Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/403

 *ings reproducing the characters of the drawings of the old masters, of which he published a large number. In dealing with prints of this nature we are approaching a stage when aquatint was used as an adjunct. Successive blocks were frequently used to produce intricate effects. But in the result as shown by the examples here illustrated from prints by C. M. Metz, executed by him after drawings by Parmegiano, they are printed in a warm brown colour and faithfully reproduce the old master's touch.

Before leaving aquatint we illustrate two views, one of The Wrekin, Shropshire, and the other of Marsden (Yorkshire), "published by Mr. Dibdin in 1802." These have an especial interest. We know the author of "Tom Bowling" and the score of ringing songs for sailormen, of ditties concerning "Lovely Nan" and "Blue-eyed Patty," of the "Jolly Young Waterman" who "at Blackfriars Bridge used for to ply," of "Tom Tough" and "Tom Truelove," who talked naval Kiplingese of eighteenth-century flavour, and who, between the turn of a quid of pigtail from one cheek to the other, gave forth utterances like these—"Go patter to lubbers and swabs, d'ye see, 'bout danger and fear and the like." We must quote a stanza, for Dibdin is not so well known as he was once:—

"Why, I heard the good chaplain palaver one day, About souls, heaven, mercy and such; And my timbers! what lingo he'd coil and belay,  Why, 'twas just all as one as high Dutch: