Rowlandson and Gillray, and the great crowd of versatile engravers who, in mezzotint, in stipple, and in line, perpetuated the memory of the eighteenth century. It should be borne in mind that at this time the English mezzotinters were establishing the traditions of their art and winning a permanent place in European fame. They more properly confined their skill to the rendering of contemporary portraits in masterly manner. On the other hand, Bartolozzi, Angelica Kaufmann, Cipriani, and the pretty school devoted themselves to the finesse of stipple and of colour prints. Line engraving, the most classic art among engraving, continued its interpretation of the old masters and its rendering of contemporary landscape and figure subjects. We reproduce an engraving from George Morland, The Bell, by James Fittler, (facing p. 170), one of a set of six which are procurable for £2 10s. the set. But the great school of eighteenth-century portrait painters, upon whom English eighteenth-century art stands, were translated into mezzotint.
The mantle of Dryden had descended on Pope, with his six volumes of the "Iliad" and five volumes of the "Odyssey"; Dr. Johnson had imposed his ponderous classicisms on the town, Addison's and Steele's Essays in the Spectator and in the Tatler were prefixed by Greek and Latin tags, great soldiers and sailors and statesmen were carried to the Abbey and the monuments erected over their remains showed them as Romans in classic attire, Josiah Wedgwood translated classic designs into Staffordshire pottery for everyday use. The spirit of
