, and, like his master, he painted portraits as well 
 as engraved. He did some admirable mezzotints after 
 Reynolds, Romney, and Hoppner, and then, in 1788, 
 he settled in Amsterdam, where he continued to work 
 until his death in 1837. Among his Reynolds prints 
 was the beautiful Mrs. Musters as " Hebe." 
 
 Another painter and engraver who sought favour for 
 his art abroad was Charles Townley, who, after studying 
 in Italy, went to Berlin, practised portraiture there, 
 and engraved several plates. He also did many in England 
 after Reynolds and other painters. 
 
 On the other hand, there were mezzotint engravers 
 who came from the Continent to learn English methods 
 and practise here. Of these Johann Gottfried Haid, one 
 of a large family of mezzotint engravers, came from his 
 native Augsburg, did some excellent work for Boydell, 
 and then returned to Austria, dying in Vienna in 1776. 
 From Vienna came Johann Jacobe, who, while in England, 
 did a few beautiful prints. Among these was Reynolds's 
 Hon. Mary Monckton, afterwards Countess of Cork, 
 who used to give those wonderful parties which Fanny 
 Burney and Lady Morgan describe so amusingly, and 
 whose vivacity enchanted Johnson, so that " they used to 
 talk together with all imaginable ease." 
 
 Joseph Grozer did several charming prints after 
 Reynolds, perhaps the most attractive being " Mary,
 
 THE SPRUCE SPORTSMAN: OR 
 BEAUTY THE BEST SHOT. 
 
 KHOM AN ANONYMOUS Mif/otint ITDO
 
 THE CLIMAX OF MEZZOTINT. 175 
 
 Lady Seaforth and child." His "Earl of Cardigan" 
 shows him equally successful as an interpreter of Romney. 
 Delightful, too, and of most artistic appeal, are the trans- 
 lations of Gainsborough, Romney, Reynolds, and Mor- 
 land by George Keating, yet another Irishman who found 
 talented expression through mezzotint. 
 
 Thomas Park, who began life as an engraver, and 
 then drifted into a literary career, has left us, among 
 some capital prints, one of Mrs. Jordan, as the Comic 
 Muse, after Hoppner ; and an interesting one of J. G. 
 Holman and Miss Brunton (afterwards Countess of Craven) 
 in " Romeo and Juliet." 
 
 Of great theatrical interest, too, were the prints of 
 Robert Laurie, a notable engraver, who, after being 
 associated with Sayer in printselling, succeeded to the 
 business in partnership with Whittle, and applied him- 
 self to the invention of a process of printing mezzotints 
 in colour. Perhaps his finest work is " Garrick led off 
 the Stage by Time," after Parkinson, in which the actor 
 is represented as looking back regretfully at Comedy 
 and Tragedy, in the persons of Mrs. Abington and 
 Mrs. Yates. But of more personal interest are such 
 groups as Tom King, Mrs. Abington, " Gentleman " 
 Smith, and Jack Palmer, in their original characters, 
 Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, Charles and Joseph Surface ; 
 and Quick and Mrs. Green with Ned Shuter in their 
 " creations " of Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle and Tony Lump- 
 kin. It is a boon, indeed, to have before us in picture 
 the principals of the original casts of The School jot 
 Scandal and She Stoops to Conquer, and look at them 
 with memories of Lamb's " Old Actors " or Churchill's 
 " Rosciad." 
 
 Of the capital prints of Henry Hudson, Francis Haward, 
 who was elected to the Academy as a stipple-engraver 
 after he had discontinued mezzotint, Josiah Boydell, 
 the Alderman's nephew and partner, Thomas Gosse, 
 and John Watts, it is not necessary to speak in detail. 
 Nor does it come within the scope of the present volume 
 which necessarily has its limitations to trace the
 
 176 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 careers and treat of the work of those fine engravers, 
 Samuel William Reynolds (J. R. Smith's pupil), William 
 Say, whose master was James Ward, Charles Turner, 
 George Clint, or George Dawe. These carried on the 
 great traditions of mezzotint-engraving into the dis- 
 couraging years of the nineteenth century, transmitting 
 them to Thomas Goff Lupton, David Lucas (Constable's 
 engraver), and Samuel Cousins, who was the last link 
 with the great old school of English engravers. 
 
 The indefatigable Mr. Alfred Whitman, of the British 
 Museum, has, however, devoted separate volumes to 
 the life-work of S. W. Reynolds and his famous pupil, 
 Cousins, as well as Charles Turner, who seems to have 
 produced, in the course of his long life, something like a 
 thousand prints. Therefore I feel personally relieved 
 of responsibility. 
 
 George Clint won his Academy honours as a painter, 
 chiefly of theatrical subjects, and his engravings were 
 not numerous. As a portrait-painter, too, George Dawe 
 became an R.A., but his mezzotints after Raeburn, North- 
 cote, and others, done in his earlier years, were fine. 
 He learned the art from his father, Philip Dawe, who had 
 worked with Hogarth, and produced some very skilful 
 mezzotints after designs, with candle-light effects, by 
 Henry Morland, such as "The Letter- Woman," the "Oyster- 
 Woman," " Unlucky Boy," " The Connoisseur," as well 
 as pictures by George Morland, Peters, Rosalba, and others. 
 Philip Dawe had also a son, named Henry, to whom he 
 taught the best way of mezzotint, but he belongs to the 
 nineteenth century, and I see the sunset of the great days 
 of the art with the passing of the eighteenth century.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE REVIVAL, OF LINE ENGRAVING. 
 
 John Pine George Vertue William Hogarth I,uke Sullivan 
 Bernard Baron Gerard Scotin Simon Francois Ravenet 
 John Hall William Wynne Ryland Pierre Charles Canot 
 Francois Vivares Francesco Bartolozzi J. B. C. Chatelain 
 Thomas Major Sir Robert Strange William Woollett John 
 Tinney John Browne William Sharp John Keyse Sherwin 
 James Basire James Heath Captain William Baillie 
 William Blake and others. 
 
 WE left the line-engravers at the end of the seventeenth 
 century, in order to take up the story of mezzotint, for 
 the older and greater art had fallen on terribly dis- 
 couraging times, and there was little prospect of revival. 
 In the sorry state of the pictorial arts during the taste- 
 less earlier decades of the eighteenth century, there was 
 no room for the line-engraver whose appeal was artistic 
 beauty. His calling had reached a wretched pass when 
 an artist like John Simon, who had come from France 
 with all the traditions of the great French line-engravers, 
 was obliged to learn mezzotint simply to live, and George 
 White had to forsake the art in which he might have won 
 fame equal to his father's, or he could not have earned his 
 daily bread. While the portrait in mezzotint was wanted,^ 
 and only the rare connoisseur made any demand for the 
 work of art, the engravers, with one or two honourable 
 exceptions, such as John Pine, Hogarth's friend, chose 
 the easiest and cheapest way, and gave the easiest and 
 cheapest thing. 
 
 M I 77
 
 178 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 But there is always the man who carries on the traditions, 
 irrespective of circumstances and conditions. The man 
 who carried on the traditions of seventeenth-century 
 line-engraving with dignity and respect was George 
 Vertue, a capital engraver, a valuable antiquary, a faith- 
 ful student of the arts, if not, in the true creative sense, 
 an artist. But such a man was just what was needed 
 at this particular epoch ; he preserved the traditions, 
 he marked time, and he loyally kept the art of line-en- 
 i graving before the public at as high a level as the times 
 could appreciate. 
 
 Born in 1684, Vertue was eighteen when, after a few 
 years' preliminary training with a heraldic engraver on 
 plate, he became the pupil of Michael Vandergutch, who 
 had been the pupil of David Loggan. After working 
 seven years with Vandergutch, studying draughtsman- 
 ship and painting meanwhile, he commenced engraving 
 on his own account, with a widowed mother and several 
 brothers and sisters to keep. Sir Godfrey Kneller gave 
 him early encouragement, but a portrait of Archbishop 
 Tillotson, commissioned by Lord Chancellor Somers, 
 enabled Vertue to prove himself at once the first line- 
 engraver of the day. He followed this with a prodigious 
 number of portraits of " all sorts and conditions of men," 
 both contemporary and of past times ; and many were 
 excellent, and all were trustworthy, for Vertue was one 
 of those persons with whom to be accurate is more than 
 to be artistic. To him the casual infidelities committed 
 
 y by Houbraken, his Dutch collaborator in the Knapton 
 series of historical heads, would have been impossible, 
 as impossible as for him to have done Houbraken's head 
 
 f of Mary Stuart after Isaac Oliver. 
 
 Antiquarianism, with its insistent accuracies, was a 
 passion" with Vertue, and to this, aided, of course, by his 
 admirable character as a man, and his archaeological 
 conversation, he owed the continuous patronage of the 
 various lords and princes who delighted to play Maecenas 
 to the unassuming engraver. With the Earls of Oxford, 
 Winchelsea, and Leicester, the Duke of Porset, Lord
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 179 
 
 Coleraine and Roger Gale, the antiquaries, he travelled 
 about from one historic place to another, always making 
 drawings and catalogues, taking notes, " filing the fifteenth 
 century, and pigeon-holing the antique." The Duke of 
 Norfolk also employed him, and he was constantly at 
 the Royal palaces with Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 
 the exercise of his profession. Of course, he was 
 appointed engraver to the Society of Antiquaries. But 
 not only for his valuable historic prints and portraits do 
 we owe him gratitude. Research was his habit ; with 
 him, in Whistler's phrase, " a date was an accomplish- 
 ment," and so to him we are indebted for the patiently 
 accumulated records which Walpole " digested " into 
 his indispensable " Anecdotes of Painting." Vertue died 
 on July 24th, 1756, and, although a strict Roman Catholic, 
 was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 As there is always the man to carry on the traditions, 
 so likewise, in spite of unsympathetic surroundings and 
 adverse conditions, there is always the artist. If it were 
 not the genial exaggeration of the tombstone that credited 
 Vertue with " all the genius of the graphic art," language 
 would be dumb indeed before the name of William Hogarth. 
 While Vertue was estimably and serviceably plodding 
 with the traditions, the giant genius of Hogarth was 
 capturing and holding the fancy and the conscience of 
 the town. But this was because of the deep, human 
 tragi-comedy, and vivid actuality of his heart-piercing 
 satires, not because of their intrinsic pictorial qualities. 
 The people did not realise that a great original master 
 was among them, producing immortal works of art, for 
 they held even Hogarth's paintings cheaply in those 
 days ; but they were compelled to buy his prints, be- 
 cause these spoke a language that all could understand 
 the language of common life, albeit the accent was a 
 mordant blend of scorn, of humour, and of pity. That 
 the designs were engraved in line, probably they did not 
 notice, any more than the people distinguish nowadays 
 between a photogravure and a mezzotint, a process-block 
 and a copper-plate. No ; it was not the art that appealed,
 
 i8o OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 but the humanity, with the laughter and the tears set 
 grotesquely about it by the mocking spirit, like gargoyles 
 on a cathedral. " Other pictures we look at," said Charles 
 Lamb, " his prints we read." And Lamb read Hogarth 
 with the eyes of his heart. 
 
 But the art is there that compels us to look, or we 
 should not want to read ; for so innately an artist was 
 Hogarth that, as those immortal moral messages of his 
 grew in his brain, he saw them from the first in form 
 and colour that is, primarily as pictures. So when his 
 graven line spread broadcast his message of scorn or of 
 pity, it bore also his message of art. And for us to-day 
 it bears incomparable, living records of the times of 
 Hogarth, the characters, the morals, the manners, the 
 fashions, the streets why, the very houses are alive. 
 What should we know of George II.'s London without 
 Hogarth's prints ? But to know Hogarth's prints as 
 they ought to be known, one should study them with 
 Charles Lamb, and Hazlitt and Thackeray, and then one 
 should seek that most fascinating and informing guide, 
 Mr. Austin Dobson, and follow him through Hogarth's 
 London and Hogarth's times. Mr. Dobson has said the 
 last necessary word about the master and the most 
 worthy for our day, at least. But Hogarth's story be- 
 longs to the history of art in its most expansive sense. 
 Whatever impulse his prints may have given to the revival 
 of English line-engraving, his influence was certainly 
 vital. Through the medium of his copper-plates he 
 could reach the people as he could not do alone with his 
 painted canvases, and so, through his prints, he forced 
 them to associate a sense of nature and actual life with 
 their sense of picture, which was quite a revolutionary 
 condition of things at that period, and of most healthy 
 augury. 
 
 Not all those prints known as Hogarth's, however, 
 were of his own engraving, though most of them certainly 
 were. He employed other engravers impressionable 
 artists they had to be for on them he impressed the in- 
 fluence of his genius. Luke Sullivan, that brilliant young
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 181 
 
 Irishman, was the chief of these, and his " March to 
 Finchley " interprets the very spirit and accent of Hogarth. 
 Another was Bernard Baron, an accomplished French 
 engraver ; another, Gerard Scotin. While to France, 
 too, he owed Simon Francois Ravenet, and each of these 
 did two of the six plates of the " Marriage a la Mode." 
 
 The coming of Ravenet was of considerable import- 
 ance, for he brought the traditions of his master, the 
 famous Le Bas, whose happy blending of etching with 
 pure line-engraving extended and enriched the capacities 
 of the line-engraver, and strengthened his artistic appeal. 
 The progress of the art in this country was greatly ad- 
 vanced by Ravenet's own rich and brilliant prints, so 
 full of spirit and the suggestion of colour, after Rem- 
 brandt, Titian, Paul Veronese, and others of the old 
 masters, as well as after Reynolds, Zoffany, and other 
 contemporaries, which won him one of the first associate- 
 ships of the Royal Academy. He influenced the art and 
 its popular consideration also through his pupils. 
 
