Chapter 17

See Amand Montier,Robert Lindet(Paris, 1899); H. Turpin,Thomas Lindet(Bernay, 1886); A. Montier,Correspondance de Thomas Lindet(Paris, 1899).

LINDLEY, JOHN(1799-1865), English botanist, was born on the 5th of February 1799 at Catton, near Norwich, where his father, George Lindley, author ofA Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden, owned a nursery garden. He was educated at Norwich grammar school. His first publication, in 1819, a translation of theAnalyse du fruitof L. C. M. Richard, was followed in 1820 by an originalMonographia Rosarum, with descriptions of new species, and drawings executed by himself, and in 1821 byMonographia Digitalium, and by “Observations on Pomaceae,” contributed to the Linnean Society. Shortly afterwards he went to London, where he was engaged by J. C. Loudon to write the descriptive portion of theEncyclopaedia of Plants. In his labours on this undertaking, which was completed in 1829, he became convinced of the superiority of the “natural” system of A. L. de Jussieu, as distinguished from the “artificial” system of Linnaeus followed in theEncyclopaedia; the conviction found expression inA Synopsis of British Flora, arranged according to the Natural Order(1829) and inAn Introduction to the Natural System of Botany(1830). In 1829 Lindley, who since 1822 had been assistant secretary to the Horticultural Society, was appointed to the chair of botany in University College, London, which he retained till 1860; he lectured also on botany from 1831 at the Royal Institution, and from 1836 at the Botanic Gardens, Chelsea. During his professoriate he wrote many scientific and popular works, besides contributing largely to theBotanical Register, of which he was editor for many years, and to theGardener’s Chronicle, in which he had charge of the horticultural department from 1841. He was a fellow of the Royal, Linnean and Geological Societies. He died at Turnham Green on the 1st of November 1865.

Besides those already mentioned, his works includeAn Outline of the First Principles of Horticulture(1832),An Outline of the Structure and Physiology of Plants(1832),A Natural System of Botany(1836),The Fossil Flora of Great Britain(with William Hutton, 1831-1837),Flora Medica(1838),Theory of Horticulture(1840),The Vegetable Kingdom(1846),Folia Orchidacea(1852),Descriptive Botany(1858).

LINDLEY, NATHANIEL LINDLEY,Baron(1828- ), English judge, son of John Lindley (q.v.), was born at Acton Green, Middlesex, on the 29th of November 1828. He was educated at University College School, and studied for a time at University College, London. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1850, and began practice in the Court of Chancery. In 1855 he publishedAn Introduction to the Study of Jurisprudence, consisting of a translation of the general part of Thibaut’sSystem des Pandekten Rechts, with copious notes. In 1860 he published in two volumes hisTreatise on the Law of Partnership, including its Application to Joint Stock and other Companies, and in 1862 a supplement including the Companies Act of 1862. This work has since been developed into two text-books well known to lawyers asLindley on CompaniesandLindley on Partnership. He became a Q.C. in January 1872. In 1874 he was elected a bencher of the Middle Temple, of which he was treasurer in 1894. In 1875 he was appointed a justice of common pleas, the appointment of a chancery barrister to a common-law court being justified by the fusion of law and equity then shortly to be brought about, in theory at all events, by the Judicature Acts. In pursuance of the changes now made be became a justice of the common pleas division of the High Court of Justice, and in 1880 of the queen’s bench division. In 1881 he was raised to the Court of Appeal and made a privy councillor. In 1897, Lord Justice Lindley succeeded Lord Esher as master of the rolls, and in 1900 he was made a lord of appeal in ordinary with a life peerage and the title of Baron Lindley. He resigned the judicial post in 1905. Lord Lindley was the last serjeant-at-law appointed, and the last judge to wear the serjeant’s coif, or rather the black patch representing it, on the judicial wig. He married in 1858 Sarah Katherine, daughter of Edward John Teale of Leeds.

LINDLEY, WILLIAM(1808-1900), English engineer, was born in London on the 7th of September 1808, and became a pupil under Francis Giles, whom he assisted in designing the Newcastle and Carlisle and the London and Southampton railways. Leaving England about 1837, he was engaged for a time in railway work in various parts of Europe, and then returned, as engineer-in-chief to the Hamburg-Bergedorf railway, to Hamburg, near which city he had received his early education, and to which he was destined to stand in much the same relation as Baron Haussmann to Paris. His first achievement was to drain the Hammerbrook marshes, and so add some 1400 acres to the available area of the city. His real opportunity, however, came with the great fire which broke out on the 5th of May 1842 and burned for three days. He was entrusted with the direction of the operations to check its spread, and the strong measures he adopted, including the blowing-up of the town hall, brought bis life into danger with the mob, who professed to see in him an English agent charged with the destruction of the port of Hamburg. After the extinction of the fire he was appointed consulting engineer to the senate and town council, to the Water Board and to the Board of Works. He began with the construction of a complete sewerage system on principles which did not escape criticism, but which experience showed to be good. Between 1844 and 1848 water-works were established from his designs, the intake from the Elbe being at Rothenburgsort. Subsidence tanks were used for clarification, but in 1853, when he designed large extensions, he urged the substitution of sand-filtration, which, however, was not adopted until the cholera epidemic of 1892-1893 had shown the folly of the opposition directed against it. In 1846 he erected the Hamburg gas-works; public baths and wash-houses were built, and large extensions to the port executed according to his plans in 1854; and he supervised the construction of the Altona gas and water works in 1855. Among other services he rendered to the city may be mentioned the trigonometrical survey executed between 1848 and 1860, and the conduct of the negotiations which in 1852 resulted in the sale of the “Steelyard” on the banks of the Thames belonging to it jointly with the two other Hanseatic towns, Bremen and Lübeck. In 1860 he left Hamburg, and during the remaining nineteen years of his professional practice he was responsible for many engineering works in various European cities, among them being Frankfort-on-the-Main, Warsaw, Pesth, Düsseldorf, Galatz and Basel. In Frankfort he constructed sewerage works on the same principles as those he followed in Hamburg, and the system was widely imitated not only in Europe, but also in America. He was also consulted in regard to water-works at Berlin, Kiel, Stralsund, Stettin and Leipzig; he advised the New River Company of London on the adoption of the constant supply system in 1851; and he was commissioned by the British Government to carry out various works in Heligoland, including the big retaining wall “Am Falm.” He died at Blackheath, London, on the 22nd of May 1900.

