The Golden Age of Engraving

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Page 180 - TIGER, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
Page 40 - Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, He has not left a wiser or better behind ; His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand, His manners were gentle, complying, and bland : Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing: When they talked of their Raphaels, Corregios, and stuff, He shifted his trumpet,* and only took snuff.
Page 108 - Swift, that angling is always to be considered as "a stick and a string, with a fly at one end and a fool at the other.
Page 218 - While it is easy, oftentimes, to see that this or that person is overtasking his powers, it is impossible to lay down any general rule on the subject that would not require too much of some and too little of others. In youth and early manhood, especially if the constitution is deficient in vigor, there would be danger from a degree of application, that might be safe enough at a later period, when the brain has become hardened by age and regular...
Page 31 - that the great principle of being happy in this world, " is, not to mind or be affected with small things.
Page 40 - Sir Joshua Reynolds was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages.
Page 135 - sleeps well," after what surely was to him "life's fitful fever," and lies buried in the cemetery of the asylum at Charenton. Charles Meryon was born in Paris on the 23d of November, 1821. He was the son of Charles Lewys Meryon, an English physician. His mother was Pierre Narcisse Chaspoux, a French ballet dancer. The father seems to have neglected him utterly, while his mother did all...
Page 92 - A man who had given his whole life to etching only, who had never thought of painting, and had never cared for those effects proper to painting and not to etching, could not have been more truly and markedly a born etcher than Millet showed himself to be — few though were the plates and many though were the canvases he worked upon.
Page 31 - He is always equal — always natural — graceful — unaffected. His boldness of posture and his singular freedom of colouring are so supported by all the grace of art — by all the sorcery of skill — that they appear natural and noble. Over the meanest head he sheds the halo of dignity ; his men are all nobleness, his women all loveliness, and his children all simplicity : yet they are all like the living originals.
Page 132 - Meryon was one of the greatest and most original artists who have appeared in Europe; he is one of the immortals; his name will be inscribed on the noble roll where Diirer and Rembrandt live forever.

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