Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/329

 of the old world eyrie set among the cliffs of East Anglia.

The necessity of working upon so hard a surface even as soft steel in order to make engraving pay commercially by having a plate to yield thousands of impressions,—"twelve hundred artist's proofs" is not an unknown quantity,—was rendered obsolete by a new discovery of coating the copper plate when finished with an infinitesimal layer of steel. The engraver worked on the soft copper, the printer was presented with the hard steel surface. This was practically the death-blow to line engraving, as the print differed in no respects from the "artist's proof." The chief difference was the price, and the only variation was the care in printing and the quality of the paper. It thus came about that commercialism ate into the vitals of line engraving, and artists' proofs at high prices were launched on the market only to be followed by prints of not inferior quality at a tenth of the price. No amount of stamping or signing could blind the public to the fact that these proofs would not hold their own in the auction-room, and so far as line engraving was concerned the decadence very soon set in. Collectors will be wise not to touch anything subsequent to 1820 other than ordinary "prints" owing to this chaotic and not very honest state of things.