 One of these was John Hall, who, commencing his art- 
 life as a painter on porcelain at the Chelsea factory, where 
 Ravenet was engraving copper-plates for stamping upon 
 the porcelain, became, under the French master's teach- 
 ing, a very capable artist with point and graver. He 
 engraved after Gainsborough and Reynolds, but he revelled 
 in West, and when, on the death of his friend Woollett, 
 he succeeded as " Historical Engraver to the King," 
 it was because of his " Oliver Cromwell Dissolving the 
 Long Parliament " and " The Death of Schomberg at 
 the Battle of the Boyne," both after West. Hall died in 
 1797 at the age of fifty-eight, a widely respected man, 
 and the eldest of his thirteen children became Master of 
 Pembroke College, Oxford. 
 
 The most famous of Ravenet's pupils, however, was 
 William Wynne Ryland, another " Engraver to the King," 
 whose name is writ large in eighteenth-century engraving- 
 history ; but, though he worked much and ably in line, 
 it is his association with the introduction into England 
 of the easier stipple-manner, and the development of
 
 182 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the colour-print, that makes him remarkable even more 
 than the fact of his having been hanged at Tyburn. But 
 Ryland's story belongs to the next chapter. 
 
 Ravenet had come over from France about 1750. 
 Even earlier had come his fellow Associate-Engraver of 
 the Royal Academy, Pierre Charles Canot, an excellent 
 engraver of landscape and sea-pieces, and the village 
 idylls of Teniers and Ostade ; and Francois Vivares, who, 
 originally a tailor's apprentice, was practically the pioneer 
 of landscape-engraving in England and the founder of a 
 school. Bartolozzi, himself a master of line, in a moment 
 of emotional exaggeration, called Vivares " the finest land- 
 scape engraver in the world," although Bartolozzi had 
 known Woollett, and even on one memorable occasion 
 saved, with an experiment of re-biting the ground, a plate 
 that Woollett in despair believed to be ruined. Yet 
 only Woollett surpassed, or even equalled, Vivar s, whose 
 translations of the landscapes of Claude Lorrain, Patel 
 (the French Claude), Gaspard Poussin, Gainsborough, 
 Berghem, Joseph Vernet, the Smiths, and others, are 
 more than faithful, while the " Moonlight " of Van den 
 Heer has something of the beauty of mystery. Vivares 
 learned his engraving in London from his fellow-countryman 
 Jean Baptiste Claude Chatelain, an able, yet very idle 
 and dissolute man ; but Vivares was ever as industrious 
 as he was popular, and truly he had need to be, for he 
 was the father of thirty-one children, and one was his 
 namesake, an engraver also. 
 
 Thomas Major, who had been a pupil of Le Bas, 
 worked in London from about 1750 until his death in 
 1799, won eminence through landscape and figure-pieces, 
 chiefly after the Dutch masters, was one of the inaugural 
 group of Royal Academy engravers, and had royal and 
 official appointments. During his residence in Paris a 
 sensational adventure had befallen him. After the 
 Battle of Culloden, two hundred and twenty-two French 
 soldiers had surrendered at Inverness to General 
 Bland and the pursuing English cavalry. As a matter 
 of fact, I believe they were Irishmen in the French
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 183 
 
 service. Anyhow, they were detained as prisoners, 
 and, since there was no entente cordials in those 
 days, France determined to make reprisals. It was 
 known that Thomas Major, the young English en- 
 graver working in Le Bas's studio, was only about five 
 feet high ; a troop of stalwart gendarmes could easily 
 arrest him and march him off to the Bastille. Major 
 at first enjoyed the humour of the situation, but three 
 months imprisonment in the Bastille was beyond a joke. 
 However, it turned to his advantage. The governor, the 
 Marquis d'Argenson, possessed a fine collection of pictures, 
 and as soon as he discovered that the young English 
 prisoner was a talented engraver, he procured permission 
 to release him, and straightway set him to engrave in 
 his gallery. But it was curious that Major should have 
 been made to pay in this way for the final overthrow of 
 the Stuart cause, for he was a direct descendant of the 
 Richard Major, of Hursley, whose daughter Dorothy be- 
 came Oliver Cromwell's daughter-in-law. 
 
 There was one of his brother engravers with whom 
 Major must have enjoyed a good laugh over his Bastille 
 experience, when they met, a little later, in Le Bas's 
 studio, and that was Robert Strange ; for the joke was 
 that innocent loyalist Major had suffered imprisonment 
 for Culloden, with which he had no concern, whereas 
 rebel Jacobite Strange, who might have been taken 
 red-handed on the field, escaped literally scot-free. For- 
 tunate for art that he did, for he became, as Leigh Hunt 
 said, " the greatest engraver, perhaps, this country has 
 seen." And the romance of his life shaped his career. 
 
 Robert Strange was descended from the Strangs of 
 Balcaskie, in Fifeshire, an ancient stock, whose name 
 stood for strength. His father was David Strang, of 
 Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, and there, in that far island, 
 Robert was born on July i4th, 1721. His boyhood, 
 fatherless at twelve, knew no artistic influence indeed, 
 as he himself said later, " never had an idea of art passed 
 the Pcntland Firth." But Nature was there in all the 
 strenuous glory of the Northern seas, and, while he was
 
 1 84 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 receiving what was called a classical education at the 
 local grammar-school, the boy would spend his leisure 
 hours sailing or rowing about the coast, peering with 
 curious fancy down to the " deep's un trampled floor, with 
 green and purple seaweeds strown," or composing into 
 pictures, with natural instinct, the lines of sea and land 
 and sky, or drawing with crude pencil the appealing forms 
 of things and beings. The wonder and the beauty of 
 the sea dominated him, and he could not bear the thought 
 of any life away from it ; so he resolved upon a naval 
 career. His mother opposed this decisively and effectually, 
 and, after a family conclave, he was placed, at fourteen 
 years of age, with a local attorney. The experiment 
 proved a failure, for though now, as always with him, 
 duty was a guiding principle, he hated the law, and having 
 " in his soul the sense of all the sea," he could hear her 
 call only. Then an elder step-brother, being a lawyer 
 in Edinburgh and worldly-wise, sent for Robert to come 
 southward, and be introduced to the friendly captain of 
 a man-of-war lying at Leith. The boy was delighted at 
 the offer of a trial cruise, but this cruise, owing to the 
 exigencies of the service, lasted unexpectedly five months, 
 and by that time young Strange had " suffered a sea- 
 change," and decided that the navy was not for him. 
 So he went docilely into his step-brother's office ; but 
 neither was the law for him. His kindly, wise, elder 
 brother discovered the boy's surreptitious sketches, and 
 showed them to Richard Cooper, the English engraver, 
 who had not long settled in Edinburgh. The result was 
 a six years' apprenticeship to Cooper. 
 
 Very industrious, happy years those were for young 
 Robin, as his friends called him, and very advantageous 
 and profitable for Cooper. Robin, too, made profit out 
 of them, for his native Kirkwall was proud of him, and 
 gave him commissions for himself, and for the time these 
 occupied he conscientiously compensated his master after 
 the completion of his indentures. This was in 1741. He 
 was now an engraver in independent practice, and 
 he was making friends and a local reputation. But
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 185 
 
 the times were disturbed; so, too, was Robert Strange's 
 heart. 
 
 It so happened that " Bonnie Prince Charlie " chose 
 for his attempt to win back the family crown the very 
 time that Robert Strange was trying to win pretty Isabella 
 Lumisden for his wife. Her family were zealous, uncom- 
 promising Jacobites. Her brother Andrew was the 
 Prince's secretary, and she was dominated by the romance 
 of Stuart misfortunes and Stuart Rights with a capital 
 R. She could see, think, and feel nothing apart from 
 the Cause, and the Cause resolved itself into Prince 
 Charlie. She loved Robin, but would promise to marry 
 no man who would not fight for her Prince. So Robin, 
 who was now a steady-going, industrious engraver, and 
 wanted only a peaceful home and a domestic wife, like 
 Cooper's, found himself suddenly transformed into an 
 active, militant Jacobite. He engraved the Prince's 
 portrait, with the Garter and the Prince of Wales's 
 feathers, as well as monetary notes for the Prince's army 
 hanging matters both, if the Hanoverians had got hold of 
 him. He bravely bore his share, as one of the Life Guards, 
 in the fruitless fighting at Culloden, then escaped from 
 the stricken field to undergo all the tribulations of a 
 hunted fugitive. How he ventured back to Edinburgh, 
 and sought sudden refuge in the very house and very 
 room where Miss Lumisden was haply singing at her 
 needlework while the English soldiers were actually 
 searching the house, and how she, surprised by her lover's 
 unexpected entrance, had the presence of mind and stout- 
 ness of heart to continue her song without a break, while 
 she quickly hid him under her capacious hoop-petticoat 
 as a Russian Court dame had earlier hidden and saved an 
 empress from a murderous mob is not one of the least 
 romantic incidents of a romantic chapter of history. 
 Novelists have made use of it. 
 
 Emboldened by this escape, and tired of being hunted, 
 Strange remained in the city. There were many places 
 in old Edinburgh where he could hide, and many good 
 friends to the Cause who would help to conceal him.
 
 1 86 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Besides, who better than himself could draw and engrave 
 the portraits of the Jacobite and Hanoverian leaders 
 then in popular demand ? He did these, of course, in 
 secret, and lived on the proceeds. Then he took a still 
 bolder step. Early in 1747 he married Miss Lumisden, 
 and this had also to be in secret. But, as soon as the Act 
 of Grace encouraged him to emerge from his hiding-places, 
 he was obliged to take leave of his wife and set out for 
 Rouen, where his brother-in-law, Lumisden, was in 
 attendance on Prince Charles, and where Strange was to 
 commence those studies necessary to forward his artistic 
 career. His great-grand-daughter, by the way, who 
 carries on the Jacobite traditions to this day, once told 
 me how Strange, travelling to London in the guise of a 
 poor student, with Virgil in his pocket, fell in with General 
 Wade's army just across the border, and begged to be 
 allowed to march with it for protection, revealing his 
 identity only in a letter of thanks to the General when 
 he was safe on his way to France. 
 
 In Rouen Strange studied drawing under Descamps, 
 and, winning the first prize at the Academy, thought 
 of becoming a miniature painter ; but his true bent was 
 towards the copper-plate, and, in June, 1749, he went 
 to Paris and placed himself under Le Bas. From him 
 he learned the use of the dry-point, or etching-needle, 
 for the preparatory work in line-engraving, and adapted 
 it to his own work in a manner entirely his own, carrying 
 on the etched parts imperceptibly with the graver, and 
 producing those marvellous and incomparable results of 
 roundness and delicacy in the representation of flesh, which 
 place his engravings, in spite of opaque skies and occasional 
 weakness in drawing, among the masterpieces of the art. 
 
 Having learnt all that Le Bas could teach him, and 
 given hostages to fortune in his two first plates of real 
 importance, Van Loo's " Cupid " and Wouverman's 
 " Return from Market," displaying his mastery over 
 both the neat and the free styles, Strange came to London 
 in October, 1750, and settled in Parliament Street, where 
 he was joined by his wife and child.
 
 CHARLES I IN CORONATION ROBES 
 
 FROM THE LINE ENGRAVING av SIR ROBERT STRANGC 
 After Vanituck.
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 187 
 
 With all his powers as an engraver fully matured, 
 and master of the greatest, noblest, and most difficult 
 branch of his art, as line-engraving must always be re- 
 garded, Strange now began his lifelong effort to raise 
 and cultivate the popular taste in art, then, as we have 
 seen, in so low a state, by engraving the works of the 
 great masters, chiefly the Italians, and, as Walpole said, 
 "with a tool worthy of Italian engravers." He also 
 sought to effect this praiseworthy purpose by importing 
 from Rome engravings after famous pictures ; while, 
 as his means increased, he bought examples of the masters 
 themselves, and publicly exhibited his collection. He 
 constantly visited Paris, engraving there and buying 
 pictures, and his fame was now spreading over Europe. 
 In 1754 he moved to the " Golden Head," Henrietta Street, 
 Covent Garden, afterwards McArdell's house, and there, 
 in 1757, he issued his famous plates, " The Finding of 
 Romulus and Remus " and " Caesar repudiating Pompoeia," 
 after P. da Cortona, " Belisarius," after Salvator Rosa, and 
 Charles I.'s three children, after Vandyck. 
 
 Strange was now one of the most famous and esteemed 
 engravers in Europe, and his whole artistic being was 
 yearning towards Italy. But now occurred the first of 
 those untoward incidents which disturbed his equanimity, 
 and left bitter feelings which rankled for years. Allan 
 Ramsay, the principal Court-painter, wished Strange 
 to engrave his portraits of the Prince of Wales, soon 
 to be King George III., and Lord Bute. Now, although 
 Strange would willingly have complied, had it been 
 practicable, the four years required for engraving the 
 two plates would have upset all his plans for the Italian 
 engraving tour, on which his heart was set. Besides, the 
 remuneration offered was absurdly inadequate as a 
 matter of fact, a ninth part only of the sum subsequently 
 paid to William Wynne Ryland, who accepted the com- 
 mission, and was appointed " Engraver to the King." 
 Strange's Jacobitism had nothing to do with his refusal, 
 but Ramsay was annoyed, and distorted the engraver's 
 reasonable explanation to the Prince and Lord Bute.
 
 i88 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 So much mischief was made that for many years 
 Strange lost the chance of Court favour, which, in 
 spite of his wife's persistent Jacobitism, he would 
 gladly have enjoyed for the furtherance of his art- 
 projects. 
 
