103. I purpose in this chapter, as intimated in the last, to sketch
briefly what I believe to be the real uses and powers of the three kinds
of engraving, by black line; either for book illustration, or general
public instruction by distribution of multiplied copies. After thus
stating what seems to me the proper purpose of each kind of work, I may,
perhaps, be able to trace some advisable limitations of its technical
methods.
I. And first, of pure line engraving.
This is the only means by which entire refinement of intellectual
representation can be given to the public. Photographs have an
inimitable mechanical refinement, and their legal evidence is of great
use if you know how to cross-examine them. They are popularly supposed
to be "true," and, at the worst, they are so, in the sense in which an
echo is true to a conversation of which it omits the most important
syllables and reduplicates the rest. But this truth of mere transcript
has nothing to do with Art properly so called; and will never supersede
it. Delicate art of design, or of selected truth, can only be presented
to the general public by true line engraving. It will be enough for my
purpose to instance three books in which its power has been sincerely
used. I am more in fields than libraries, and have never cared to look
much into book illustrations; there are, therefore, of course, numbers
of well-illustrated works of which I know nothing: but the three I
should myself name as typical of good use of the method, are I. Rogers's
Poems, II. the Leipsic edition of Heyne's Virgil (1800), and III. the
great "Description de l'Egypte."
104. The vignettes in the first named volumes (considering the Italy
and Poems as one book) I believe to be as skillful and tender as any
hand work, of the kind, ever done; they are also wholly free from
affectation of overwrought fineness, on the one side, and from hasty or
cheap expediencies on the other; and they were produced, under the
direction and influence of a gentleman and a scholar. Multitudes of
works, imitative of these, and far more attractive, have been produced
since; but none of any sterling quality: the good books were (I was
told) a loss to their publisher, and the money spent since in the same
manner has been wholly thrown away. Yet these volumes are enough to show
what lovely service line engraving might be put upon, if the general
taste were advanced enough to desire it. Their vignettes from Stothard,
however conventional, show in the grace and tenderness of their living
subjects how types of innocent beauty, as pure as Angelico's, and far
lovelier, might indeed be given from modern English life, to exalt the
conception of youthful dignity and sweetness in every household. I know
nothing among the phenomena of the present age more sorrowful than that
the beauty of our youth should remain wholly unrepresented in Fine Art,
because unfelt by ourselves; and that the only vestiges of a likeness to
it should be in some of the more subtle passages of caricatures, popular
(and justly popular) as much because they were the only attainable
reflection of the prettiness, as because they were the only sympathizing
records of the humors, of English girls and boys. Of our oil portraits
of them, in which their beauty is always conceived as consisting in a
fixed simper--feet not more than two inches long, and accessory grounds,
pony, and groom--our sentence need not be "_guarda e passa_," but
"_passa_" only. Yet one oil picture has been painted, and so far as I
know, one only, representing the deeper loveliness of English youth--the
portraits of the three children of the Dean of Christ Church, by the son
of the great portrait painter, who has recorded whatever is tender and
beautiful in the faces of the aged men of England, bequeathing, as it
seems, the beauty of their children to the genius of his child.
105. The second book which I named, Heyne's Virgil, shows, though
unequally and insufficiently, what might be done by line engraving to
give vital image of classical design, and symbol of classical thought.
It is profoundly to be regretted that none of these old and
well-illustrated classics can be put frankly into the hands of youth;
while all books lately published for general service, pretending to
classical illustration, are, in point of Art, absolutely dead and
harmful rubbish. I cannot but think that the production of
well-illustrated classics would at least leave free of money-scathe, and
in great honor, any publisher who undertook it; and although schoolboys
in general might not care for any such help, to one, here and there, it
would make all the difference between loving his work and hating it. For
myself, I am quite certain that a single vignette, like that of the
fountain of Arethusa in Heyne, would have set me on an eager quest,
which would have saved me years of sluggish and fruitless labor.
106. It is the more strange, and the more to be regretted, that no such
worthy applications of line engraving are now made, because, merely to
gratify a fantastic pride, works are often undertaken in which, for want
of well-educated draughtsmen, the mechanical skill of the engraver has
been wholly wasted, and nothing produced useful, except for common
reference. In the great work published by the Dilettanti Society, for
instance, the engravers have been set to imitate, at endless cost of
sickly fineness in dotted and hatched execution, drawings in which the
light and shade is always forced and vulgar, if not utterly false.
Constantly (as in the 37th plate of the first volume), waving hair casts
a straight shadow, not only on the forehead, but even on the ripples of
other curls emerging beneath it: while the publication of plate 41, as a
representation of the most beautiful statue in the British Museum, may
well arouse any artist's wonder what kind of "diletto" in antiquity it
might be, from which the Society assumed its name.
