Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/184

182 proper for the art. Hitherto the fineness of line by which copperplate-engraving easily obtains delicacy of contour and soft transitions of tone, has been rarely and with difficulty attained by the best-skilled hand and eye among wood-engravers, and when attained has, usually, not been successfully printed. There remains, however, no longer any reason to exclude fine lines from wood-engraving, when once it has become plain that such work is possible without a wasteful expenditure of labor, that its results are valuable, and that it can be properly printed. But if it shall prove that the character of the line proper to copperplate is also proper to wood, it may be looked on as certain that the line-arrangement proper to the former material can never be rationally used for the latter. The crossing of lines to which the engraver on copperplate resorts is especially laborious to the engraver in wood, and after all his toil does not give any desirable effect which would not have resulted from other methods of work. It has been seen that Dürer employed this cross-hatching in imitation of copperplate-engraving; but he did so because he was ignorant of the way to arrange color so that this difficult task of engraving cross-hatchings would be unnecessary. Holbein, who was equally ignorant of the possibilities of white line, rejected cross-hatching. Bewick also rejected it, and proved it was unnecessary even where much color was to be given. In the later work of the sixteenth century, and in modern English work, wood-engraving imitated its rival art both in the character and the arrangement of its lines; it failed in both instances mainly because such imitation involved a waste of labor, and did not result in works so valuable artistically as were obtained by copperplate-engraving with far greater