 In 1760, having provided funds for his journey by 
 the sale of red-chalk drawings, Strange set out on his 
 memorable Italian tour, taking with him, among his 
 letters of recommendation, one from Horace Walpole 
 to Sir Horace Mann, British Envoy at the Court of Tus- 
 cany how odd that sounds nowadays ! introducing 
 him as "a very first-rate artist, and by far our best." 
 This Italian tour was a triumphal progress. Everywhere 
 homage was paid to Strange as to a great artist, for in 
 Italy, not as in early Georgian England, the creator or 
 interpreter of beauty was a personage of honour and 
 consequence. In Florence, Bologna, Rome, he was 
 splendidly received, his genius was acknowledged, and 
 membership of the Academies was conferred upon him. 
 He painted miniatures for ready money to pay his way, 
 but, in the great palaces, the Borghese, the Corsini, the 
 Spada, he made drawings from the masters for his en- 
 graving. Prince Rezzonito, the Pope's nephew, placed 
 an apartment in the Vatican at his disposal, specially 
 fitted for his work ; scaffolding was erected where he 
 wished, and the same privilege was his in the Baronelli 
 Palace at Naples, and, indeed, wherever he went. When 
 they made him a member of the ancient Academy of 
 St. Luke, the great Piranese spoke his eulogy. On the 
 ceiling of the room in the Vatican where the prints were 
 kept, Strange's portrait, painted by Toffanelli, was intro- 
 duced among those of the greatest engravers, an honour 
 unique for a British artist. In Parma, where he was 
 particularly honoured at Court, he was appointed Professor 
 at the Royal Academy, in appreciation of his superb 
 engraving of Correggio's famous " St. Jerome," or " II 
 Giorno," that picture of many adventures, for which 
 the painter was paid, by the pious old widow who com- 
 missioned it, over and above the eighty golden crowns
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 189 
 
 agreed upon, six months' board, two cart-loads of faggots, 
 a quantity of wheat, and a pig ! 
 
 One incident disturbed the triumph or, rather, the 
 peace of his tour, and this was apparently a sequel to 
 his trouble over the Court pictures. Dalton, the King's 
 librarian, was in Italy purchasing pictures for the royal 
 collections, and, when Strange, meeting him with Francesco 
 Bartolozzi in Bologna, and, suspecting no bad faith, 
 mentioned certain pictures he intended engraving, he 
 found, when he applied to the authorities for permission 
 to copy them, that he had been forestalled by the agent 
 of the King of England, and that Bartolozzi, who had 
 bound himself to Dalton for three years, had been engaged 
 to engrave those pictures. Strange was justly furious 
 with Dalton, and, perhaps unjustly, he accused Bartolozzi 
 of being a party to the intrigue. However, his represent- 
 ations of the injustice, backed by the esteem in which 
 the Bolognese held him, effectually removed his disabilities. 
 But the circumstance always rankled, and added to the 
 cumulative volcano of artistic quarrels and grievances 
 which for years was smouldering in his mind, until it 
 broke into eruption in the celebrated pamphlet, " An 
 Inquiry into the Rise and Establishment of the Royal 
 Academy, to which is prefixed a letter to the Earl of Bute." 
 
 Truth to tell, Robert Strange had, with his sincere 
 artistic conscience, a hyper-sensitive egoism, which he 
 had come to regard as identical with the nobility 
 and dignity of the engraver's art. Being somewhat 
 irascible in temperament, anything that conflicted with 
 this idea became a grievance, which he subjected to a 
 volcanising process. He seems to have had little or no 
 sympathy with contemporary art, but his whole being 
 was devoted to propagating the pictorial ideals and 
 principles of the old masters through the medium of 
 the graven line. His taste in selection may not always 
 be above question by the critical judgment of to-day, 
 but his singleness of purpose, making for artistic righteous- 
 ness, was above cavil. He sacrificed even his domestic 
 comfort to it, for, devoted to his wife and children, he
 
 igo OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 was obliged to spend months and years at a time away 
 from them, copying and engraving the masters. Yet 
 he was always at loggerheads with his brother artists, 
 when they did not see eye to eye with him, although 
 we hear of him socially among them at Old Slaughter's 
 in Hogarth's day, and later at the Turk's Head. 
 
 Fresh from being elected, in 1765, a member of 
 the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, 
 he returned to London to be made a director of the In- 
 corporated Society of Artists, with its new royal charter. 
 But trouble with his co-directors began with the very 
 first exhibition, emphasised by jealousy of undue favour, 
 as he thought, shown to Bartolozzi. Then came the 
 foundation of the Royal Academy, with its exclusion 
 of engravers and inclusion of Bartolozzi among the painters ! 
 Here was indeed an insult to the art, and Strange, after 
 his wont, resented this with indignant tongue and pen. 
 The subsequent institution of the Associate-Engraver class 
 was a compromise which he scorned, as did Woollett, 
 Sharp, and Hall, claiming for their art nothing less than full 
 equality with the painters, sculptors, and architects. That a 
 British Royal Academy of Arts should refuse its full honours 
 to an engraver such as Strange or Woollett, and accord them 
 to a painter like Edward Penny, for instance, was, of course, 
 ridiculous ; yet this anomaly was not corrected until 
 Samuel Cousins was elected Royal Academician in 1855 ! 
 
 In the year of the first Royal Academy exhibition, 
 1769, Strange, as an educational counterblast, opened at 
 his house in Castle Street, Leicester Fields, an exhibition 
 of his own collection of old masters, and published a 
 descriptive catalogue with his own critical notes on the 
 painters. It was certainly a varied collection, repre- 
 senting the Italian, Spanish, French, Flemish, and Dutch 
 schools, and perhaps Strange hoped it might help the 
 public to look at the Royal Academy exhibition with a 
 juster sense of art. It was not, however, until 1775 that 
 he published his Royal Academy pamphlet, and vented 
 all his grievances, and incidentally afforded lively oppor- 
 tunities for the jibers and jeerers of the Press.
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 191 
 
 Then, leaving all quarrels and bitter feelings behind, 
 he went to Paris with his wife and family, and there 
 lived five fruitful, peaceful years, engraving among 
 other great things Guercino's " Death of Dido." In 
 1780, however, he returned to London and settled in 
 Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields at that time 
 still a fashionable street. 
 
 Strange seems now to have outgrown his grievances, 
 as he had outgrown his Jacobitism in spite of his wife, 
 who would not allow the word " Pretender " to pass un- 
 challenged, and to whom King George III. was still only 
 the Elector of Hanover ! But, after all, she was a sensible 
 woman, as she was a devoted wife ; Culloden was ancient 
 history, and " her Prince " well, he was never likely to 
 reign at St. James's, whereas the Elector no, King 
 George, since it must be so was only too ready to show 
 his appreciation of her gifted husband. 
 
 The long-desired Court favour was at hand, the oppor- 
 tunity for reconciliation favourable. Strange had pro- 
 duced a magnificent engraving of Vandyck's great picture 
 of Charles I. and the Marquis of Hamilton, in the Louvre, 
 and, as a pair to it, he craved permission to engrave 
 the Queen Henrietta in the King's collection. King 
 George gladly acquiesced ; but when Strange next applied 
 for permission to engrave West's picture of the apotheosis 
 of the dead little Princes Octavius and Alfred an affair 
 of children and cherubs in the clouds, with a view of 
 Windsor beneath the father and mother in the King 
 and Queen were touched, and they took the engraver to their 
 hearts. It was the promise of this, of course, that had 
 induced Strange to engrave this picture of the King's 
 dead pets by the King's favourite painter. The royal 
 family delighted to watch him at work in the palace, 
 and King George was full of compliments. 
 
 The old Jacobite engraver being reconciled to the Hano- 
 verian King through the picturing of dead children was 
 almost an idyll. " What would you have thought had 
 anyone foretold this in 1746 ? " asked Lord Buchan one day, 
 when he saw Strange at work in front of the picture. As
 
 1 92 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Mrs. Strange was not present, probably the engraver 
 referred to " wild oats," and laughed. He had seen 
 the world since Culloden. 
 
 The climax to his romantic story came when, at the 
 Queen's Palace,* Strange presented proofs of his engraving 
 to the delighted King, who had had a particular tenderness 
 for those dead children, especially Octavius, " his com- 
 panion, his comfort, his delight," as Mrs. Papendiek tells. 
 King George was profuse in praise of the print. " Mr. 
 Strange," he said, " I have another favour to ask of you. 
 It is that you will attend the levee on Wednesday or 
 Friday that I may confer on you the honour of knight- 
 hood unless," he added playfully, " you refuse to accept 
 it from the Elector of Hanover." He had no sooner 
 left the gratified engraver than he returned, saying, 
 " I'm going immediately to St. James's ; if you'll follow 
 me, I'll do it now the sooner the better." 
 
 So, forty-one years after Culloden, a sword was drawn 
 to dub the once Jacobite rebel a loyal knight of King 
 George. The newspaper wits had their fun over the 
 affair, but Lady Strange, as her letters show, was over- 
 joyed and very proud. " My knight," she wrote to her 
 Jacobite brother, " has obtained a compleat victory 
 over all his enemies, which gives a relish to the whole." 
 She even went so far as to describe West's picture as 
 " most beautiful," and King George as " His Majesty " ! 
 
 Sir Robert Strange had not very long to enjoy his 
 victory. The next year, 1788, saw him in broken health, 
 trying the efficacy of the Hot Wells at Bristol, and, although 
 he went again to Paris as late as 1791, he was henceforth 
 a confirmed invalid in Great Queen Street. His last 
 effort was to prepare for publication sets of his finest 
 proofs, with a portrait of himself after Greuze, an intro- 
 ductory note on the progress of engraving, and a grateful 
 dedication to the King. Lady Strange, to whom he 
 left a comfortable fortune, sold these sets, after his death, 
 at eighty guineas each. 
 
 * Now called Biickingham Palace.
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 193 
 
 The great engraver died on July 5th, 1792, and was 
 buried in the family vault in St. Paul's, Covent Garden. 
 We have full details of his last hours in a pathetic letter 
 written by his widow to their second son, Sir Thomas 
 Andrew Lumisden Strange, then Chief Justice in Nova 
 Scotia, and later in Madras a great authority on Indian 
 law. " Oh, what I and my dear children have lost ! 
 The best of husbands, fathers, and men." That was a 
 fine epitaph for a widow to write after exactly fifty years 
 of conjugal life, and on a husband with an irascible artistic 
 temperament ! Perhaps, unconsciously, she was penning 
 her own encomium as a wife and a woman. 
 
 When Horace Walpole, writing in 1762 of the state 
 of engraving in England, said " Vivares and some others 
 have great merit in graving landscape," it is strange indeed 
 that so discerning a connoisseur did not particularly 
 mention William Woollett. The more so because he described 
 Edward Rooker as the " Marc Antonio of architecture," 
 praised Thomas Major's prints, after Teniers, as equal to 
 any French works of the kind, and concluded with the 
 remark that when he had named that " capital master," 
 Strange, not yet Sir Robert, he had " mentioned the art 
 at its highest period in Britain." Yet Woollett must 
 always rank among the great engravers of the world, and 
 his name will ever stand, together with those of Strange 
 and Sharp, for the heights of achievement in English 
 line-engraving, although presumably he was included 
 only among the unnamed " some others " of Walpole. 
 
 William Woollett was born in King Street, Maidstone, 
 on August I5th, 1735. His father, Philip Woollett, a 
 flax-dresser, was one of twelve Maidstone tradesmen who 
 were in the habit of meeting convivially at the " Ship." 
 One day they were more convivial than usual ; for it 
 became known that a lottery ticket, for which they had 
 jointly subscribed, had drawn a prize of 5,000. With 
 his twelfth share the flax-dresser promptly leased a public- 
 house in the Rose Yard, called the " Turk's Head." The 
 sign appealed to young William, his son ; perhaps it seemed 
 to him prophetic of the days when, at the celebrated 
 
 N
 
 194 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 "Turk's Head" Tavern in London, he should associate as 
 an equal with famous artists. Anyway, the sign appealed 
 to him, and he scratched it upon a pewter pot, and so 
 determined his future career. Philip Woollett had come 
 of Dutch stock ; maybe he had inherited the instinct of 
 artistic appreciation, and in the boyish scratches on the 
 pewter pot he discerned the hand that was to engrave 
 " The Death of Wolfe." A wise father, he lost no time 
 in taking the boy up to London, and apprenticing him to 
 John Tinney, an engraver who had a printshop in Fleet 
 Street. Although Tinney himself never won distinction, 
 he must have been an excellent teacher, for among 
 Woollett's fellow-pupils were Anthony Walker, and John 
 Browne, the accomplished landscape-engraver, who was 
 one of the first six engravers elected to the Associateship 
 of the Royal Academy. But, on the valuable groundwork 
 of his art which he had got from Tinney,Woollett developed 
 his own incomparable style out of his individual genius, 
 which inspired his eyes with a sense of vision in perfect 
 accord with the artists he interpreted, and invested his 
 hand with a magic power that made it the Ariel-like servant 
 of his vision. And, while he was becoming master of his 
 etching-point and his graver, he was studying the principles 
 of pictorial art at the St. Martin's Lane Academy, and 
 distinguishing himself among the pupils. He was very 
 near-sighted and worked with glasses. His simple, un- 
 worldly nature, true artistic temperament, and natural, 
 unpretending manner, won friends for him, as these 
 qualities had already led him into an early, improvident 
 marriage ; but they also secured for him the confidence 
 of John Boydell, then in his early days of publishing. 
 
 It was the beauty of Woollett's engraving of Claude's 
 " Temple of Apollo " that induced Boydell to commission 
 him to engrave Wilson's " Niobe " for a hundred guineas, 
 a price beyond any the young publisher had yet ventured. 
 Yet that sum, considerable to him at that time, his 
 good nature impelled him to advance by instalments 
 long before the plate was finished ; for Woollett was 
 struggling hard against poverty, with his wife and children

 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 195 
 
 to keep, in a garret in Green's Court, Castle Street, Leicester 
 Fields. However, the kindly consideration which Boydell 
 showed Woollett during the engraving of the " Niobe " 
 was happily repaid by the successful sale of the print, 
 which produced two thousand pounds. This was in 
 1761, and Woollett's pre-eminent position was now recog- 
 nised. Nobody had ever presented landscape on the 
 copper-plate as he did ; his etching-point and his graver 
 commanded the atmosphere and all the mysteries of light 
 and shade. On his plates the distances literally lent 
 enchantment to the view, while the foregrounds were 
 just as fine, just as exquisite, perfect harmony of vision 
 reigning over all. The classic landscapes of Richard 
 Wilson and Claude Lorrain found in Woollett their ideal 
 interpreter, while the imitative scenes of the Smiths, of 
 Chichester, were rendered almost classic by his genius. 
 
