a pair of boots to be repaired, in which the name Ryland was written inside. The cobbler claimed the reward, and the officers arrived to find Ryland attempting suicide with a razor.
Whatman of Maidstone, the great paper-maker, gave a damning piece of evidence against Ryland when he proved that the bill was forged on paper actually made by him after the date on the bill. Ryland was found guilty and sentenced to death. Forgery was a capital offence a hundred years ago. He was hanged at Tyburn, the last execution carried out at this infamous place. "Without a knowledge of the Newgate Calendar it is impossible to be acquainted with the history of England in the eighteenth century," and to those readers who wish to delve deeper into the subject there is a reference in the Bibliography accompanying this volume which may help them.
This style of stipple engraving which was seized by the eighteenth-century English public with avidity and did so much to kill the fine school of line engravers of which Strange and Woollett were at the head, was known as "the red chalk manner." There is much to commend its softness in rendering the delicacies of flesh, but in rendering virile work it softened down the energy into mere prettiness. It is a very narrow school, this eighteenth-century school of stipple. In its representation, in dots, of red chalk or stumped drawings, its practitioners lose sight of the broader outlook of engraving. But fashion has decreed that stipple work be hall-marked, and print-sellers carry on the same traditions as their forerunners in awarding disproportionate praise, and
