It is neither my business nor intention to enter into discussions; it would be too difficult a task to prove that the count’s invention comes up to Pliny’s meaning; no certain evidence can be brought neither for nor against it. Any discovery that tends towards improvement of arts and sciences is valuable; that the count’s invention is of this kind, will appear to every unprejudiced mind.
Therefore it matters not if the ancients did so or not.
But, to give my opinion only——the numberless experiments I made to bring the new encaustic into a regular system—the repeated trials to explain Pliny’s meaning any other way that would answer the general ends of painting, &c. induce me to believe that encausto pingendi of the ancients could not be enameling, but must have been some manner of painting very near of kin to that which is the subject of this treatise. Besides the clear and expressive words of our ancient author—Ceris pingere ac picturam inurere—and where he speaks of their ship painting—resolutis igni ceris penicilio utendi—carry a silent proof with them, that the Latin verb urere ought not to be understood in so fierce a degree as enameling requires.[3]
In both the above cited passages cera is in the plural number; and for this very reason I believe it can mean nothing else but bees-wax simple, or compounded with other ingredients capable to sympathise therewith.
It would be ridiculous to suppose the Latin tongue so defective in Pliny’s time, as not to afford two distinct names for two things so opposite as enameling and ship painting are.
I cannot conceive what good enamel would or could do to their ships, without undergoing the operation of the fire after being painted. Nor can I form any idea of a Roman enameled first-rate man of war.
The most probable reason, for Pliny’s not giving a better account of particulars may be, that he knowing nothing at all of the matter, used the term of art then in vogue; or was imposed upon by artists who did not chuse to part with the secret of their art.
Instances of this kind we have every day.——Arts and trades abound with jargon and mystical names, which, if taken or explained literally, would often prove but little analogous to their subject. Writers that pay no regard to that, and without farther scrutiny speak and relate what they are told, must of course be unintelligible. Hence it comes that most of our dictionaries on arts and sciences, and the greatest number of books on painting, are so perplexing; and in many a point rival Pliny in obscurity.
To write upon a subject and unfold its mystery, one ought to be practically acquainted with it; a superficial drawing is not enough; to teach others how to go to work, the section is wanted.