transcribes by the ordered patience of his methods, and places himself in natural subordination to the mind of the artist whose design or picture he is engraving. But etching is a painter's art. Whereas all other engraving, except lithography, is slow and laborious, etching in its speed is capable of responding to the personal sensitiveness of the artist.
Among the many thousands of engravers from the earliest time there are not a great number who were painters too. Martin Schongauer was at once painter, engraver, and goldsmith; Albert Dürer was painter and engraver; Lucas van Leyden, representative of the Dutch school, and Agostino, and the Italian school down to the Carracci were painter-engravers. Vandyck's etchings are as personal as his pictures, and Rembrandt's fame with the etching-needle is as paramount as his reputation with the brush. The little Dutch masters of the seventeenth century wisely chose to perpetuate their own works by means of etchings with their own hands. Claude Gelée left about forty etchings of landscapes; Hogarth was a master of the graver; William Blake painted and engraved his visions; "Old Crome" and Wilkie both etched; the great Turner, high-priest of colour, used the etching-needle with masterly skill, and learned how to engrave in mezzotint; and there is, of course, Whistler.
Rembrandt.—The process of etching was used by Dürer in his later prints in the early sixteenth century. The process was known to goldsmiths long before. Lodovico Carracci, whose prints are rare and all from his own designs, first etched the outline