107. The third book above named as a typical example of right work in
line, the "Description de l'Egypte," is one of the greatest monuments
of calm human industry, honestly and delicately applied, which exist in
the world. The front of Rouen Cathedral, or the most richly-wrought
illuminated missal, as pieces of resolute industry, are mere child's
play compared to any group of the plates of natural history in this
book. Of unemotional, but devotedly earnest and rigidly faithful labor,
I know no other such example. The lithographs to Agassiz's "poissons
fossiles" are good in their kind, but it is a far lower and easier kind,
and the popularly visible result is in larger proportion to the skill;
whereas none but workmen can know the magnificent devotion of
unpretending and observant toil, involved in even a single figure of an
insect or a starfish on these unapproachable plates. Apply such skill to
the simple presentation of the natural history of every English county,
and make the books portable in size, and I cannot conceive any other
book-gift to our youth so precious.
108. II. Wood-cutting and etching for serious purpose.
The tendency of wood-cutting in England has been to imitate the fineness
and manner of engraving. This is a false tendency; and so far as the
productions obtained under its influence have been successful, they are
to be considered only as an inferior kind of engraving, under the last
head. But the real power of wood-cutting is, with little labor, to
express in clear delineation the most impressive essential qualities of
form and light and shade, in objects which owe their interest not to
grace, but to power and character. It can never express beauty of the
subtlest kind, and is not in any way available on a large scale; but
used rightly, on its own ground, it is the _most purely intellectual_ of
all Art; sculpture, even of the highest order, being slightly sensual
and imitative; while fine wood-cutting is entirely abstract, thoughtful,
and passionate. The best wood-cuts that I know in the whole range of Art
are those of Duerer's "Life of the Virgin;" after these come the other
works of Duerer, slightly inferior from a more complex and wiry treatment
of line. I have never seen any other work in wood deserving to be named
with his; but the best vignettes of Bewick approach Duerer in execution
of plumage, as nearly as a clown's work can approach a gentleman's.
109. Some very brilliant execution on an inferior system--less false,
however, than the modern English one--has been exhibited by the French;
and if we accept its false conditions, nothing can surpass the
cleverness of our own school of Dalziel, or even of the average
wood-cutting in our daily journals, which however, as aforesaid, is only
to be reckoned an inferior method of engraving. These meet the demand of
the imperfectly-educated public in every kind; and it would be absurd to
urge any change in the method, as long as the public remain in the same
state of knowledge or temper. But, allowing for the time during which
these illustrated papers have now been bringing whatever information and
example of Art they could to the million, it seems likely that the said
million will remain in the same stage of knowledge yet for some time.
Perhaps the horse is an animal as antagonistic to Art in England, as he
was in harmony with it in Greece; still, allowing for the general
intelligence of the London bred lower classes, I was surprised by a
paragraph in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, quoting the _Star_ of November 6th
of last year, in its report upon the use made of illustrated papers by
the omnibus stablemen,--to the following effect:--
"They are frequently employed in the omnibus yards from five o'clock in
the morning till twelve at night, so that a fair day's work for a
'horse-keeper' is about eighteen hours. For this enormous labor they
receive a guinea per week, which for them means seven, not six, days;
though they do contrive to make Sunday an 'off-day' now and then. The
ignorance of aught in the world save ''orses and 'buses' which prevails
amongst these stablemen is almost incredible. A veteran horse-keeper,
who had passed his days in an omnibus-yard, was once overheard praising
the 'Lus-trated London News with much enthusiasm, as the best periodical
in London, 'leastways at the coffee-shop.' When pressed for the reason
of his partiality, he confessed it was the 'pickshers' which delighted
him. He amused himself during his meal-times by 'counting the images!'"
110. But for the classes among whom there is a real demand for
educational art, it is highly singular that no systematic use has yet
been made of wood-cutting on its own terms; and only here and there,
even in the best books, is there an example of what might be done by it.
The frontispieces to the two volumes of Mr. Birch's "Ancient Pottery and
Porcelain," and such simpler cuts as that at p. 273 of the first volume,
show what might be cheaply done for illustration of archaic classical
work; two or three volumes of such cuts chosen from the best vases of
European collections and illustrated by a short and trustworthy
commentary, would be to any earnest schoolboy worth a whole library of
common books. But his father can give him nothing of the kind--and if
the father himself wish to study Greek Art, he must spend something like
a hundred pounds to put himself in possession of any sufficiently
illustrative books of reference. As to any use of such means for
representing objects in the round, the plate of the head of Pallas
facing p. 168 in the same volume sufficiently shows the hopelessness of
setting the modern engraver to such service. Again, in a book like
Smith's dictionary of geography, the wood-cuts of coins are at present
useful only for comparison and reference. They are absolutely valueless
as representations of the art of the coin.
111. Now, supposing that an educated scholar and draughtsman had drawn
each of these blocks, and that they had been cut with as much average
skill as that employed in the wood-cuts of _Punch_, each of these
vignettes of coins might have been an exquisite lesson, both of high Art
treatment in the coin, and of beautiful black and white drawing in the
representation; and this just as cheaply--nay, more cheaply--than the
present common and useless drawing. The things necessary are indeed not
small,--nothing less than well educated intellect and feeling in the
draughtsmen; but intellect and feeling, as I have often said before now,
are always to be had cheap if you go the right way about it--and they
cannot otherwise be had for any price. There are quite brains enough,
and there is quite sentiment enough, among the gentlemen of England to
answer all the purposes of England: but if you so train your youths of
the richer classes that they shall think it more gentlemanly to scrawl a
figure on a bit of note paper, to be presently rolled up to light a
cigar with, than to draw one nobly and rightly for the seeing of all
men;--and if you practically show your youths, of all classes, that they
will be held gentlemen, for babbling with a simper in Sunday pulpits; or
grinning through, not a horse's, but a hound's, collar, in Saturday
journals; or dirtily living on the public money in government
non-offices:--but that they shall be held less than gentlemen for doing
a man's work honestly with a man's right hand--you will of course find
that intellect and feeling cannot be had when you want them. But if you
like to train some of your best youth into scholarly artists,--men of
the temper of Leonardo, of Holbein, of Duerer, or of Velasquez, instead
of decomposing them into the early efflorescences and putrescences of
idle clerks, sharp lawyers, soft curates, and rotten journalists,--you
will find that you can always get a good line drawn when you need it,
without paying large subscriptions to schools of Art.
112. III. This relation of social character to the possible supply
of good Art is still more direct when we include in our survey the
mass of illustration coming under the general head of dramatic
caricature--caricature, that is to say, involving right understanding of
the true grotesque in human life; caricature of which the worth or
harmfulness cannot be estimated, unless we can first somewhat answer the
wide question, What is the meaning and worth of English laughter? I say,
"of English laughter," because if you can well determine the value of
that, you determine the value of the true laughter of all men--the
English laugh being the purest and truest in the metal that can be
minted. And indeed only Heaven can know what the country owes to it, on
the lips of such men as Sydney Smith and Thomas Hood. For indeed the
true wit of all countries, but especially English wit (because the
openest), must always be essentially on the side of truth--for the
nature of wit is one with truth. Sentiment may be false--reasoning
false--reverence false---love false,--everything false except wit; that
_must_ be true--and even if it is ever harmful, it is as divided against
itself--a small truth undermining a mightier.
On the other hand, the spirit of levity, and habit of mockery, are among
the chief instruments of final ruin both to individual and nations. I
believe no business will ever be rightly done by a laughing Parliament:
and that the public perception of vice or of folly which only finds
expression in caricature, neither reforms the one, nor instructs the
other. No man is fit for much, we know, "who has not a good laugh in
him"--but a sad wise valor is the only complexion for a leader; and if
there was ever a time for laughing in this dark and hollow world, I do
not think it is now. This is a wide subject, and I must follow it in
another place; for our present purpose, all that needs to be noted is
that, for the expression of true humor, few and imperfect lines are
often sufficient, and that in this direction lies the only opening for
the serviceable presentation of amateur work to public notice.
113. I have said nothing of lithography, because, with the exception of
Samuel Prout's sketches, no work of standard Art-value has ever been
produced by it, nor can be: its opaque and gritty texture being wholly
offensive to the eye of any well trained artist. Its use in connection
with color is, of course, foreign to our present subject. Nor do I take
any note of the various current patents for cheap modes of drawing,
though they are sometimes to be thanked for rendering possible the
publication of sketches like those of the pretty little "Voyage en
Zigzag" ("how we spent the summer") published by Longmans--which are
full of charming humor, character, and freshness of expression; and
might have lost more by the reduction to the severe terms of
wood-cutting than they do by the ragged interruptions of line which are
an inevitable defect in nearly all these cheap processes. It will be
enough, therefore, for all serious purpose, that we confine ourselves
to the study of the black line, as produced in steel and wood; and I
will endeavor in the next paper[83] to set down some of the technical
laws belonging to each mode of its employment.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] _Art Journal_, vol. v., pp. 97-8. April 1866.--ED.
[83] The present paper was, however, the last.--ED.
End of Project Gutenberg's On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2), by John Ruskin