 As a landscape-engraver Woollett made his name, 
 but he proved himself equally great in the still more 
 difficult branch of his art, historical engraving, and in 
 this he was destined to achieve his most popular, his 
 most widely recognised, triumph. This was his engraving 
 of West's famous picture of the " Death of General Wolfe," 
 published in 1776, five years after the picture was painted. 
 The applause with which this plate was greeted was 
 universal. Woollett's fame now spread over the con- 
 tinents, and his works were sought by European collectors. 
 He was appointed " Historical Engraver to his Majesty." 
 After another five years five years of splendid, patient 
 work with illustrious results came another masterpiece, 
 the engraving of West's big sea-piece, " The Battle at 
 La Hogue," painted in 1778. This spirited print of the 
 action fought on May 23rd, 1692, by the English and 
 Dutch fleets under Sir George Rooke, against the French 
 in the harbour of La Hogue, was a worthy sequel to the 
 " Death of Wolfe," and, together with that and the 
 " Niobe," it may be said to indicate Woollett's high- 
 water mark, which means the high-water mark of line- 
 engraving. 
 
 No success spoiled Woollett, or made him other than
 
 196 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the simple-minded man, and patient, conscientious artist, 
 he had always been. In the midst of a jovial assembly of 
 his brother artists at the " Turk's Head " in Gerrard Street, 
 Soho, when some particularly good joke had " set the 
 table on a roar," Woollett asked what they were all 
 laughing at. The laugh turned on the man who had 
 failed to see the joke. What had he been thinking about ? 
 " I was thinking," said Woollett, " which way I should 
 lay the lines on the coat of General Wolfe." And it was 
 just in such a particular that the engraver showed his 
 genius, for the line-engraver has only lines through which 
 to interpret the painter's colour, his " values," and his 
 brushwork, and it is in the right selection and ordering 
 of these lines that his brain -work is revealed. 
 
 When Woollett showed the proofs of the " Battle at 
 La Hogue " to West, the painter was pleased, but wished 
 that a little more " colour " could have been given to one 
 part, and some slight alteration in the lighting could have 
 been made in another. Woollett said he would do these 
 things. " But how long will it take you, Mr. Woollett ?" 
 asked West. " Oh, about three or four months." And 
 West, who told the story, added, " And the patient 
 creature actually went through the additional labour 
 without a murmur." 
 
 Patience, however, was seemingly his special virtue, 
 and, only the month after the publication of this print, 
 Mrs. Woollett, for the fifth time, presented him with twins, 
 besides, on one occasion, a matter of triplets. Yet he 
 lived buoyantly for his art, and was in the habit of cele- 
 brating the completion of an important plate by firing 
 a cannon on his roof. Whether he did the same each 
 time the twins arrived is not recorded. Perhaps his 
 explosions were then merely verbal, for fear of disturbing 
 Mrs. Woollett. 
 
 Woollett lived always simply, and, when he died, it was 
 through having neglected an injury received while playing 
 the game of Dutch Pins, a variation of skittles. His 
 death, which occurred at his house in Charlotte Street, 
 Rathbone Place, on May 23rd, 1785, left his wife and
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 197 
 
 daughters dependent upon the sale of his prints. This 
 was sufficient only until the war with France in 1793 
 closed the Continent to British trade. But Woollett's 
 name was illustrious. He lies in St. Pancras Churchyard, 
 but a mural tablet by Thomas Banks, R.A., has honoured 
 him in Westminster Abbey these hundred years, although 
 George III. had at first pooh-poohed West's suggestion 
 of a monument in our British Valhalla. 
 
 When Woollett, at his death, left his plate of West's 
 picture of the " Landing of Charles II. at Dover " in only 
 the preliminary etched state, the engraver worthiest 
 to finish it was William Sharp, and into his hands it was 
 entrusted. The son of a gun-maker, Sharp was born in 
 London on January 29th, 1749, and very early he developed 
 a graphic tendency. His father, seeing no further than 
 his own trade, apprenticed the boy to Barak Longmate, 
 the heraldic engraver, who ornamented swords and fire- 
 arms with " bright " engraving that is, engraving not 
 intended for printed impressions. This was all the training 
 Sharp received ; but his own genius and industry found 
 him the way to become a great engraver, one of the 
 greatest that this, or any, country has ever seen. 
 
 Sharp was a youth of character and energy ; he was 
 strong and well-favoured. While still an apprentice he 
 had married a French girl, and, as soon as he was out 
 of his indentures, he took a shop in Bartholomew Lane, 
 Royal Exchange, and engraved two decorative business 
 cards, which set forth that " Sharp, Engraver," was 
 prepared to engrave " History, ornamental writing, seals, 
 etc." The "cits" in the neighbourhood of the Royal 
 Exchange did not clamour for historical art, as they 
 seem to do nowadays. So young Sharp, having made a 
 happy drawing of " Hector," the old lion at the Tower, 
 engraved it, and so well did the print sell that he promptly 
 gave up writing-engraving, moved to the neighbourhood 
 of Vauxhall, and set his face towards the heights of the 
 engraver's art, never to turn back. 
 
 He was now living a life after his own heart. Full 
 of bodily vigour, he enjoyed his daily swim in the Thames,
 
 198 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and plenty of other physical exercise. With his mind full 
 of ideas, alert with fancies, yet always seeing clearly 
 the way of art, he sought the sympathy of artists, enjoyed 
 having Woollett's old friend John Browne, the land- 
 scape-engraver, for his neighbour, and became associated 
 with Benjamin West, from whom he seems to have learned 
 much. In 1782 Boydell commissioned him to engrave 
 West's " Alfred dividing the loaf with the Pilgrim." 
 Three years after this he published his magnificent plate 
 of Guido Reni's " Doctors of the Church," which Sharp 
 himself considered his masterpiece, and Raphael Morghen 
 declared to be equal to anything of his own engraving. 
 He was turning out splendid plates, in portraiture and of 
 historical character ; and now, money having come to 
 him through the death of his brother, in 1787 he com- 
 menced publishing his own prints in Charles Street, near 
 the Middlesex Hospital. 
 
 Sharp now presents a curious psychological study. 
 Always of a mystic turn of mind, and given to indulgence 
 in fantastic theories, the early death of his wife appears 
 to have turned him towards Swedenborgianism for con- 
 solation. But at this time, clear-minded as he always 
 was about his art, he seems to have been subject to any 
 abnormal influences that offered spiritual adventures 
 in the mazes of the mystical. Richard Brothers, the 
 madman, who called himself the Prince of the Hebrews, 
 and declared himself divinely appointed to gather the 
 Jews together, and lead them back to Jerusalem, found a 
 staunch believer in Sharp, who stated as much on the 
 portrait he engraved of Brothers. That other impostor, 
 Joanna Southcott, who actually induced a hundred thou- 
 sand persons to believe her statement that she was the 
 woman in the twelfth chapter of the Revelation, also 
 found this great engraver a ready dupe. He brought 
 her from Exeter at his own expense, maintained 
 her for some time in London, portrayed the low cunning 
 of her face on the copper, and believed in her to the end. 
 Next he became concerned with Thomas Paine and Home 
 Tooke, whose portraits he engraved, but his association
 
 ri 1 1 ( ILL! ' ); L.-' 
 
 LT.-COL THE HON. CHARLES CATHCART. 
 
 After 0. Romnry.
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 199 
 
 with their politics, and membership of the Society for 
 Constitutional Information, led to his being summoned 
 to answer to the Privy Council for his revolutionary 
 principles ! As he was not really possessed of any 
 revolutionary intentions, the tedious proceedings bored 
 him. So he took advantage of a pause to hand to Pitt 
 and Henry Dundas the prospectus of a work which Tooke 
 was about to publish, requesting them to subscribe them- 
 selves, and hand it on to the other members. The naive 
 audacity of the act tickled the august Privy Council's 
 sense of humour, and, amid general laughter, the terrible 
 revolutionary suspect was allowed to go back to his 
 copper-plates. 
 
 And what copper-plates they were ! Eye to eye, and 
 mind to mind, he saw with the painters he interpreted, 
 and, with a mastery of his art that in method and genius 
 was individually his, he made their works of art live 
 again through his own. No portrait in line has surely 
 ever excelled, if it has equalled, the " Dr. Hunter," after 
 Reynolds, without which nowadays no Harley Street 
 consulting-room is considered furnished. But in the 
 engraving of men's portraits, whether it be as the inter- 
 preter of his great contemporaries, Reynolds, Romney, 
 and Raeburn, or of Vandyck himself (who does not know 
 Sharp's three heads of Charles I. ?), Sharp bears away 
 the palm even though simultaneously Valentine Green, 
 J. R. Smith, John Jones, and the rest, were producing 
 their more facile masterpieces of mezzotint. In Sharp's 
 portraiture through the graven line, it seems to me, at 
 least, there is more brain-work, more intellectual appeal, 
 than the greatest effort in mezzotint. 
 
 Having written these words, I allow my eye to wander 
 among the mezzotints on my walls, from a J. R. Smith 
 after Reynolds to one after Hoppner, from a Valentine 
 Green after Vandyck to one after Reynolds, from a John 
 Jones after Romney to a Watson after Lely, and then I 
 let it rest upon a portrait in line of Thomas Walker, 
 the Manchester Reformer, who triumphantly stood his 
 trial for high treason, and here, in William Sharp's
 
 200 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 interpretation of George Romney, I find not the sensuous 
 charm of the mezzotints, but the very intellect of the 
 engraver's art. 
 
 Considering Sharp's tendency to mysticism and emo- 
 tional credulities, this intellectual quality in his art, which 
 dominates his historical plates as well as his portraits, 
 is remarkable. It won him honour from the academies 
 of the Continent, but when Sir Joshua Reynolds offered 
 to recommend him for the Associateship of our own 
 Royal Academy, he refused, like Strange and Woollett, to 
 acknowledge his art on a level below the painter's. 
 
 Sharp was the last of the great English line-engravers. 
 When he died, on July 25th, 1824, the introduction of 
 steel-plates had already given the death-blow to his art 
 as a calling in England. He lies in Chiswick Churchyard, 
 where Hogarth lies, and Whistler. 
 
 There was one among the prominent engravers of 
 the latter part of the eighteenth century who might 
 have ranked with the greatest, and that was John Keyes 
 Sherwin, than whom none was endowed with richer 
 natural gifts ; but his success was too easy, his vanity too 
 great, his character too weak. Born in a Sussex village 
 in 1751, until he was sixteen he worked, like his father, 
 as a labourer on the Hampshire estate of William Mitford, 
 the future historian of Greece, cutting timber for ship- 
 building. Somehow Mitford discovered his talent, and 
 sent a drawing of his to the Society of Arts, which was 
 awarded a medal. He was then sent up to London to 
 study painting under John Astley, and, a little later, 
 engraving under Bartolozzi. Everything seemed easy to 
 him ; at the Royal Academy schools he won the gold 
 medal for historical painting, and his copper-plates had 
 the charm of talented facility. His line had a sensuous 
 grace, while a true feeling for beauty combined with a 
 freshness of touch to win him popularity. 
 
 Also his personality was very winning ; he would enjoy 
 life at any cost, and among his pleasures was to be a dandy 
 and a man of fashion. He worked with great rapidity, 
 and so sure was his touch he could draw his subject direct
 
 REVIVAL OF LINE ENGRAVING. 201 
 
 on the copper without any preliminary drawing, as I 
 have seen Whistler do with his dry-point. Sherwin's 
 plates of Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Hartley were done in 
 this way. He became quite a fashion, his personal charm 
 and his talent were the talk among women ; for a hand- 
 some young artist, who had been discovered among 
 rustic labourers, yet had all the ton, and could do such 
 beautiful things, was worth talking about. And, when 
 he did his large picture of the " Finding of Moses," in 
 which it was his policy to introduce the Princess Royal 
 as Pharaoh's daughter, with a number of Court beauties, 
 such as the Duchess of Devonshire and her sister, Lady 
 Duncannon, the Duchess of Rutland, the Countess of 
 Jersey, as her attendants, his studio was haunted by women 
 of fashion, although the jealousies he caused by introducing 
 some and omitting others could not fail to react upon 
 himself. His head was turned. Rapidly as he made 
 money, as rapidly he spent it, and still more rapidly his 
 debts mounted, until they entirely hid him from the 
 public view. Endless were his tricks and subterfuges 
 to avoid duns and bailiffs, and some were conceived in 
 the true spirit of comedy ; but even his wits were not 
 inexhaustible. The haunts of fashion and the studios 
 knew him no more. His vogue failed entirely, he was 
 reduced to obscure hackwork for his daily food, and 
 in 1790, at thirty-nine, this once fashionable dandy and 
 charming, gifted interpreter of grace and beauty, died 
 miserably in a low tavern called " Hog in the Pound." 
 The story of eighteenth-century line-engraving in 
 England is nearly told. There remain to mention yet a 
 few artists of note. James Basire, for instance, the son 
 of an engraver, and the father and grandfather of en- 
 gravers, did many distinguished plates his portrait of 
 Captain Cook, for example and was greatly esteemed 
 in his profession, holding the position of engraver to the 
 Royal Society and also to the Society of Antiquaries, 
 which latter post was inherited in succession by his son 
 and his grandson. Of still greater distinction was James 
 Heath, a pupil of Joseph Collyer, the stipple-engraver.
 
