Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/165

Rh said the series was inartistic and worthless, and an uneducated eye can easily discover faults in it; imaginative genius of the highest order is expressed in it, nevertheless, and from this the series derives its value. Blake never made a new trial of the art.

The revival of wood-engraving was not confined to England. At the end of the eighteenth century Prussia founded a chair at Berlin for teaching the art, and made the Ungers, father and son, professors of it; but, although they contributed to the progress of wood-engraving in Germany, no real success was obtained until the time of their successor, Gubitz. In France, too, the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry began to offer prizes for the best wood-engraving as early as 1805; but some years passed before any contestants, who practised the true art, appeared. The publisher Didot deserves much of the credit for reviving French wood-engraving, because he employed Gubitz, and called to Paris the English engravers who really founded the modern French school. The efforts of societies or individuals, however, do not explain the rise of the art in our time. Wood-engraving merely shared in the renewal of life which took place at the end of the last century, and so profoundly affected literature, art, and politics. The barren classical taste disappeared in what is known as the return to nature, the intellectual life of the people was stimulated to extraordinary activity, civilization suffered rapid and important modifications, and every human pursuit and interest received an impulse or a blow. Wood-engraving felt the influence of the change, and came into demand with the other cheap pictorial arts to satisfy popular needs; the interest of the publishers, the improvements in the processes