best engravers, who ought to be far otherwise employed, in making
transcripts from the best works, ancient or modern, by which taste may
be improved, the mind enlarged, and the heart made to feel as it ought.
If our flashy prints are the index of the public taste in this country,
we have little of which to boast; and we undoubtedly keep our artists
from rising to any worthy aim, by showing them how satisfied we can be
with mediocrity, and even some degrees below it. There is, in etching, a
lightness and playfulness of execution which excuses, if it does not
quite reconcile us to a bad subject. We lose the idea of effort in the
freedom. To present to the eye a laboured nothing, is to disgust by the
sense of labour alone. We calculate the time and cost, and look for an
object worthy the outlay in vain, and become thoroughly dissatisfied. We
have a great mind to describe the process of etching, that the lovers of
art who read _Maga_, and happen to be ignorant of it, may try their
hands--it is very fascinating work, and even the uncertainty in the
first attempts, and the very failures, give pleasure in the operation.
There is something more pleasant in hoping our labour will turn out
well, than knowing it. If there be any whose time hangs heavy on their
hands, let them take up etching. Johnson lamented that men did not work
with their needles, considering the employment of the hands a great aid
to thought--and so it is. Now the etching-needle is the one a man may
take up without becoming ridiculous. As there are so many "Handmaids" to
the art, from which the whole mystery may be learned, we forbear. We
have, however, turned to our friend Gerard Larresse for the purpose of
setting down, _secundum artem_, a practical account, and find it not:
but we like little old treatises better than modern, there is something
unsophisticated in their manner of giving information, and there is no
study of periods, which, in their music, steal away the understanding;
so we refer to Faithorne. But nevertheless our friend Gerard, if he does
not give information, supplies amusement. He thinks every thing best