 202 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 His admirable book illustrations, notably after Stothard's 
 designs, are innumerable ; while, perhaps, the most import- 
 ant of his plates are West's " Death of Nelson," Singleton 
 Copley's " Death of Major Pierson," Wheatley's " Gordon 
 Riots in 1780," and the "Dead Soldier," after Wright 
 of Derby. Like his master, he was given the Royal 
 Academy Associateship, and in 1794 he was appointed 
 Engraver to the King. Captain William Baillie, an Irish 
 soldier, who devoted his retirement to the graphic arts, 
 won a distinguished amateur reputation by his numerous 
 etchings after Rembrandt and other Dutch masters. 
 Charles Grignon, too, must be named for excellence, and 
 James Caldwall, and James Fittler. Then there were 
 the capital landscape-engravers : William Byrne, and his 
 pupil, John Landseer, a staunch champion of his art, 
 and the father of eminent sons, Sir Edwin, Charles, and 
 Thomas Landseer ; William Watts ; William Angus ; 
 B. T. Pouncy, Woollett's pupil and brother-in-law ; and 
 Daniel Lerpiniere, the disciple of Vivares. 
 
 Of William Black and his work I shall not attempt to 
 speak; a whole literature is growing in his glory. He 
 used the graven line or the etched line for his medium of 
 expression, as he used verse or colour, according to his 
 mood. But with Blake it is always the idea expressed, 
 with the spiritual impulse behind it, that chiefly counts. 
 So, too, with the etched line of James Gillray and Thomas 
 Rowlandson, its satirical and pictorial import carries it 
 beyond the scope of this chapter. Besides, are there not 
 Mr. Joseph Grego's sumptuous volumes to interpret the 
 two great satirists ? 
 
 But where is the line-engraver in these days ? Is his 
 glory departed for ever ? We rejoice in the painter- 
 etcher. We are proud of our Strang and our Short and 
 our Cameron, and grateful for their beauties ; but is the 
 beautiful line of a Strange or a Woollett past hoping for ? 
 Is the noble art of Faithorne and Sharp dead in England 
 beyond resurrection ?
 
 CUPID BOUND BY 
 
 FHOM THE STIPPLE ENGRAVING 
 After Amj,'lita Kaufman. 
 
 NYMPHS. 
 
 W W. RYLAND
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE STORY OP STIPPLE ENGRAVING. 
 
 William Wynne Ryland : He introduces Stipple-engraving into 
 England, and develops the Colour-print William Blake : His 
 Prophecy Francesco Bartolozzi : His Influence Caroline Wat- 
 son P. W. Tomkins Thomas Cheesman William Nutter 
 Charles Knight I^ouis Schiavonetti John Vendramini J. M. 
 Delatre Robert S. Marcuard Peter Simon Thomas Burke 
 C. Wilkin Joseph Collyer J. Conde T. Gaugain -W. Dickin- 
 son Thomas Watson J. R. Smith William Ward John 
 Jones Robert Pollard Thomas Ryder F. D. Soiron James 
 Hogg James Minasi John Ogborne, James Gillray, etc. 
 
 WHEN William Wynne Ryland concluded his apprentice- 
 ship with Ravenet, he set forth, in company with Roubiliac, 
 the sculptor, to breathe the ampler and more stimulating 
 air of the art-world of Paris. There he sought from 
 Le Bas himself the master's handling of the graver and 
 the etching-point ; there he learned from the famous 
 Boucher the graces of design ; and there, in the studio 
 of Jean Charles Francois, he was initiated into the manner 
 of engraving in imitation of chalk drawings, which Francois 
 claimed to have invented, and Ryland later introduced 
 into England and developed under the name of stipple- 
 engraving. 
 
 Ryland, indeed, stands to the introduction into 
 this country of stipple in much the same relation as Prince 
 Rupert stands to mezzotint. But, as a matter of fact, 
 the dotted manner was only a development ; not, like 
 mezzotint, an absolutely new method. Ludwig Von 
 Siegen, in his _ memorable letter announcing his own 
 
 203
 
 204 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 invention, alludes to the dotted manner as among the 
 known forms of engraving. Then, as a precursor of 
 stipple, there was the opus mallei, a process of punching 
 the plate with an awl and mallet to produce a dotted 
 impression, which was employed by Jan Lutma, the 
 seventeenth-century Dutch engraver and goldsmith, 
 and still earlier by Giulio Campagnola, Ottavio Leoni, 
 Jean Boulanger, Agostino Veneziano, and others. Albert 
 Diirer, too, adopted a method of dotting to enrich certain 
 effects. In England graven dots were very early used 
 in the representation of flesh. We have seen William 
 Rogers, before the end of the sixteenth century, stippling 
 the face of his " Queen Elizabeth," and Lucas Vorsterman 
 employing dots still more effectively to suggest the aspect 
 of flesh in his fine head of Charles I. But, until about the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, stippling was merely 
 an accessory of the line-engraver's art ; it did not exist 
 as an art by itself. The chalk manner of Francois, how- 
 ever, practically amounted to a distinct art, and, of course, 
 there were not wanting clever, unscrupulous engravers 
 such as Louis Bonnet and Demarteau to claim for 
 themselves the credit of its invention, because they popu- 
 larised it and gained the profit that should have been 
 the inventor's. Nevertheless, it was Francois's method 
 that Ryland brought to England and developed, and 
 Bartolozzi carried to maturity and perfection. 
 
 The stipple-method was very simple, easy, and rapid. 
 It is soon described. An etching-ground was laid on 
 the plate, and on to that the picture, drawn in outline 
 on paper, was transferred, the " ground " being duly smoked 
 for the purpose. Then the outline was etched in a series 
 of dots, and all the deep and middle shadows put in with 
 larger and closer dots, or tiny groups of dots. After 
 this the aquafortis was very carefully applied, and the 
 etched portions were bitten in. Next, the bituminous 
 ground was removed, all the lighter tints were stippled 
 with the dry-point or the stipple-graver, and the bitten 
 shadows gone over with the point to deepen where 
 required and give richer effect.
 
 THE ORANGE GIRL 
 
 FROM TMC STIP 
 Aftvr J. H. Bi- 
 
 ENOHAVINQ OY BAHTOLOZZI
 
 STIPPLE ENGRAVING. 205 
 
 It was with no thought of stipple, however, that Ryland 
 returned to England after five years' absence in France 
 and Italy. In Paris he had won the gold medal which 
 gave him the privilege of study in the Roman Academy, 
 and, in loving communion with the Italian masters, he 
 had learned the classic way to draw the human figure. 
 He returned to London an accomplished artist, and 
 admirable line-engraver. Continental life had developed 
 in him an easy grace of manner, which sat well on a 
 personality of much social charm, and he found a cordial 
 welcome among those coteries which were in touch with 
 art. He made his way rapidly. 
 
 We have already seen Ryland stepping into the Court 
 shoes which Robert Strange had been obliged to refuse. 
 The gold with which they were lined tempted him to 
 marry in the exuberance of his virility he appears to 
 have chosen unwisely and also his easy way of success 
 led him to commence print-selling in Cornhill in partner- 
 ship with his pupil Henry Bryer. He was engraving 
 attractive plates in line, and the business prospered. 
 
 He was teaching, too. Joseph Strutt, to whom, 
 apart from his engravings and his writings on the art, 
 we owe so much of our knowledge of the ancient customs, 
 manners, dresses, and pastimes of the English people, 
 was a pupil of Ryland, and he might have had another 
 and a far more illustrious, but for a prophetic instinct 
 of the intended pupil. This was William Blake, whose 
 father took him to Ryland with a view to apprenticing 
 him ; but the wonderful poet-artist, then a lad of four- 
 teen, yet even then a seer, said, " I don't like the man's 
 face ; it looks as if he'll live to be hanged." So, instead 
 of Ryland, the antiquarian engraver, Basire got the 
 visionary genius for a pupil. 
 
 One is tempted to wonder whether Blake's imagination 
 would have expressed itself differently through the more 
 academic artistry he would undoubtedly have acquired 
 under Ryland, and whether contact with Blake's visionary 
 nature would have affected the impressionable Ryland to 
 his benefit. Might he not have learned from the poet's
 
 206 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 own words that " He who bends to himself a joy Doth 
 the winged life destroy ; But he who catches the joy as 
 it flies Lives in Eternity's sunrise " ? It must have been 
 shortly before the print-selling business of Ryland and Bryer 
 was declared bankrupt that the boy Blake and the man 
 Ryland came face to face. But there was much to read 
 in Ryland's face by that time, for spendthrift pleasure 
 and the luxurious passions were already engraving there 
 the lines of care. 
 
 In the art-life of France and Italy Ryland's tempera- 
 ment had bathed itself in living sunshine, and he had 
 caught the joy as it had flown ; but, when he came back 
 to London, he set himself to pursue pleasure, he would 
 " bend to himself a joy." Here he must be a man of 
 fashion, a person of consequence not an artist merely. 
 He must shine at routs, assemblies, masquerades ; the 
 E. O. tables must give him their excitements, and the 
 gay world look for him at Carlisle House and the Pan- 
 theon. He could " make a leg " with the noblest Macaroni 
 of them all, he could talk of Italian art with authority, 
 and quote French epigrams piquant enough for any 
 fashionable ears. 
 
 Ryland was certainly a success, and he spent a great 
 deal of money. His social ambition was not modest, 
 all the less so because his origin had been humble ; his 
 father was a copper-plate printer. Besides, he had a 
 wife and family to keep. The business in Cornhill had 
 been prospering to such an extent that Ryland, with the 
 habit not uncommon among those of the artistic tem- 
 perament of confounding capital with income, drew upon 
 its resources as if they were inexhaustible. 
 
 So the crash came, and the King's engraver was 
 desperate for money. But Ryland's necessity was the 
 mother of English stipple-engraving, and Angelica Kauff- 
 man was its foster-mother. 
 
 The romantic story has been told in picturesque and 
 glowing phrase by Mrs. Julia Frankau, in her engaging 
 and valuable study of the history of colour-printing in 
 this country, " Eighteenth-Century Colour-Prints." The
 
 THE HON MRS STANHOPE. 
 
 CONTEMPLATION.") 
 
 FROM TMI STIPPLE ENOHAVINO BY CAROLINE WATSON 
 Aftir Sir Joshua Reynoldi, P.K.A.
 
 ENGLISH FIRESIDE. 
 
 FROM Tut STIPPLF ENGRAVING OY P W TON 
 After C. Anvil.
 
 STIPPLE ENGRAVING. 207 
 
 collaboration of the fair young painter and the neces- 
 sitous engraver was a momentous episode in this history. 
 It influenced the course of English engraving not alto- 
 gether, perhaps, to its advantage. The chalk manner of 
 Franois, and his experiments in colour-printing, came 
 opportunely to Ryland's service, and at once he set him- 
 self to adapt these to the translation of Angelica Kauff- 
 man's pretty designs with their pseudo-classic airs and 
 graces. Among these were " Cupid bound to a Tree," 
 in which the charming designer introduced her own por- 
 trait, as she did also in " Ludit Amabiliter," and in " Venus 
 presenting Helen to Paris " ; Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
 tagu as " Morning Amusement," " O Venus Regina," 
 " Patience," " Perseverance," " The Judgment of Paris," 
 "Olirn Truncus," "Juno Cestum," "Beauty crowned 
 by Love," " Lady Hester Stanhope " but the list is 
 long. 
 
 The popular demand for these dainty stipple-prints 
 in colour was enormous, more than Ryland could possibly 
 supply. Having been able to pay his debts, he started 
 print-selling again, at 159, Strand. Then he sent to Paris 
 for Seignieur, an expert who knew all that was known 
 about colour-printing up to that date, including, of course, 
 Le Blon's process and its developments, as well as Fran- 
 9ois's, and he and Ryland, in consultation and co-operation 
 with Bartolozzi, decided the most effective way of printing 
 stipple-engravings in colour. Thus they evolved the 
 colour-print, which became so popular a craze in the last 
 twenty years or so of the eighteenth century, and has 
 lately been fashionably resuscitated as a collector's fancy, 
 or as a decorative mural accompaniment to the revival 
 of Chippendale, Sheraton, and Hepple white. 
 
 The process, involving only a single printing, differed 
 altogether from Christopher Le Blon's three-colour printing 
 of mezzotints from three separate plates, which had 
 proved so commercially unprofitable in the earlier part 
 of the century. The art consisted in discovering the 
 right tints of the various coloured inks, and applying them 
 to the engraved copper-plate in the exact order and
 
 2o8 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 degree which should make them blend to the desired tones 
 and harmonies. With a water-colour drawing to work 
 from, the first thing the colour-printer had to decide 
 was the dominating tint, with which he would then ink 
 over the plate, and then almost wipe out of the stippling, 
 so as to leave a ground- tint that should tone in harmo- 
 niously with the brighter colours to be next applied. Adding 
 the flesh tints was the last and most difficult stage of the 
 inking ; but all the application and fusing of the tints 
 on the plate demanded the nicest care and a very subtle 
 sense of colour. Then, not the least anxious part of the 
 work was warming the plate to its exact degree of sensi- 
 tiveness for printing, so that the colours should fuse with 
 sufficient tenderness, yet lack nothing of vividness and 
 brilliancy. 
 
 The extensive and continuous demand for these colour- 
 prints brought so much profit to the business in the Strand 
 that Ryland became once more the reckless spendthrift ; 
 he launched into all kinds of excesses and extravagances, 
 and allowed a liaison to drain his exchequer until, after 
 eight years of prosperity, he was again a ruined man. 
 And if, one May morning in 1783, dressed in a brown 
 coat, white waistcoat, and silk stockings, the talented 
 engraver had chanced to meet William Blake, who might 
 once have been his pupil, he would instinctively have 
 hidden his face, since he would not have dared to read 
 in those eyes of prophetic vision the answer to the fear 
 they would have read in his countenance. For he was 
 flying from the law that was not yet pursuing him, and 
 the punishment for forgery was ignominious death. 
 