LINDO, MARK PRAGER(1819-1879), Dutch prose writer, of English-Jewish descent, was born in London on the 18th of September 1810. He went to Holland when nineteen years of age, and once established there as a private teacher of the English language, he soon made up his mind to remain. In 1842 he passed his examination at Arnhem, qualifying him as a professor of English in Holland, subsequently becoming a teacher of the English language and literature at the gymnasium in that town. In 1853 he was appointed in a similar capacity at the Royal Military Academy in Breda. Meanwhile Lindo had obtained a thorough grasp of the Dutch language, partly during his student years at Utrecht University, where in 1854 he gained the degree of doctor of literature. His proficiency in the two languages led him to translate into Dutch several of the works of Dickens, Thackeray and others, and afterwards also of Fielding, Sterne and Walter Scott. Some of Lindo’s translations bore the imprint of hasty and careless work, and all were very unequal in quality. His name is much more likely to endure as the writer of humorous original sketches and novelettes in Dutch, which he published under the pseudonym of De Oude Herr Smits (“Old Mr Smits”). Among the most popular are;Brieven en Ontboezemingen(“Letters and Confessions,” 1853, with three “Continuations”);Familie van Ons(“Family of Ours,” 1855);Bekentenissen eener Jonge Dame(“Confessions of a Young Lady,” 1858);Uittreksels uit het Dagboek van Wijlen den Heer Janus Snor(“Extracts from the Diary of the late Mr Janus Snor,” 1865);Typen(“Types,” 1871); and, particularly,Afdrukken van Indrukken(“Impressions from Impressions,” 1854, reprinted many times). The last-named was written in collaboration with Lodewyk Mulder, who contributed some of its drollest whimsicalities of Dutch life and character, which, for that reason, are almost untranslatable. Lodewyk Mulder and Lindo also founded together, and carried on, for a considerable time alone, theNederlandsche Spectator(“The Dutch Spectator”), a literary weekly, still published at The Hague, which bears little resemblance to its English prototype, and which perhaps reached its greatest popularity and influence when Vosmaer contributed to it a brilliant weekly letter under the fanciful title of Vlugmaren (“Swifts”). Lindo’s serious original Dutch writings he published under his own name, the principal one beingDe Opkomst en Ontwikkeling van het Engelsche Volk(“The Rise and Development of the British People,” 2 vols. 1868-1874)—a valuable history. Lodewyk Mulder published in 1877-1879 a collected edition of Lindo’s writings in five volumes, and there has since been a popular reissue. Lindo was appointed an inspector of primary schools in the province of South Holland in 1865, a post he held until his death at The Hague on the 9th of March 1879.

LINDSAY,the family name of the earls of Crawford. The family is one of great antiquity in Scotland, the earliest to settle in that country being Sir Walter de Lindesia, who attended David, earl of Huntingdon, afterwards King David I., in his colonization of the Lowlands early in the 12th century. The descendants of Sir Walter divided into three branches, one of which held the baronies of Lamberton in Scotland, and Kendal and Molesworth in England; another held Luffness and Crawford in Scotland and half Limesi in England; and a third held Breneville and Byres in Scotland and certain lands, not by baronial tenure, in England. The heads of all these branches sat as barons in the Scottish parliament for more than two hundred years before the elevation of the chief of the house to an earldom in 1398. TheLindsays held the great mountain district of Crawford in Clydesdale, from which the title of the earldom is derived, from the 12th century till the close of the 15th, when it passed to the Douglas earls of Angus. SeeCrawford, Earls of.

See A. W. C. Lindsay, afterwards earl of Crawford,Lives of the Lindsays, or a Memoir of the Houses of Crawford and Belcarres(3 vols., 1843 and 1858).

LINDSAY,a town and port of entry of Ontario, Canada, and capital of Victoria county, on the Scugog river, 57 m. N.E. of Toronto by rail, on the Canadian Pacific railway, and at the junction of the Port Hope and Haliburton branches and the Midland division of the Grand Trunk railway. Pop. (1901) 7003. It has steamboat communication, by way of the Trent canal, with Lake Scugog and the ports on the Trent system. It contains saw and grist mills, agricultural implement and other factories.

