IV

INTRODUCTION,

printed with the letter-press by the simple method of downright pressure.Impressions from them may also be obtained by applying friction to thepaper after it is laid upon the block; care being taken that the paper do notslip from its original position during the operation. The earliest Europeanwood cuts with which we are acquainted, appear to have been for the mostpart printed in this manner; which is said to have been the method practisedfrom very ancient times by the Chinese .

The greatest difficulty of wood-engraving consists in clearing out the mi-nute quadrangular spaces, occasioned in the shaded parts by one row ofhatchings being crossed by other hatchings. To do this, so that each strokeshall preserve the freedom of a pen-drawing, is a task of extreme delicacy;for that which in drawing, or in copper-plate engraving, is done with onesweep of the pen or burin, is here to be effected by numberless minute andtedious operations. But however great this difficulty, it is very certain thatit was surmounted by the German artists of the beginning of the sixteenthcentury, vast numbers of whose, wood-cuts have all the freedom of masterlypen-drawings. It is not improbable, that they employed some method nowunknown. Sometimes the writer has been disposed to conjecture that, inmaking their drawings upon the wooden blocks, they may have used an inkcapable of resisting acids ; and that, thus, they might be enabled, for a shorttime, to expose those parts of the block which were to be excavated, to theaction of a corrosive liquid; so as to soften the wood in those parts. Thisdone, and the surface having been rendered rotten and spongy in the partswhich were to be hollowed out, whilst those covered by the ink preservedtheir original hardness and texture, it appears possible that the soft partswould be found to separate from the hard without much difficulty; and thatby punches, of the different dimensions and shapes required, and sharp at theedges, the small quadrangular spaces between the hatchings, above mention-ed, might be beat in, sufficiently deep, and with sufficient cleanness at theedges, to produce the effect desired. All this, however, is but surmise; andit is the policy of those artists of the present day who are accustomed to makedesigns for the wood-engravers, to avoid cross-hatchings as much as possible;depending, for the force of their shadows, upon the thickness and proximity ofthe strokes ; not, as in copper-plate engraving, upon crossing and re-cross-ing them with other strokes.

Of the Origin of wood-engraving, we have no authentic records ; nor isit even ascertained in what century it was first practised in Europe . It is con-sidered certain, however, that the Chinese were well acquainted with this art