Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/275

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If 1860-1870 was the golden period for facsimile wood engraving, 1730-1820 was equally rich in illustrated magazines and in volumes appearing at that time with copper-plate engravings. Their name is legion. The Gentleman's Magazine, the European, the London, Town and Country, the Universal, the Westminster, and the Oxford are among the most prominent. Extra illustrators have stripped these old magazines of their portraits. Cosway's portraits of Madame Du Barri or Mrs. Robinson in the European fetch as much as £1 or 30s. apiece. The Wit's Magazine contains several illustrations by William Blake. The little known or the unknown work of well-known men appeared in these old magazines. The Portrait of Sterne we reproduce is a fair example of the style of this period. Gillray and Rowlandson, Bartolozzi and Stothard contributed designs, and the series of portraits in the London and the European extended over a wide area, and included Francesco de Quevedo, of Spain, whose romances have found so able an illustrator in modern days in Vierge, and Lavater, of France, engraved by Bromley, as well as famous contemporaries whose portraits are fine biographic records. Novels were illustrated in able manner. Richardson's "Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison" had their series of copper plates. The Town and Country, scandalous as it was, had a fine series of portraits in oval frames like miniatures of persons under thinly disguised titles, such as Miss Gr—n, E—l of R—d, The amiable Miss