LINDSEY, THEOPHILUS(1723-1808), English theologian, was born in Middlewich, Cheshire, on the 20th of June 1723, and was educated at the Leeds Free School and at St John’s College, Cambridge, where in 1747 he became a fellow. For some time he held a curacy in Spitalfields, London, and from 1734 to 1756 he travelled on the continent of Europe as tutor to the young duke of Northumberland. He was then presented to the living of Kirkby-Wiske in Yorkshire, and after exchanging it for that of Piddletown in Dorsetshire, he removed in 1763 to Catterick in Yorkshire. Here about 1764 he founded one of the first Sunday schools in England. Meanwhile he had begun to entertain anti-Trinitarian views, and to be troubled in conscience about their inconsistency with the Anglican belief; since 1769 the intimate friendship of Joseph Priestley had served to foster his scruples, and in 1771 he united with Francis Blackburne, archdeacon of Cleveland (his father-in-law), John Jebb (1736-1786), Christopher Wyvill (1740-1822) and Edmund Law (1703-1787), bishop of Carlisle, in preparing a petition to parliament with the prayer that clergymen of the church and graduates of the universities might be relieved from the burden of subscribing to the thirty-nine articles, and “restored to their undoubted rights as Protestants of interpreting Scripture for themselves.” Two hundred and fifty signatures were obtained, but in February 1772 the House of Commons declined even to receive the petition by a majority of 217 to 71; the adverse vote was repeated in the following year, and in the end of 1773, seeing no prospect of obtaining within the church the relief which his conscience demanded, Lindsey resigned his vicarage. In April 1774 he began to conduct Unitarian services in a room in Essex Street, Strand, London, where first a church, and afterwards the Unitarian offices, were established. Here he remained till 1793, when he resigned his charge in favour of John Disney (1746-1816), who like himself had left the established church and had become his colleague. He died on the 3rd of November 1808.

Lindsey’s chief work isAn Historical View of the State of the Unitarian Doctrine and Worship from the Reformation to our own Times(1783); in it he claims, amongst others, Burnet, Tillotson, S. Clarke, Hoadly and Sir I. Newton for the Unitarian view. His other publications includeApology on Resigning the Vicarage of Catterick(1774), andSequel to the Apology(1776);The Book of Common Prayer reformed according to the plan of the late Dr Samuel Clarke(1774);Dissertations on the Preface to St John’s Gospel and on praying to Jesus Christ(1779);Vindiciae Priestleianae(1788);Conversations upon Christian Idolatry(1792); andConversations on the Divine Government, showing that everything is from God, and for good to all(1802). Two volumes ofSermons, with appropriate prayers annexed, were published posthumously in 1810; and a volume of Memoirs, by Thomas Belsham, appeared in 1812.

LINDSTRÖM, GUSTAF(1829-1901), Swedish palaeontologist, was born at Wisby in Gotland on the 27th of August 1829. In 1848 he entered the university at Upsala, and in 1854 he took his doctor’s degree. Having attended a course of lectures in Stockholm by S. L. Lovén, he became interested in the zoology of the Baltic, and published several papers on the invertebrate fauna, and subsequently on the fishes. In 1856 he became a school teacher, and in 1858 a master in the grammar school at Wisby. His leisure was devoted to researches on the fossils of the Silurian rocks of Gotland, including the corals, brachiopods, gasteropods, pteropods, cephalopods and crustacea. He described also remains of the fishCyathaspisfrom Wenlock Beds, and (with T. Thorell) a scorpionPalaeaphonusfrom Ludlow Beds at Wisby. He determined the true nature of the operculated coralCalceola; and while he described organic remains from other parts of northern Europe, he worked especially at the Palaeozoic fossils of Sweden. He was awarded the Murchison medal by the Geological Society of London in 1895. In 1876 he was appointed keeper of the fossil Invertebrata in the State Museum at Stockholm, where he died on the 16th of May 1901.

See obituary (with portrait), by F. A. Bather, inGeol. Mag.(July 1901), p. 333.

LINDUS,one of the three chief cities of the island of Rhodes, before their synoecism in the city of Rhodes. It is situated on the E. side of the island, and has a finely placed acropolis on a precipitous hill, and a good natural harbour just N. of it. Recent excavations have discovered the early temple of Athena Lindia on the Acropolis, and splendid Propylaea and a staircase, resembling those at Athens. The sculptors of the Laocoon are among the priests of Athena Lindia, whose names are recorded by inscriptions. Some early temples have also been found, and inscriptions cut on the rock recording the sacrifices known asΒουκάτια. There are also traces of a theatre and rock-cut tombs. On the Acropolis is a castle, built by the knights in the 14th century, and many houses in the town show work of the same date.

SeeRhodes; also Chr. Blinkenberg and K. F. Kinch,Exploration arch. de Rhodes(Copenhagen, 1904-1907).

LINE,a word of which the numerous meanings may be deduced from the primary ones of thread or cord, a succession of objects in a row, a mark or stroke, a course or route in any particular direction. The word is derived from the Lat.linea, where all these meanings may be found, but some applications are due more directly to the Fr.ligne.Linea, in Latin, meant originally “something made of hemp or flax,” hence a cord or thread, fromlinum, flax. “Line” in English was formerly used in the sense of flax, but the use now only survives in the technical name for the fibres of flax when separated by heckling from the tow (seeLinen). The ultimate origin is also seen in the verb “to line,” to cover something on the inside, originally used of the “lining” of a garment with linen.

In mathematics several definitions of the line may be framed according to the aspect from which it is viewed. The synthetical genesis of a line from the notion of a point is the basis of Euclid’s definition,γραμμὴ, δὲ μῆκος ἀπλατές(“a line is widthless length”), and in a subsequent definition he affirms that the boundaries of a line are points,γραμμῆς δὲ πέρατα σημεῖα. The line appears in definition 6 as the boundary of a surface:ἐπιφανείας δὲ πέρατα γραμμαἰ(“the boundaries of a surface are lines”). Another synthetical definition, also treated by the ancient Greeks, but not by Euclid, regards the line as generated by the motion of a point (ῥύσις σημείου), and, in a similar manner, the “surface” was regarded as the flux of a line, and a “solid” as the flux of a surface. Proclus adopts this view, styling the lineἀρχήin respect of this capacity. Analytical definitions, although not finding a place in the Euclidean treatment, have advantages over the synthetical derivation. Thus the boundaries of a solid may define a plane, the edges a line, and the corners a point; or a section of a solid may define the surface, a section of a surface the line, and the section of a line the “point.” The notion of dimensions follows readily from either system of definitions. The solid extends three ways,i.e.it has length, breadth and thickness, and is therefore three-dimensional; the surface has breadth and length and is therefore two-dimensional; the line has only extension and is unidimensional; and the point, having neither length, breadth nor thickness but only position, has no dimensions.

