[8] Seghers has also been credited with the use of soft ground etching or of aquatint. Examination of the prints shows, however, that the effects in question were got either by using acid on the plate, or by working in dotted lines, not with the roulette but with the simple needle. In ascertaining these facts and in correcting some of his first impressions the writer has profited by the knowledge and the kind assistance of Mr. S. R. Koehler, Keeper of the Prints at Boston, U.S.A., whose authority on such questions is well known.
[9] This assumes him to have been born 1631. Another date given is 1633.
[10] See supra: p. 41.
[11] A drawing of his is dated Paris, 1623. And according to Bertolotti he was in Rome by 1627.
[12] Bredius gives the date as 1644.
[13] Exhibited last winter (1895) at Burlington House by the Duke of Westminster.
[14] Compare also a little-known piece of Whitman’s “The Ox-Tamer,” in Autumn Rivulets, which ends:
Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them ...
I confess I envy only his fascination—my silent, illiterate friend,
Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms,
In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region.