Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/344

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5-3/8 in. by 3-7/16 in., but it is a masterpiece of line engraving.

Edward Goodall, of Leeds, a self-taught engraver, attracted the attention of Turner, who engaged him to engrave after him. His exquisite little vignettes in Rogers's "Italy" and "Poems" are inspired with the spirit of the master whose drawings they interpret. We reproduce a fine plate of Carlisle, which is in size 3-1/4 in. by 5-3/8 in. The rainbow lights up the little plate. Among all Turner's engravers there are few who can equal in poetry and in grace either Miller or Goodall.

This long catalogue is only suggestive, rather than exhaustive, of the work of the astoundingly prolific genius, with a hand as delicate as a watchmaker in pencilling the most minute details of his work, and with a vision as profoundly penetrating into the mysteries of Nature in her awesome moods as was Dante in symbolism and in his visionary interpretation of the realm of the unseen. In colour, Turner's breadth and his mastery were as varied as the sympathetic mastery of Shakespeare over human emotions or the airy subtleties of Shelley in ecstatic idealism. The son of the barber of Maiden Lane peered beyond the London mists and Thames-bound environment of smoky sunsets, and of murky sunrises. He roamed over England and drank in all that the sylvan glades and purling streams, all that the white, sparkling cliffs and the rock-bound coast and the turbulent sea could convey to genius with whom none in England and few in modern art in Europe can stand without total eclipse. From the dark and