The definition of a “straight” line is a matter of much complexity. Euclid defines it as the line which lies evenly with respect to the points on itself—εὐθεῖα γραμμή ἐστιν ἥτις ἐξ ἴσου τοῖς ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῆς σημείοις κεῖται: Plato defined it as the line having its middle point hidden by the ends, a definition of no purpose since it only defines the line by the path of a ray oflight. Archimedes defines a straight line as the shortest distance between two points.

A better criterion of rectilinearity is that of Simplicius, an Arabian commentator of the 5th century:Linea recta est quaecumque super duas ipsius extremitates rotata non movetur de loco suo ad alium locum(“a straight line is one which when rotated about its two extremities does not change its position”). This idea was employed by Leibnitz, and most auspiciously by Gierolamo Saccheri in 1733.

The drawing of a straight line between any two given points forms the subject of Euclid’s first postulate—ᾐιτήσθω ἀπὸ παντὸς σημείου ἐπὶ πᾶν σημεῖον εὐθεῖαν γραμμὴν ἀγάγειν, and the producing of a straight line continuously in a straight line is treated in the second postulate—καὶ πεπερασμένην εὐθεῖαν κατὰ τὸ συνεχὲς ἐπ᾽ εὐθείας ἐκβαλεῖν.

For a detailed analysis of the geometrical notion of the line and rectilinearity, see W. B. Frankland,Euclid’s Elements(1905). In analytical geometry the right line is always representable by an equation or equations of the first degree; thus in Cartesian coordinates of two dimensions the equation is of the form Ax + By + C = 0, in triangular coordinates Ax + By + Cz = 0. In three-dimensional coordinates, the line is represented by two linear equations. (SeeGeometry, Analytical.)Line geometryis a branch of analytical geometry in which the line is the element, and not the point as with ordinary analytical geometry (seeGeometry, Line).

LINE ENGRAVING,on plates of copper or steel, the method of engraving (q.v.), in which the line itself is hollowed, whereas in the woodcut when the line is to print black it is left in relief, and only white spaces and white lines are hollowed.

The art of line engraving has been practised from the earliest ages. The prehistoric Aztec hatchet given to Humboldt in Mexico was just as trulyengravedas a modern copper-plate which may convey a design by Flaxman; the Aztec engraving is ruder than the European, but it is the same art. The important discovery which made line engraving one of the multiplying arts was the discovery how to print an incised line, which was hit upon at last by accident, and known for some time before its real utility was suspected. Line engraving in Europe does not owe its origin to the woodcut, but to the chasing on goldsmiths’ work. The goldsmiths of Florence in the middle of the 15th century were in the habit of ornamenting their works by means of engraving, after which they filled up the hollows produced by the burin with a black enamel made of silver, lead and sulphur, the result being that the design was rendered much more visible by the opposition of the enamel and the metal. An engraved design filled up in this manner was called aniello. Whilst a niello was in progress the artist could not see it so well as if the enamel were already in the lines, yet he did not like to put in the hard enamel prematurely, as when once it was set it could not easily be got out again. He therefore took a sulphur cast of his niello in progress, on a matrix of fine clay, and filled up the lines in the sulphur with lampblack, thus enabling himself to judge of the state of his engraving. At a later period it was discovered that a proof could be taken on damped paper by filling the engraved lines with a certain ink and wiping it off the surface of the plate, sufficient pressure being applied to make the paper go into the hollowed lines and fetch the ink out of them. This was the beginning of plate printing. The niello engravers thought it a convenient way of proving their work—the metal itself—as it saved the trouble of the sulphur cast, but they saw no further into the future. They went on engraving nielli just the same to ornament plate and furniture; nor was it until the 16th century that the new method of printing was carried out to its great and wonderful results. There are, however, certain differences between plate-printing and block-printing which affect the essentials of art. When paper is drivenintoa line so as to fetch the ink out of it, the line may be of unimaginable fineness, it will print all the same; but when the paper is only pressedupona raised line, the line must have some appreciable thickness; the wood engraving, therefore, can never—except in atour de force—be so delicate as plate engraving. Again, not only does plate-printing excel block-printing in delicacy; it excels it also in force and depth. There never was, and there will never be, a woodcut line having the power of a deep line in a plate, for in block-printing the line is only a blackened surface of paper slightly impressed, whereas in plate-printing it is acastwith an additional thickness of printing ink.

The most important of the tools used in line-engraving is the burin, which is a bar of steel with one end fixed in a handle rather like a mushroom with one side cut away, the burin itself being shaped so that the cutting end when sharpened takes the form of a lozenge, point downwards. The burin acts exactly like a plough; it makes a furrow and turns out a shaving of metal as the plough turns the soil of a field. The burin, however, is pushed while the plough is pulled, and this peculiar character of the burin, or graver, as a pushed instrument at once establishes a wide separation between it and all the other instruments employed in the arts of design, such as pencils, brushes, pens and etching needles.