 His hiding-place discovered, Ryland blundered into 
 cutting his throat, but he could not die. He protested 
 his innocence, but it was useless ; the ineffectual gash 
 in the throat condemned him. It appears to have been 
 the strongest piece of evidence against him. Many in- 
 fluential efforts were made to save him, but the King had, 
 years before, at the engraver's own prayer, pardoned 
 his brother when condemned for highway robbery, and 
 he had since refused to spare the fashionable preacher,
 
 LADY HAMILTON AS A SPINSTER. 
 
 FBOM THE STIPPLE ENGRAVING BY THOMAS CHEESM 
 After Gtorgr Romne-j
 
 SWEET POLL OF PLYMOUTH. 
 FROM THE STIPPLE ENGRAVING BY C KNIQHI 
 After T. SMharJ. R.A.
 
 
 STIPPLE ENGRAVING. 209 
 
 Dr. Dodd, who had also fallen to forgery ; so he let Ryland 
 go to Tyburn. 
 
 For the benefit of Ryland's widow and children, 
 Bartolozzi generously finished a plate on which the hap- 
 less engraver had been working up to the time of his 
 execution. This was " King John signing the Magna 
 Charta," after Mortimer. And now Bartolozzi practically 
 dominated the market for stipple-prints. One of the 
 original Royal Academicians as a painter, not as an 
 engraver his personality and influence counted for much 
 in the art-world of London, and where he led the crowd 
 would follow. 
 
 Bartolozzi had come over to England in 1764, a 
 splendid line-engraver, a fine draughtsman, and a master 
 of all the engraver's artistry, with a sweet, tender, caress- 
 ing sense of beauty, essentially Italian, yet responsive to 
 any art which had beauty for its inspiration. As a line- 
 engraver he had deservedly won high reputation in this 
 country. The " Clytie," after Annibale Carracci (of 
 which, when it was finished, he said himself, " Let Strange 
 beat that if he can ! "), " The Silence," the Guercino 
 etchings, the Franceschini groups of Bacchanalian boys, 
 and innumerable other fine and beautiful things, had 
 revealed him a master. And he had been always the 
 artist. 
 
 He was also a bon viveur, and now the commercial 
 value of the new and easy stipple tempted him to a con- 
 stant lapsing from his artistic self. Of course, he did 
 many charming, incomparable things through the medium 
 of stipple, and, fully testing all the capabilities of the art, 
 he stamped upon it his own individuality. He employed 
 it, I venture to think, most effectively for portraiture, 
 as, for example, in the " Lady Betty Foster " (the second 
 wife of William, Duke of Devonshire, Georgiana's husband), 
 the " Lady Smith and her children," and " Jane, Countess 
 of Harrington, with her two little sons," the " Lord Thur- 
 low," and others of Reynolds's, the " Lieutenant Riddell " 
 (of the Horse Grenadier Guards, who was killed in a duel, 
 and buried in Westminster Abbey), after Dowmnan, 
 o
 
 
 2io OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " Mrs. Crouch," after Romney, and " Countess Spencer," 
 after Gainsborough to name but a few. Yet it was 
 his fanciful, mythological, allegorical prints after his own 
 designs, or Cipriani's, Hamilton's, or Angelica Kauff- 
 man's his cupids, nymphs, and goddesses, his revels 
 of children, that were most in demand in his own day, 
 and are now the typical Bartolozzi prints in fashionable 
 request for the Sheraton drawing-room of to-day. Yet 
 it would be hard to say that these the " Cupid making 
 his Bow," " Contentment," " Friendship," " The Parting 
 of Achilles and Briseis," " Hector and Andromache," 
 and so on, were more popular than the " St. James's 
 Beauty " and " St. Giles's Beauty," the " Orange Girl," 
 after Benwell, " Spring," " Summer," " Autumn," and 
 " Winter " after Wheatley, and many other pretty things 
 of contemporary tendency. Bartolozzi's prints were 
 counted by thousands, they embraced every class of subject, 
 and represented most of the painters and designers of 
 his day, good, bad, and indifferent, not to mention the 
 Italian masters. Yet it is almost impossible to say for 
 certain which of Bartolozzi's signed stipple-prints are 
 actually Bartolozzi's work, for he had no scruple in putting 
 his name to the works of his pupils, even when these 
 received no finishing touches from his own hand. Often, 
 however, they were equal to anything that the master 
 could have done, and sometimes they were better engravings 
 than he would have taken the trouble to do. 
 
 Bartolozzi knew his market, and made the most of 
 it. He was a man of luxurious habits ; he spent money 
 generously, lavishly ; he gave freely ; he stinted himself 
 of nothing that his appetites desired, and his appetites 
 were epicurean. Needless to say, therefore, Bartolozzi 
 frequently found his purse empty, and he had now reached 
 an age, and a habit, when the easiest way to replenish 
 his purse seemed to him the best. 
 
 He saw that, in its craze for the stipple-print, the 
 public would accept anything that was offered; so his 
 studio became a factory. He took pupils by the score. 
 Some were established engravers who came merely to
 
 THE ALE-HOUSE DOOR 
 
 After Singleton.
 
 ipL I 
 
 CREDULOUS LADY AND ASTROLOGER 
 
 FROM THE STIPPLE ENGRAVING BY P SIMON 
 Aftrr J. K. Smith.
 
 STIPPLE ENGRAVING. 211 
 
 learn the new method, so that they, too, might fatten 
 on it ; some were apt and clever young artists, who found 
 through stipple their own happiest expression ; others 
 were the merest tyros, with no sense of art whatever. 
 But Bartolozzi used them all, and made money out of 
 them all ; and all were proud to call themselves pupils 
 of Bartolozzi. 
 
 To those with the true artistic instinct he taught that 
 stipple-engraving was an art which, while it could never 
 express pictorial grandeur, was admirably adapted to 
 the expression of sweetness and tenderness, grace and 
 elegance an art which might be always exquisite within 
 its limitations. Unfortunately, he did not teach only 
 this ; for there were those among his countless pupils 
 and they were the majority who could not have learned 
 it, who would not have understood. With those he 
 seems to have encouraged, through the influence of his 
 indifference, the gradual emasculation of the art by 
 flooding the market with meretricious designs, hastily 
 and feebly engraved, and made more flattering to the 
 popular taste by the decorative prettiness, but artistic 
 impuissance, of the cheap colour-print. 
 
 It was doubtless this indifference to the dignity of 
 the engraver's art that called forth Sir Robert Strange's 
 protest against the introduction of the stipple method. 
 " From the nature of the operation," he said, " and the 
 extreme facility with which it is executed, it has got 
 into the hands of every boy, of every print-seller in town, 
 of every manufacturer of prints, however ignorant and 
 unskilful." So it was likely to " depreciate the fine arts 
 in general, glut the public, and vitiate the growing taste 
 of the nation. This art is in itself extremely limited, 
 admits of little variety, and is susceptible of no improve- 
 ment." 
 
 Nevertheless, there were many artists among the 
 stipple-engravers of that period even Strange admitted 
 there were " ingenious artists " among them whose 
 prints are justly prized to-day, and eagerly desired by 
 the connoisseur, lor their persuasive qualities of sweet
 
 212 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and dainty charm, their decorative beauty. Among 
 these Bartolozzi's pupils were, of course, prominent, and 
 their works contributed brilliantly to the story of stipple. 
 
 To attempt, in these concluding pages, anything like 
 a description of the stipple-engravers and their prints 
 would be impossible. Their name is legion, and Mrs. 
 Frankau has covered the ground completely in her 
 " Eighteenth-Century Colour-Prints." There are names, 
 however, which command even the briefest reference 
 here. 
 
 Caroline Watson has already been mentioned in con- 
 nection with her father. Her gifts were many and rare, 
 her art was exquisite, and her stipple-engravings were 
 among the most accomplished ever done. She was as 
 happy in translating the freer art of Romney, Reynolds, 
 and Hoppner, as in her minutely finished, yet broadly 
 conceived, transcriptions of the miniatures of Cosway 
 and Sam Shelley. She knew instinctively when to use 
 pure stippling, in which none could excel her, as witness 
 the wonderful portraits of Lord and Lady Kinnoull, 
 and when to mix her methods, as in the lovely " Hon. 
 Mrs. Stanhope as Contemplation." She was Queen 
 Charlotte's official engraver, and a personal favourite 
 in high places, surely a fact sufficient to refute the " meek 
 Caroline " of tame William Hay ley's sepulchral couplets. 
 
 Peltro William Tomkins, also the Queen's engraver, 
 was, perhaps, the most gifted and refined exponent of 
 Bartolozzi's method, but his originality proclaimed itself, 
 and his art had its individual charm. Bartolozzi him- 
 self generously said of him : " He is my son in the art ; 
 he can do all I can in this way, and I hope he will do 
 more." In his portrait-prints he tempered spirit with 
 delicacy. Contemporary life and art found him readily 
 responsive, as in his " English Fireside " and " French 
 Fireside," and his domestic and idyllic prints have ex- 
 tended their appeal from his own day to this. Impres- 
 sions in colour of the pretty " Morning " and " Evening," 
 after Hamilton, for instance, now fetch prices that once were 
 considered sufficient for a great line-engraver to receive
 
 FAVOURITE CHICKENS 
 GOING TO MARKET. 
 
 SATURDAY MORNING 
 
 FROM THE STIPPLE ENGRAVING BY THOMAS BURKE 
 After W. R. Bigg. K.A.
 
 STIPPLE ENGRAVING. 213 
 
 for two years' work on a masterpiece. Tomkins was an 
 original designer of most pleasing appeal, especially when 
 he treated children, and, like his master, he always en- 
 graved children with relish. 
 
 Thomas Cheesman's prints are generally characterised 
 by an engaging individuality of manner, and the impress 
 of an artist. His well-known " Lady Hamilton as the 
 Spinster," after Romney, is one of his most charming ; 
 but for charming prints of his the choice is large. " The 
 Sempstress," " Maternal Affection," " The Reverie," each 
 has its special appeal. Cheesman lodged, in his early 
 days, with Hogarth's widow at the famous " Golden Head " 
 in Leicester Fields, and she paid him the high compliment 
 of asking Lord Charlemont that her lodger might be 
 allowed to engrave her husband's wonderful picture, 
 " The Lady's Last Stake." 
 
 William Nutter's stippling has the touch of charm, 
 the large pictorial feeling. His portraits are delightful, 
 notably Reynolds's Lady Beauchamp who afterwards 
 became the Marchioness of Hertford, and kept the gossips 
 so busy about her intimacy and influence with the Prince 
 Regent. The Shelley miniatures are also among Nutter's 
 gems, while " The Alehouse Door " and " The Farm- 
 yard," after Singleton, " Saturday Night " and " Sunday 
 Morning," after Bigg, and other popular designs of Westall, 
 Stothard, J. R. Smith, Russell, Morland, and Hamilton, 
 are always sought by collectors. 
 
 Charles Knight was an industrious and facile engraver 
 who seems to have done many things for which others 
 got the credit, and so completely had he acquired the 
 Bartolozzi touch that the master had no hesitation in 
 signing his plates. Naturally a print of " Miss Farren," 
 after Lawrence, would sell better if Bartolozzi's name 
 appeared on it. Yet Knight had, at least, the satisfaction 
 of signing the trial proofs, not necessarily for publication. 
 But Knight's acknowledged prints of popular appeal 
 were many indeed, and nothing was prettier than " Sweet 
 Poll of Plymouth," after Stothard, though equally popular 
 were "The Match Boy" and "The Primrose Girl," after
 
 214 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 J. R. Smith ; " British Plenty " and " Scarcity in India," 
 after Singleton, and others too numerous to particularise. 
 
 Louis Schiavonetti, beginning as a line-engraver, is 
 noted for his prints of William Blake's designs for Blair's 
 poem, " The Grave." But he took to stipple, was Barto- 
 lozzi's pupil for a short time, and did some charming 
 plates, the most taking being " The Mask," " The Spencer 
 Children," after Reynolds, and its companion, " The 
 Ghost," after Westall. 
 
 John Vendramini was one of Bartolozzi's most accom- 
 plished disciples, and took over his master's print-selling 
 business when Bartolozzi migrated to Portugal in 1802. 
 He engraved some of Wheatley's " Cries of London." 
 Another pupil still more intimately associated with the 
 master was J. M. Delatre, who became Bartolozzi's right- 
 hand man. He worked indefatigably and rapidly, and 
 Bartolozzi signed much of his work. He assisted the latter 
 to a considerable extent with the great plate after Singleton 
 Copley's " Death of Chatham," and won a lawsuit against 
 the painter on his own account. His popular stipples were 
 after Angelica Kauffman, Stothard, Hamilton, Cipriani, 
 Wheatley, and others. 
 
 Robert S. Marcuard also engraved after these favourite 
 designers, as indeed all the popular stipple-engravers had 
 to do ; but he differentiated his method by introducing 
 more etching to strengthen the stippling. He has left 
 us an interesting print of Bartolozzi himself, graver in 
 hand, after Reynolds. Another of the same school 
 although, indeed, they may all be described as of the 
 same school, since Bartolozzi's influence was over them 
 all, even those who never worked in his factory was 
 Peter Simon. His best-known print is the familiar 
 " Angels' Heads," of Reynolds ; but an admirable piece 
 of stippling is " The Credulous Lady and the Astrologer," 
 after J. R. Smith a transcript of a contemporary fashion 
 in superstition corresponding to the Bond Street palmist 
 craze of our own day. 
 
 Thomas Burke was an artist of distinguished talent, 
 and marked individuality. We have seen him studying
 
 LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN. 
 
