of his son, who executed one hundred and sixty-five mezzotint plates, including the set of Kit-cat portraits and the Hampton Court beauties, and a crowd of other portraits, as well as some fancy subjects after Mercier. His plate after the picture by Frans Hals of a Man Playing a Guitar is a splendid piece of work. But all his portraits are sought after and he ranks high in the estimation of the collector, although it must be stated that the prices of his work place it within reach of the astute bargain-hunter, as dozens of his prints cost no more than a sovereign apiece. The illustration (facing p. 244) of one of his plates, the Portrait of Richard Boyle, Viscount Shannon, clearly shows the extensive use of etching. It was this nobleman who added the colonnade to Burlington House, built by his father, and on being asked why he built his town mansion "out of town," replied that he was determined "to have no building beyond him." Now commissions sit to discuss the state of the congested traffic on either side of the house in Piccadilly.
With deft and patient and almost tedious labours, the mezzotint engraver works from dark to light and reproduces by means of the scraper and the burnisher the tone effects of the painter with his colours.
The delightful Portrait of Addison after Kneller, engraved by J. Smith, which we place in juxtaposition with that of Robert Boyle, shows a mezzotint portrait finished in elaborate manner, delicate in its details and strong in its contrasts.
Mezzotint came into its own with the advent of