The elements of engraving with the burin upon metal will be best understood by an example of a very simple kind, as in the engraving of letters. The capital letter B contains in itself the rudiments of an engraver’s education. As at first drawn, before the blacks are inserted, this letter consists of two perpendicular straight lines and four curves, all the curves differing from each other. Suppose, then, that the engraver has to make a B, he will scratch these lines, reversed, very lightly with a sharp point or style. The next thing is to cut out the blacks (not the whites, as in wood engraving), and this would be done with two different burins. The engraver would get his vertical black line by a powerful ploughing with the burin between his two preparatory first lines, and then take out some copper in the thickest parts of the two curves. This done, he would then take a finer burin and work out the gradation from the thick line in the midst of the curve to the thin extremities which touch the perpendicular. When there is much gradation in a line the darker parts of it are often gradually ploughed out by returning to it over and over again. The hollows so produced are afterwards filled with printing ink, just as the hollows in a niello were filled with black enamel; the surplus printing ink is wiped from the smooth surface of the copper, damped paper is laid upon it, and driven into the hollowed letter by the pressure of a revolving cylinder; it fetches the ink out, and you have your letter B in intense black upon a white ground.When the surface of a metal plate is sufficiently polished to be used for engraving, the slightest scratch upon it will print as a black line, the degree of blackness being proportioned to the depth of the scratch. An engraved plate from which visiting cards are printed is a good example of some elementary principles of engraving. It contains thin lines and thick ones, and a considerable variety of curves. An elaborate line engraving, if it is a pure line engraving and nothing else, will contain only these simple elements in different combinations. The real line engraver is always engraving a line more or less broad and deep in one direction or another; he has no other business than this.

When the surface of a metal plate is sufficiently polished to be used for engraving, the slightest scratch upon it will print as a black line, the degree of blackness being proportioned to the depth of the scratch. An engraved plate from which visiting cards are printed is a good example of some elementary principles of engraving. It contains thin lines and thick ones, and a considerable variety of curves. An elaborate line engraving, if it is a pure line engraving and nothing else, will contain only these simple elements in different combinations. The real line engraver is always engraving a line more or less broad and deep in one direction or another; he has no other business than this.

In the early Italian and early German prints, the line is used with such perfect simplicity of purpose that the methods of the artists are as obvious as if we saw them actually at work.

The student may soon understand the spirit and technical quality of the earliest Italian engraving by giving his attention to a few of the series which used erroneously to be called the “Playing Cards of Mantegna,” but which have been shown by Mr Sidney Colvin to represent “a kind of encyclopaedia of knowledge.”

The history of these engravings is obscure. They are supposed to be Florentine; they are certainly Italian; and their technical manner is called that of Baccio Baldini. But their style is as clear as a style can be, as clear as the artist’s conception of his art. In all these figures the outline is the main thing, and next to that the lines which mark the leading folds of the drapery; lines quite classical in purity of form and severity of selection, and especially characteristic in this, that they are always really engraver’s lines, such as may naturally be done with the burin, and they never imitate the freer line of the pencil or etching needle. Shading is used in the greatest moderation with thin straight strokes of the burin, that never overpower the stronger organic lines of the design. Of chiaroscuro, in any complete sense, there is none. The sky behind the figures is represented by white paper, and the foreground is sometimes occupied by flat decorative engraving, much nearer in feeling to calligraphy than to modern painting. Sometimes there is a cast shadow, but it is not studied, and is only used to give relief. In thisearly metal engraving the lines are often crossed in the shading, whereas in the earliest woodcuts they are not; the reason being that when lines are incised they can as easily be crossed as not, whereas, when they are reserved, the crossing involves much labour of a non-artistic kind. Here, then, we have pure line-engraving with the burin, that is, the engraving of the pure line patiently studied for its own beauty, and exhibited in an abstract manner, with care for natural form combined with inattention to the effects of nature. Even the forms are idealized, especially in the cast of draperies, for the express purpose of exhibiting the line to better advantage. Such are the characteristics of those very early Italian engravings which were attributed erroneously to Mantegna. When we come to Mantegna himself we find a style equally decided. Drawing and shading were for him two entirely distinct things. He did not draw and shade at the same time, as a modern chiaroscurist would, but he first got his outlines and the patterns on his dresses all very accurate, and then threw over them a veil of shading, a very peculiar kind of shading, all the lines being straight and all the shading diagonal. This is the primitive method, its peculiarities being due, not to a learned self-restraint, but to a combination of natural genius with technical inexperience, which made the early Italians at once desire and discover the simplest and easiest methods. Whilst the Italians were shading with straight lines the Germans had begun to use curves, and as soon as the Italians saw good German work they tried to give to their burins something of the German suppleness.