 FROM THE STIPPLE ENGRAVING BY C WILKIN 
 After Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
 
 WILLIAM BECKFORD. 
 
 FROM IMC STIPPLE ENGHAVINO BY JOHN CONOC. 
 After K. Cosu/ay, K.A.
 
 STIPPLE ENGRAVING. 215 
 
 mezzotint under Dixon, but it was in stipple that he was 
 to make a reputation second to none. His stippling was 
 closer and more velvety in effect than any other's, and 
 his plates are rich in " quality." They have a distinction 
 and a beauty all their own. No wonder he was Angelica 
 Kauffman's favourite engraver, for no other could so well 
 interpret all the graces and refinements she wanted her 
 pencil to express. Burke's prints after Angelica are 
 among the gems of the stipple-engraver's art, consequently 
 one sees them constantly reproduced ; yet no repro- 
 duction can convey the charm and quality of the " Lady 
 Rushout and Daughter," for example, or " Alexander 
 resigning his mistress, Campaspe, to Apelles," . or the 
 " Cleopatra throwing herself at the feet of Augustus," or any 
 other of the Angelica Kauffman designs. But Burke could 
 put the same charm into the rustic, homely pictures of Bigg, 
 as may be seen in the " Favourite Chickens Saturday 
 Morning, Going to Market," reproduced in this volume. 
 
 Charles Wilkin was another stipple-engraver with an 
 individual manner, which marked him out for special 
 distinction, for stipple did not lend itself easily to the 
 expression of individuality. Nothing finer in this medium 
 was ever done than the " Lady Cockburn and her Children," 
 after Reynolds 's beautiful picture, now restored by the 
 late Mr. Beit's will to its legitimate home, the National 
 Gallery. It is a curious fact, however, that, after Sir 
 James Cockburn had allowed the picture to be engraved, 
 he was so dissatisfied with the print that he protested 
 against its publication. Wilkin, who had produced an 
 engraving which posterity must always prize, was not 
 unnaturally annoyed, and, much to the Cockburn family's 
 disgust, published his print with the title, " Cornelia, the 
 mother of the Gracchi." That this title was entirely in- 
 appropriate, that no macaw had ever found its way 
 across the Atlantic to ancient Rome, did not matter. 
 The print spoke for itself then, as it does to-day. It 
 interprets a beautiful work of art with exquisite art. 
 
 Joseph Collyer was an important worker in stipple, 
 which he adopted instead of line, when it became the
 
 216 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 more popular medium. His " Mrs. Fitzherbert," " Sir 
 Joseph Banks," and " Lady Banks," after Russell, his 
 " Miss Farren," after Downman, and various prints after 
 Reynolds and Russell, are his best. 
 
 J. Cond6 had a lightness of touch, and a delicate 
 pictorial sense, which made him an ideal interpreter of 
 Cosway, whose " Mrs. Fitzherbert " and " Mr. Horace 
 Beckford " (afterwards Lord Rivers, a handsome youth) 
 he made into most desirable prints. His dainty engraving 
 was particularly successful with the portraiture of lovely 
 women. 
 
 Thomas Gaugain was originally a painter a pupil 
 of Houston, by the way but the ease and profit of stipple 
 lured him from his easel. Together with his brother, 
 he made many experiments in colour-printing, and they 
 produced several very popular prints. The popular 
 thing was, in fact, ever Gaugain 's aim. " An Airing in 
 Hyde Park " is one of the prints that always excites a 
 sale room when it appears, for it means high bidding ; 
 but other popular prints of Gaugain's are Hamilton's pretty 
 children series, " Summer's Amusement," " Winter's 
 Amusement," " How smooth, brother, feel again," and 
 the " Castle in Danger " ; Bigg's " Shipwrecked Sailor," 
 and "The Sailor Boy's Return," and the " Louisa" pair, 
 after Morland. 
 
 Some of the great mezzotint engravers could not resist 
 the appeal of stipple. William Dickinson was one of the 
 best of these, and his prints in this medium are highly 
 valued, especially the " Duchess of Devonshire and 
 Viscountess Duncannon," after Angelica Kauffman, the 
 pair to Burke's " Lady Rushout." His friend Thomas 
 Watson did some stipples after Bunbury in conjunction 
 with him, but also some charming things notably 
 Gardner's " Mrs. Wilbraham " and " Mrs. Crewe," if we 
 can bring ourselves to accept the latter after Watson's 
 own superb mezzotint of Reynolds's Mrs. Crewe. 
 
 J. R. Smith's stipple-prints are, of course, engaging 
 as they are accomplished, and they are very popular with 
 collectors. The " Laetitia " series, after Morland, is
 
 THE ELOPEMENT. ITHE "STORY OF 
 
 SERIES.' 
 
 FROM THC STIPPLE ENGRAVING BY J R SMITH 
 After George Borland.
 
 STIPPLE ENGRAVING. 217 
 
 famous ; and familiar through constant reproduction 
 are " Delia in Town," " Delia in the Country," and 
 " Thoughts on a Single Life," while " A Loisir," " Flir- 
 tilla," " Narcissa," " The Chanters," are also going the 
 same way. Charming all, and interesting as typical of 
 the fashionable taste of Smith's own day ; for none was 
 more ready than he to flatter it with his easy art. But 
 any one' of his fine mezzotints is worth all he ever did 
 in stipple. 
 
 William Ward also was so much less himself, less 
 the fine artist, in stipple than in mezzotint ; yet his 
 stipples are among the things of the collector's desiring. 
 " Constancy " and " Variety," a pair after his brother-in- 
 law, Morland, " Thoughts on Matrimony," after J. R. 
 Smith, " Private Amusement " and " Public Amusement," 
 after Ramberg, " Louisa," and various dainty prints 
 from his own designs, are as popular now in the sale-rooms 
 as of old they used to be in the printsellers' shops but 
 the prices are now multifold. 
 
 John Jones also used stipple well within the limitations 
 of the medium, and, though his prints have a quality of 
 breadth, he never made the mistake of striving for mezzo- 
 tint effects. His " Earl of Mansfield," after Grimaldi's 
 miniature, is stippling of the finest, while of broader 
 treatment are the lovely " Emma " (Lady Hamilton), 
 of Romney, and the " Frances Kemble," of Downman. 
 His stipples after Romney and Reynolds are among the 
 most beautiful things of their kind, " Serena," " Erminia," 
 " Muscipula," " Collina," " Robinetta," " The Young 
 Fortune Tellers," and " The Sleeping Girl." 
 
 There remain many engravers who employed the stipple 
 method with charm, but to name a few only is possible 
 on this final page. Robert Pollard was a true artist, 
 his " Beauty governed by Prudence, crowned by Vir- 
 tuous Love " is a gem in colour ; Thomas Ryder ; F. D. 
 Soiron, known for his " Tea Garden " and " The Promen- 
 ade in St. James's Park " ; James Hogg, James Minasi, 
 John Ogborne, who did a delightful print of Mrs. Jordan ; 
 Gabriel Scorodoomoff ; Charles Turner ; Edmund Scott,
 
 218 OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Richard Earlom, Robert Thew, Antoine Cardon, William 
 Blake, Francis Haward (Mrs. Siddons as the " Tragic 
 Muse "), George Keating, R. M. Meadows, Henry Meyer, 
 the brothers Facius, J. K. Sherwin, Anker Smith, William 
 Bond, John Murphy, V. M. Picot, C. Josi, D. P. Pariset, 
 M. Bovi, and the great James Gillray, whose varied 
 pictorial work in stipple has been overshadowed by his 
 tremendous output in caricature. All these pleased the 
 taste of the town in their own day with stipple-prints in 
 monochrome or in colour, and to-day they help us to 
 know and understand more fully many phases of English 
 eighteenth-century life, which the printed word alone 
 cannot always illustrate.
 
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 Etching and Aqua- Tinting, by F. Yrubslips," 1794. J. CHR. 
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 " Teaching the Art of Engraving, Etching, and Scraping Mezzo- 
 tintos " (also L,e Blon's colour-printing method), 1764. H. BROM- 
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 W. M. CRAIG. " Lectures on Drawing, Painting, and Engraving," 
 1821. C. F. PARTINGTON. "The Engraver's Complete Guide," 
 1825. GRANGER AND NOBLE. " Biographical History of England," 
 5th edition, 1824 (ist 1775). MICHAEL BRYAN. "Dictionary of 
 Painters and Engravers," 1816, 1849, 1898, 1905. JOHN GOULD. 
 " Biographical Dictionary of Painters, Sculptors, Engravers and 
 Architects," 1838. T. H FIELDING. "The Art of Engraving," 
 1844. ALFRED ASHLEY. "Art of Etching on Copper," 1849. 
 HENRY ALKEN. "Art and Practice of Etching, etc.," 1849. 
 " THE COMPLETE AQUATINTER, being the Whole Process of Etching 
 and Engraving in Aquatinta." W. F. TIFFIN. " Gossip About 
 Portraits," 1866 ; " Catalogue of his Collection," 1889. S. T. DAVEN- 
 PORT. " Engraving and Other Reproductive Art Processes," 1865- 
 1876. PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON. " Etching and Etchers." 1868- 
 1876; "Etchers' Handbook," 1871; "The Graphic Arts," 1882;
 
 220 ENGLISH BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 "Drawing and Engraving," 1892. EDWARD HAMILTON. "En- 
 graved Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds," 1874. S. RED- 
 GRAVE. "Dictionary of Artists of the English School," 1878. 
 LOUIS A. FAG AN. " Handbook to Prints in the British Mu- 
 seum," 1876; "History of Engraving in England," 1893; 
 "Works and Memoir of William Faithorne," 1888; "Works and 
 Memoir of William Woollett," 1885. WIUJAM SPOHN BAKER. 
 "The Origin and Antiquity of Engraving," 1875; "William 
 Sharp: Life and Works," 1875. JAMES DENNISTOUN. "Memoirs 
 of Sir Robert Strange," 1855. F. WOODWARD. "Masterpieces 
 of Sir Robert Strange, with Memoir," 1874. J. CHALONER SMITH. 
 "British Mezzotint Portraits," 1878-83. J. MABERLEY. "The 
 Print Collector," 1880. W. H. WILLSHIRE. "Introduction to 
 the Study and Collection of Ancient Prints," 1877. AUSTIN DOBSON. 
 "Hogarth," 1878. JOHN IRELAND. "Hogarth Illustrated," 
 1791-8. CHARLES LAMB. "Essay on the Genius of Hogarth." 
 HENRY DELABORDE. " Engraving : Its Origin, Processes and 
 History, with chapter on English Engraving, by William Walker," 
 1886. H. P. HORNE. " Engraved Works of Gainsborough and 
 Romney," 1891. W. O. CHAPIN. " The Masters and Masterpieces 
 of Engraving," 1894. HUBERT HERKOMER, R.A. "Etching and 
 Mezzotint Engraving," 1892. ANDREW TUER. " Bartolozzi and his 
 Works," 1881. FREDERICK WEDMORE. "Masters of Etching," 
 1874; "Etching in England," 1895; "Fine Prints," 1896. 
 FRANK SHORT. "The Making of Etchings," 1888; "Tools and 
 Materials used in Etching and Engraving," 1904. ALFRED WHIT- 
 MAN. "Masters of Mezzotint," 1898; "The Print Collector's 
 Handbook," 1901 ; " Valentine Green," 1902 ; " S. W. Reynolds," 
 1903; "Samuel Cousins," 1904; "Charles Turner" (Lives and 
 Works). MRS. JULIA FRANKAU. " Eighteenth-Century Colour- 
 Prints," 1900; "John Raphael Smith: Life and Works," 1902; 
 " William and James Ward : Lives and Works," 1904. GORDON 
 GOODWIN. " James McArdell," 1903 ; " James Watson, Thomas 
 Watson, Elizabeth Judkins," 1904. C. DAVENPORT. " Mezzo- 
 tints," 1904. J. W. CLARK. " David Loggan's Cantabrigia Illus- 
 trated, with Life and Notes," 1905. " BURLINGTON FINE ARTS 
 CLUB Exhibition Catalogues " ; " BRITISH MUSEUM Guide to an 
 Exhibition of Mezzotint Engravings," 1905. SIDNEY COLVIN. "Early 
 Engraving and Engravers in England " (1545 to 1695), 1905. DR. 
 LIPPMANN. " History of Engraving and Etching," 1906. GIL- 
 CHRIST. "Life of William Blake," 1863. A. C. SWINBURNE. 
 "Critical Essay on Blake," 1868. RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D. 
 "William Blake." IRENE LANGRIDGE. "William Blake, Life and 
 Art Work," 1904. JOSEPH GREGO. " Life and Works of James 
 Gillray " ; "Life and Works of Thomas Rowlandson," 1880. 
 T. C. BUTTON. "Something about Engravings," 1885. H. G. 
 PATON. "Etching, Drypoint, Mezzotint," 1895. H. W. SINGER 
 and WM. STRANG. "Etching, Engraving, and Other Methods of 
 Printing Pictures," 1897. W. G. RAWLINSON. "Turner's Liber 
 Studiorum," 1878-1906. I. H. SLATER. "Engravings and Their 
 Value," 1900. T. STURGE MOORE (Editor). " Little Engravings " 
 (Series), 1902. Various Books on Etching, by R. S. CHATTOCK ; 
 H. R. ROBERTSON; W. G. SHRUBSOLE; G. W. RHEAD, 1883-1900. 
 "THE CONNOISSEUR"; " THE PRINTSELLER."
 
 INDEX TO ENGRAVERS. 
 