The characteristics of early metal engraving in Germany are seen to perfection in Martin Schongauer and Albert Dürer, who, though with striking differences, had many points in common. Schongauer died in 1488; whilst the date of Dürer’s death is 1528. Schongauer was therefore a whole generation before Dürer, yet not greatly inferior to him in the use of the burin, though Dürer has a much greater reputation, due in great measure to his singular imaginative powers. Schongauer is the first great German engraver known by name, but he was preceded by an unknown German master, called “the Master of 1466,” who had Gothic notions of art (in strong contrast to the classicism of Baccio Baldini), but used the burin skilfully, conceiving of line and shade as separate elements, yet shading with an evident desire to follow the form of the thing shaded, and with lines in various directions. Schongauer’s art is a great stride in advance, and we find in him an evident pleasure in the bold use of the burin. Outline and shade, in Schongauer, are not nearly so much separated as in Baccio Baldini, and the shading, generally in curved lines, is far more masterly than the straight shading of Mantegna. Dürer continued Schongauer’s curved shading, with increasing manual delicacy and skill; and as he found himself able to perform feats with the burin which amused both himself and his buyers, he over-loaded his plates with quantities of living and inanimate objects, each of which he finished with as much care as if it were the most important thing in the composition. The engravers of those days had no conception of any necessity for subordinating one part of their work to another; they drew, like children, first one object and then another object, and so on until the plate was furnished from top to bottom and from the left side to the right. Here, of course, is an element of facility in primitive art which is denied to the modern artist. In Dürer all objects are on the same plane. In his “St Hubert” (otherwise known as “St Eustace”) of c. 1505, the stag is quietly standing on the horse’s back, with one hoof on the saddle, and the kneeling knight looks as if he were tapping the horse on the nose. Dürer seems to have perceived the mistake about the stag, for he put a tree between us and the animal to correct it, but the stag is on the horse’s back nevertheless. This ignorance of the laws of effect is least visible and obtrusive in plates which have no landscape distances, such as “The Coat of Arms with the Death’s Head” (1503) and “The Coat of Arms with the Cock” (c.1512).

Dürer’s great manual skill and close observation made him a wonderful engraver of objects taken separately. He saw and rendered all objects; nothing escaped him; he applied the same intensity of study to everything. Though a thorough student of the nude—witness his Adam and Eve (1504) and other plates—he would pay just as much attention to the creases of a gaiter as to the development of a muscle; and though man was his main subject, he would study dogs with equal care (see the five dogs in the “St Hubert”), as well as pigs (see the “Prodigal Son,”c.1495); and at a time when landscape painting was unknown he studied every clump of trees, every visible trunk and branch, nay, every foreground plant, and each leaf of it separately. In his buildings he saw every brick like a bricklayer, and every joint in the woodwork like a carpenter. The immense variety of the objects which he engraved was a training in suppleness of hand. His lines go in every direction, and are made to render both the undulations of surfaces (see the plane in the Melencolia, 1514) and their texture (see the granular texture of the stones in the same print).

From Dürer we come to Italy again, through Marcantonio, who copied Dürer, translating more than sixty of his woodcuts upon metal. It is one of the most remarkable things in the history of art, that a man who had trained himself by copying northern work, little removed from pure Gothicism, should have become soon afterwards the great engraver of Raphael, who was much pleased with his work and aided him by personal advice. Yet, although Raphael was a painter, and Marcantonio his interpreter, the reader is not to infer that engraving had as yet subordinated itself to painting. Raphael himself evidently considered engraving a distinct art, for he never once set Marcantonio to work from a picture, but always (much more judiciously) gave him drawings, which the engraver might interpret without going outside his own art; consequently Marcantonio’s works are always genuine engravings, and are never pictorial. Marcantonio was an engraver of remarkable power. In him the real pure art of line-engraving reached its maturity. He retained much of the early Italian manner in his backgrounds, where its simplicity gives a desirable sobriety; but his figures are boldly modelled in curved lines, crossing each other in the darker shades, but left single in the passages from dark to light, and breaking away in fine dots as they approach the light itself, which is of pure white paper. A school of engraving was thus founded by Raphael, through Marcantonio, which cast aside the minute details of the early schools for a broad, harmonious treatment.

The group known as the engravers of Rubens marked a new development. Rubens understood the importance of engraving as a means of increasing his fame and wealth, and directed Vorsterman and others. The theory of engraving at that time was that it ought not to render accurately the local colour of painting, which would appear wanting in harmony when dissociated from the hues of the picture; and it was one of the anxieties of Rubens so to direct his engravers that the result might be a fine plate independently of what he had painted. To this end he helped his engravers by drawings, in which he sometimes indicated what he thought the best direction for the lines. Rubens liked Vorsterman’s work, and scarcely corrected it, a plate he especially approved being “Susannah and the Elders,” which is a learned piece of work well modelled, and shaded everywhere on the figures and costumes with fine curved lines, the straight line being reserved for the masonry. Vorsterman quitted Rubens after executing fourteen important plates, and was succeeded by Paul Pontius, then a youth of twenty, who went on engraving from Rubens with increasing skill until the painter’s death. Boetius a Bolswert engraved from Rubens towards the close of his life, and his brother Schelte a Bolswert engraved more than sixty compositions of Rubens, of the most varied character, including hunting scenes and landscapes. This brings us to the engraving of landscape as a separate study. Rubens treated landscape in a broad comprehensive manner, and Schelte’s way of engraving it was also broad and comprehensive. The lines are long and often undulating, the cross-hatchings bold and rather obtrusive, for they often substitute unpleasant reticulations for the refinement and mystery of nature, but it was a beginning, and a vigorous beginning. The technical developments of engraving under the influence ofRubens may be summed up briefly as follows: (1) The Italian outline had been discarded as the chief subject of attention, and modelling had been substituted for it; (2) broad masses had been substituted for the minutely finished detail of the northern schools; (3) a system of light and dark had been adopted which was not pictorial, but belonged especially to engraving, which it rendered (in the opinion of Rubens) more harmonious.

The history of line-engraving, from the time of Rubens to the beginning of the 19th century, is rather that of the vigorous and energetic application of principles already accepted than any new development. From the two sources already indicated, the school of Raphael and the school of Rubens, a double tradition flowed to England and France, where it mingled and directed English and French practice. The first influence on English line-engraving was Flemish, and came from Rubens through Vandyck, Vorsterman, and others; but the English engravers soon underwent French and Italian influences, for although Payne learned from a Fleming, Faithorne studied in France under Philippe de Champagne the painter and Robert Nanteuil the engraver. Sir Robert Strange studied in France under Philippe Lebas, and then five years in Italy, where he saturated his mind with Italian art. French engravers came to England as they went to Italy, so that the art of engraving became in the 18th century cosmopolitan. In figure-engraving the outline was less and less insisted upon. Strange made it his study to soften and lose the outline. Meanwhile, the great classical Renaissance school, with Gérard Audran at its head, had carried forward the art of modelling with the burin, and had arrived at great perfection of a sober and dignified kind. Audran was very productive in the latter half of the 17th century, and died in 1703, after a life of severe self-direction in labour, the best external influence he underwent being that of the painter Nicolas Poussin. He made his work more rapid by the use of etching, but kept it entirely subordinate to the work of the burin. One of the finest of his large plates is “St John Baptizing,” from Poussin, with groups of dignified figures in the foreground and a background of grand classical landscape, all executed with the most thorough knowledge according to the ideas of that time. The influence of Claude Lorrain on the engraving of landscape was exercised less through his etchings than his pictures, which compelled the engravers to study delicate distinctions in the values of light and dark. Through Woollett and Vivarès, Claude exercised an influence on landscape engraving almost equal to that of Raphael and Rubens on the engraving of the figure, though he did not direct his engravers personally.

In the 19th century line-engraving received first an impulse and finally a check. The impulse came from the growth of public wealth, the increasing interest in art and the increase in the commerce of art, which, by means of engraving, fostered in England mainly by John Boydell, penetrated into the homes of the middle classes, as well as from the growing demand for illustrated books, which gave employment to engravers of first-rate ability. The check to line-engraving came from the desire for cheaper and more rapid methods, a desire satisfied in various ways, but especially by etching and by the various kinds of photography. Nevertheless, the 19th century produced most highly accomplished work in line-engraving, both in the figure and in landscape. Its characteristics, in comparison with the work of other centuries, were chiefly a more thorough and delicate rendering of local colour, light and shade, and texture. The elder engravers could draw as correctly as the moderns, but they either neglected these elements or admitted them sparingly, as opposed to the spirit of their art. In a modern engraving from Landseer may be seen the blackness of a man’s boots (local colour), the soft roughness of his coat (texture), and the exact value in light and dark of his face and costume against the cloudy sky. Nay more, there is to be found every sparkle on bit, boot and stirrup. Modern painting pays more attention to texture and chiaroscuro than classical painting did, and engraving necessarily followed in the same directions. But there is a certain sameness in pure line-engraving more favourable to some forms and textures than to others. This sameness of line-engraving, and its costliness, led to the adoption of mixed methods, extremely prevalent in commercial prints from popular artists. In the well-known prints from Rosa Bonheur, for example, by T. Landseer, H. T. Ryall, and C. G. Lewis, the tone of the skies is got by machine-ruling, and so is much undertone in the landscape; the fur of the animals is all etched, and so are the foreground plants, the real burin work being used sparingly where most favourable to texture. Even in the exquisite engravings after Turner, by Cooke, Goodall, Wallis, Miller, Willmore, and others, who reached a degree of delicacy in light and shade far surpassing the work of the old masters, the engravers had recourse to etching, finishing with the burin and dry point. Turner’s name may be added to those of Raphael, Rubens and Claude in the list of painters who have had a special influence upon engraving. The speciality of Turner’s influence was in the direction of delicacy of tone. In this respect the Turner vignettes to Roger’s poems were a high-water mark of human attainment, not likely ever to be surpassed.

The record of the art of line-engraving during the last quarter of the 19th century is one of continued decay. Technical improvements, it was hoped, might save the art; it was thought by some that the slight revival resultant on the turning back of the burin’s cutting-point—whereby the operator pulled the tool towards him instead of pushing it from him—might effect much, in virtue of the time and labour saved by the device. But by the beginning of the 20th century pictorial line-engraving in England was practically non-existent, and, with the passing of Jeens and Stacpoole, the spasmodic demand by publishers for engravers to engrave new plates remained unanswered. Mr C. W. Sherborn, the exquisite and facile designer and engraver of book-plates, has scarcely been surpassed in his own line, but his art is mainly heraldic. There are now no men capable of such work as that with which Doo, J. H. Robinson, and their fellows maintained the credit of the English School. Line-engraving has been killed by etching, mezzotint and the “mixed method.” The disappearance of the art is due not so much to the artistic objection that the personality of the line-engraver stands obtrusively between the painter and the public; it is rather that the public refuse to wait for several years for the proofs for which they have subscribed, when by another method they can obtain their plates more quickly. An important line plate may occupy a prodigious time in the engraving; J. H. Robinson’s “Napoleon and the Pope” took about twelve years. The invention of steel-facing a copper plate would now enable the engraver to proceed more expeditiously; but even in this case he can no more compete with the etcher than the mezzotint-engraver can keep pace with the photogravure manufacturer.

The Art Union of London in the past gave what encouragement it could; but with the death of J. Stephenson (1886) and F. Bacon (1887) it was evident that all hope was gone. John Saddler at the end was driven, in spite of his capacity to do original work, to spend most of his time in assisting Thomas Landseer to rule the skies on his plates, simply because there was not enough line-engraving to do. Since then there was some promise of a revival, and Mr Bourne engraved a few of the pictures by Gustave Doré. But little followed. The last of the line-engravers of Turner’s pictures died in the person of Sir Daniel Wilson (d. 1892), who, recognizing the hopelessness of his early profession, laid his graver aside, and left Europe for Canada and eventually became president of the university of Toronto.