 Aggas, Ralph, 4 
 Angus, William, 202 
 
 Baillie, Captain William, 202 
 Baron, Bernard, 181 
 Bartolozzi, Francesco, 182, 189, 
 
 190, 209 
 
 Basire, James, 201, 205 
 Beard, Thomas, 98 
 Beckett, Isaac, 72 
 Blake, William, 202, 205, 218 
 Bleeck, Peter Van, 95 
 Blooteling, Abraham, 55, 68 
 Boel, Cornelius, 16 
 Bond, William, 218 
 Bovi, M., 218 
 Boydell, Josiah, 175 
 Brooks, John, 98 
 Browne, Alexander, 67, 69 
 
 - John, 194, 198 
 Bry, Theodore de, 4 
 Bryer, Henry, 205 
 Burke, Thomas, 126, 214 
 Byrne, William, 202 
 
 Caldwall, James, 202 
 Canot, Pierre Charles, 182 
 Cardon, Antoine, 218 
 Carter, William, 52 
 Cecil, Thomas, 29 
 Chatelain, J. B. C., 182 
 Cheesman, Thomas, 213 
 Clint, George, 176 
 
 Cockson, Thomas, 9, 1 1 
 Cole, Humphrey, 4 
 Collyer, Joseph, 201, 215 
 Colour-printing, described, 207 
 Conde, J., 216 
 Cooper, Richard, 184 
 Cousins, Samuel, 176, 190 
 Cross, Thomas, 29 
 
 D 
 
 Dalen, Cornells Van, 26 
 Davis, Edward le, 55 
 Dawe, George, 176 
 
 Henry, 176 
 
 Philip, 176 
 
 Dean, John, 155 
 Delaram, Francis, 16 
 Delatre, J. M., 214 
 Dickinson, William, 144, 146, 
 
 216 
 
 Dixon, John, 125 
 Doughty, Wm., 157 
 Droeshout, Martin, 24 
 
 - Michael, 25 
 Dudley, Thomas, 52 
 Dunkarton, Robert, 142 
 Dupont, Gainsborough, 173 
 
 Earlom, Richard, 102, 151, 218 
 Elstrack, Renold, 1 1 
 Etching, method described, 44 
 
 Faber, John, 89, 97 
 - John, Junr., 89
 
 222 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Facius, the Brothers, 218 
 Faithorne, William, 4, 5, 22, 30, 
 34, 49 
 
 William, the younger, 37, 
 
 43, 76 
 
 Finlayson, John, 133 
 Fisher, Edward, 108, 115 
 Fittler, James, 202 
 Ford, Michael, 98 
 Frye, Thomas, 127 
 
 Gascar, Henri, 68 
 Gaugain, Thomas, 216 
 Gay wood, Robert, 52 
 Geminus, Thomas, 2 
 Gillray, James, 202, 218 
 Glover, George, 22, 30 
 Gosse, Thomas, 176 
 Green, Valentine, 134, 162, 199 
 Grignon, Charles, 202 
 Grozer, Joseph, 175 
 
 II 
 
 Haecken, Alexander Van, 96 
 
 Haid, Johann Gottfried, 174 
 
 Hall, John, 181 
 
 Hancock, Robert, 135 
 
 Haward, Francis, 175, 218 
 
 Heath, James, 201 
 
 Hodges, Charles Howard, 165, 
 
 174 
 
 Hogarth, William, 59, 97, 179 
 Hogg, James, 217 
 Hogenberg, Francis, 4 
 
 Remigius, 4 
 
 Hole, William, 4, 14 
 
 Hollar, Wenceslaus, 36, 38, 44, 
 
 66 
 Hondius, Hendrik, 53 
 
 Jodocus, 4 
 
 Houbraken, 178 
 
 Houston, Richard, 98, 108 
 
 Hudson, Henry, 175 
 
 J 
 
 Jackson, Michael, 115 
 Jacobe, Johann, 174 
 Johnson, Thomas, 94 
 Jones, John, 148, 199, 217 
 Josi, C., 218 
 Judkins, Elizabeth, 120 
 
 K 
 
 Keating, George, 175, 218 
 Knight, Charles, 213 
 Kyte, Francis, 94 
 
 Landseer, John, 202 
 
 Laurie, Robert, 175 
 
 Lens, Bernard, 76 
 
 Lerpiniere, Daniel, 202 
 
 Line engraving, i6th and i7th 
 century exponents of, 1-59 ; 
 earliest examples of copper- 
 plate engraving in England, 
 1,2; technique of, 6 ; de- 
 cline of, 59; 1 8th century, 
 revival of, 178; its great- 
 est period, 193 ; its dis- 
 couragement, 20 1 
 
 Loggan, David, 53, 178 
 
 Lombart, Peter, 32 
 
 Lucas, David, 176 
 
 Lumley, George, 67 
 
 Lupton, Thomas Goff, 176 
 
 Luttrell, Edward, 71 
 
 M 
 
 Major, Thomas, 182, 193 
 Map-makers, early, 3, 4 
 Marchi, Giuseppe F. L., 155 
 Marcuard, Robert S., 214 
 Marshall, William, 26 
 McArdell, James, 89, 98, 100, 1 19 
 Meadows, R. M., 218 
 Meyer, Henry, 218
 
 INDEX. 
 
 223 
 
 Mezzotint, the legendary story 
 of, 60 ; Von Siegen's in- 
 vention of, 61 ; method of, 
 61 ; Prince Rupert intro- 
 duces art to England, 64 ; 
 Evelyn's announcement, 64 ; 
 earliest mezzotints, 66 ; 
 Blooteling invents the 
 " rocker," 68 ; portraits in, 
 the fashion, 69 ; White 
 combines etching with, 87 ; 
 decline of the art, 97 ; its 
 revival by the Irish School, 
 100 ; the great days of, 1 30 ; 
 the climax, 158 ; seven- 
 teenth-century exponents 
 of, 60-80 ; eighteenth-cen- 
 tury exponents of, 81-176 
 Miller, Andrew, 98 
 Minasi, James, 217 
 Murphy, John, 172, 218 
 Music, the first engraved in 
 England, 15 
 
 N 
 Nutter, William, 213 
 
 O 
 
 Ogborne, John, 217 
 Opus mallei, 204 
 " Orlando Furioso," title-page, 
 9 
 
 Pariset, D. P., 218 
 Park, Thomas, 175 
 Passe, Crispin Van de, 18 
 Magdalen - , 19 
 
 - Simon , 19 
 
 - William , 19, 21 
 
 Payne, John, 22, 35 
 Pelham, Peter, 95 
 Pether, William, 130 
 Picot, V. M., 218 
 
 Pine, John, 177 
 
 Place, Francis, 52, 66 
 
 Plates, custom of altering, 13, 
 
 21, 33, 42 
 
 Pollard, Robert, 217 
 Pouncy, B. T., 202 
 Prices, record, 138, 145 
 Purcell, Richard, 98, 113 
 
 R 
 
 Ravenet, Simon Francois, 181, 
 
 182 
 Reynolds, Samuel William, 165, 
 
 176 
 
 " Rocker," invention of the, 68 
 Rogers, William, i, 4, n 
 Rooker, Edward, 193 
 Ross, James, 136 
 Rowlandson, Thomas, 202 
 Rupert, Prince, 5, 60 
 Ryder, Thomas, 217 
 Ryland, William Wynne, 181, 
 
 187, 203, 205 
 Ryther, Augustine, 3, 4 
 
 Say, William, 176 
 Schiavonetti, Louis, 214 
 Scorodoomoff, Gabriel, 217 
 Scotin, Gerard, 181 
 Scott, Edmund, 217 
 Sharp, William, 59, 197 
 Shervvin, John Keyes, 200, 218 
 
 - William, 65 
 
 Siegen, Colonel Ludwig von, 61 
 Simon, John, 81, 97, 177 
 
 - Peter, 214 
 Smith, Anker, 218 
 
 - John, 76, 89, 159 
 
 - John Raphael, 158, 199,216 
 Soiron, F. D., 217 
 
 Somer, Paul Van, 69, 72 
 Spilsbury, Jonathan, 174 
 Spooner, Charles, 98, 112 
 Steel plates, introduction of, 200
 
 224 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Stipple, Ryland introduces 
 method into England, 181, 
 
 203 ; earlier dotted methods, 
 204; technique described, 
 
 204 ; colour-printing in, 
 206 ; Bartolozzi's develop- 
 ment of, 207 ; great popu- 
 larity of, 208 
 
 Strange, Sir Robert, 59, 162, 
 
 183, 211 
 
 Strutt, Joseph, 205 
 Sullivan, Luke, 180 
 
 Tempest, Pearce, 52 
 
 Thew, Robert, 218 
 
 Tinney, John, 194 
 
 Tomkins, Peltro William, 212 
 
 Tompson, Richard, 67, 69 
 
 Townley, Charles, 174 
 
 Turner, Charles, 176, 217 
 
 V 
 
 Vaart, John Van der, 69, 76 
 Valck, Gerard, 55, 69 
 Vanderbank, Peter, 55, 88 
 Vandergutch, Michael, 178 
 
 Vaughan, Robert, 28 
 Vendramini, John, 214 
 Vertue, George, 178 
 Vivares, Francois, 159, 182 
 Voerst, Robert Van, 26, 30 
 Vorsterman, I/ucas, 22, 26, 3^0 
 
 W 
 
 Walker, Anthony, 194 
 
 James, 156 
 Ward, James, 165, 168 
 
 William, 165, 168, 217 
 
 Watson, Caroline, 120, 212 
 
 - James, 1 14, 119 
 
 Thomas, 143, 199, 216 
 
 Watts, John, 176 
 
 - William, 202 
 
 White, George, 59, 87, 97, 177 
 
 - Robert, 55, 56 
 Wilkin, Charles, 215 
 Williams, R., 74 
 
 Woollett, William, 59, 132, 182, 
 
 193 
 Wright, Benjamin, 4 
 
 Young, John, 165, 172 
 
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 CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, La Btllt Sauvagt, LudgaU Hill, Ltndo*.
 
 ''FARMER GEORGE" from the original drawing by Lovat 
 Eraser 
 
 LOVAT FRASER 
 
 Bv ALEXANDER GREENE 
 
 Two English artists live through 
 their charming personalities as well 
 as by their published work Aubrey 
 Bcardsley and Lovat Fraser. Both 
 flashed upon the world suddenly, 
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 ity and success, grew rich in friends 
 of kindred tastes, and died young. 
 
 Eraser's activity was limited to ten 
 years, and nearly half of that was 
 stolen by the war, just as he was 
 
 tion of it. One of his interests was 
 life in the eighteenth century its 
 music, its costumes, literature and 
 architecture; and evidences of his 
 predilection appear in his work. 
 "The Beggar's Opera" gave him his 
 best opportunity to express his 
 knowledge of that period; and it 
 was through this production that he 
 entered into work for the theatre. It 
 gave him his greatest fame, and it
 
 LOVAT FRASER 
 
 By ALEXANDER GREENE 
 
 Two English artists live through 
 their charming personalities as well 
 as by their published work Aubrey 
 Beardsley and Lovat Fraser. Both 
 flashed upon the world suddenly, 
 worked a few years, tasted popular- 
 ity and success, grew rich in friends 
 of kindred tastes, and died young. 
 
 Fraser's activity was limited to ten 
 years, and nearly half of that was 
 stolen by the war, just as he was 
 becoming known. His early produc- 
 tions were in the form of broadsides, 
 chap-books, bookplates, Christmas 
 cards, posters and commercial work 
 of all sorts. He wrote verse occa- 
 sionally that he illustrated for pub- 
 lication as broadsides by the Poetry 
 Bookshop, London ; he designed an 
 alphabet for a little boy, son of an 
 American friend ; for his own daugh- 
 ter he made toys ; and he made de- 
 signs for textiles. All paths of art 
 attracted him. 
 
 With two friends, he established a 
 small publishing business under the 
 sign "The Flying Fame" ; and, short 
 though its life (killed by the war), 
 its output was exceedingly choice. 
 Under this imprint, the world re- 
 ceived the poetry of Ralph Hodgson, 
 some of the choicest of many years. 
 It appeared in the form of booklets, 
 in small paper and large paper form, 
 decorated by Fraser, the larger paper 
 copies having hand-coloured illustra- 
 tions. The titles were : "Eve," "The 
 Bull," "The Mystery" and "The 
 Song of Honour." In the same 
 series was "Five New Poems" by 
 James Stephens. In selecting this 
 poetry for his enterprise, Fraser re- 
 vealed his taste in the appreciation 
 f poetry as much as by his illustra- 
 
 tion of it. One of his interests was 
 life in the eighteenth century its 
 music, its costumes, literature and 
 architecture; and evidences of his 
 predilection appear in his work. 
 "The Beggar's Opera" gave him his 
 best opportunity to express his 
 knowledge of that period ; and it 
 was through this production that he 
 entered into work for the theatre. It 
 gave him his greatest fame, and it 
 had been running over a year at the 
 Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, at the 
 time of Fraser's death, June, 1921. 
 One of his latest associations was 
 with Karsavina of the Diaghileff 
 Ballet, for whom he designed "Nurs- 
 ery Rhymes." He did not live to 
 see the presentation of his designs 
 for "If," by Lord Dunsany. 
 
 He worked incessantly. James 
 Stephens told rne that he would work 
 while talking w r ith his friends who 
 visited him ; and, at luncheon, he 
 would draw on the menu cards and 
 even on the table cloth. Besides 
 Stephens, his intimate friends were 
 Ralph Hodgson, Haldane Macfall, 
 Rupert Brooke, John Drinkwater, 
 Gordon Craig, Max Beerbohm, Har- 
 old Monro and Beerbohm Tree. All 
 testify to his extreme happiness and 
 boyishness. One critic wrote that he 
 had no profession because he did just 
 what he most loved to do. Life was 
 joyful, and he loved it as a child. 
 His parents were able to relieve him 
 of financial worries, but almost im- 
 mediately he was a success financially 
 and artistically. However, overwork 
 and a weakness from shell shock and 
 gas during the war cut short his 
 brilliant career, following an opera- 
 tion, at the age of thirty-one.
 
 r 
 
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