If line-engraving still flourishes in France, it is due not a little to official encouragement and to intelligent fostering by collectors and connoisseurs. The prizes offered by the École des Beaux Arts would probably not suffice to give vitality to the art but for the employment afforded to the finished artist by the “Chalcographie du Musée du Louvre,” in the name of which commissions are judiciously distributed. At the same time, it must be recognized that not only are French engravers less busy than they were in days when line-engraving was the only “important” method of picture-translation, but they work for the most part for much smaller rewards. Moreover, the class of the work has entirely changed, partly through thereduction of prices paid for it, partly through the change of taste and fashion, and partly, again, through the necessities of the situation. That is to say, that public impatience is but a partial factor in the abandonment of the fine broad sweeping trough cut deep into the copper which was characteristic of the earlier engraving, either simply cut or crossed diagonally so as to form the series of “lozenges” typical of engraving at its finest and grandest period. That method was slow; but scarcely less slow was the shallower work rendered possible by the steel plate by reason of the much greater degree of elaboration of which such plates were capable, and which the public was taught—mainly by Finden—to expect. The French engravers were therefore driven at last to simplify their work if they were to satisfy the public and live by the burin. To compensate for loss of colour, the art developed in the direction of elegance and refinement. Gaillard (d. 1887), Blanchard, and Alphonse François (d. 1888) were perhaps the earliest chiefs of the new school, the characteristics of which are the substitution of exquisite greys for the rich blacks of old, simplicity of method being often allied to extremely high elaboration. Yet the aim of the modern engraver has always been, while pushing the capability of his own art to the farthermost limit, to retain throughout the individual and personal qualities of the master whose work is translated on the plate. The height of perfection to which the art is reached is seen in the triptych of Mantegna by Achille Jacquet (d. 1909), to whom may perhaps be accorded the first place among several engravers of the front rank. This “Passion” (from the three pictures in the Louvre and at Tours, forming the predella of the San Zeno altarpiece in Verona) not only conveys the forms, sentiment, and colour of the master, but succeeds also in rendering the peculiar luminosity of the originals. Jacquet, who gained thePrix de Romein 1870, also translated pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and engraved fine plates after Paul Dubois, Cabanel, Bouguereau, Meissonier and Detaille. The freedom of much of his work suggests an affinity with etching and dry-point; indeed, it appears that he uses the etching-needle and acid to lay in some of his groundwork and outlines. Léopold Flameng’s engraving after Jan van Eyck’s “Virgin with the Donor,” in the Louvre, is one of the most admirable works of its kind, retaining the quality and sentiment of the master, extreme minuteness and elaboration notwithstanding. Jules Jacquet is known for his work after Meissonier (especially the “Friedland”) and after Bonnat; Adrien Didier for his plates after Holbein (“Anne of Cleves”), Raphael, and Paul Veronese, among the Old Masters, and Bonnat, Bouguereau, and Roybet among the new. Jazinski (Botticelli’s “Primavera”), Sulpis (Mantegna and Gustave Moreau), Patricot (Gustave Moreau), Burney, and Champollion (d. 1901), have been among the leaders of the modern school. Their object is to secure the faithful transcript of the painter they reproduce, while readily sacrificing the power of the old method, which, whatever its force and its beauty, was easily acquired by mediocre artists of technical ability who were nevertheless unable to appreciate or reproduce anything beyond mechanical excellence.

The Belgian School of engraving is not without vitality. Gustave Biot was equally skilful in portraiture and subject (engraving after Gallait, Cabanel, Gustave Doré, among his best work); A. M. Danse executed plates after leading painters, and elaborated an effective “mixed method” of graver-work and dry-point; and de Meerman has engraved a number of good plates; but private patronage is hardly sufficient in Belgium to maintain the school in a state of prosperous efficiency.

In Germany, as might be expected, line-engraving retains not a little of its popularity in its more orthodox form. The novel Stauffer-Bern method, in which freedom and lightness are obtained with such delicacy that the fine lines, employed in great numbers, run into tone, and yield a supposed advantage in modelling, has not been without appreciation. But the more usual virtue of the graver has been best supported, and many have worked in the old-fashioned manner. Friedrich Zimmermann (d. 1887) began his career by engraving such prints as Guido Reni’s “Ecce Homo” in Dresden, and then devoted himself to the translation of modern German painters. Rudolph Pfnor was an ornamentist representative of his class; and Joseph Kohlschein, of Düsseldorf, a typical exponent of the intelligent conservative manner. His “Marriage at Cana” after Paul Veronese, “The Sistine Madonna” after Raphael, and “St Cecilia” after the same master, are all plates of a high order.

In Italy the art is well-nigh as moribund as in England. When Vittorio Pica (of Naples) and Conconi (of Milan) have been named, it is difficult to mention other successors to the fine school of the 19th century which followed Piranesi and Volpato. A few of the pupils of Rosaspina and Paolo Toschi lived into the last quarter of the century, but to the present generation Asiolo, Jesi, C. Raimondi, L. Bigola, and Antonio Isac are remembered rather for their efforts than for their success in supporting their art against the combined opposition of etching, “process” and public indifference.

Outside Europe line-engraving can no longer be said to exist. Here and there a spasmodic attempt may be made to appeal to the artistic appreciation of a limited public; but no general attention is paid to such efforts, nor, it may be added, are these inherently worthy of much notice. There are still a few who can engrave a head from a photograph or drawing, or a small engraving for book-illustration or for book-plates; there are more who are highly proficient in mechanical engraving for decorative purposes; but the engraving-machine is fast superseding this class. In short, the art of worthily translating a fine painting beyond the borders of France, Belgium, Germany and perhaps Italy can scarcely be said to survive, and even in those countries it appears to exist on sufferance and by hot-house encouragement.

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