(T. Se.)
[1] Piers Plowman has been so long attributed as a whole to Langland (q.v.), that in spite of modern analytical criticism it is most conveniently discussed under that name.
ENGLISHRY (Englescherie), a legal name given, in the reign of William the Conqueror, to the presentment of the fact that a person slain was an Englishman. If an unknown man was found slain, he was presumed to be a Norman, and the hundred was fined accordingly, unless it could be proved that he was English. Englishry, if established, excused the hundred. Dr W. Stubbs (Constitutional History, i. 196) says that possibly similar measures were taken by King Canute. Englishry was abolished in 1340.
See Select Cases from the Coroners’ Rolls, 1265-1413, ed. C. Gross, Selden Society (London, 1896).
ENGRAVING, the process or result of the action implied by the verb “to engrave” or mark by incision, the marks (whether for inscriptive, pictorial or decorative purposes) being produced, not by simply staining or discolouring the material (as with paint, pen or pencil), but by cutting into or otherwise removing a portion of the substance. In the case of pictures, the engraved surface is reproduced by printing; but this is only one restricted sense of “engraving,” since the term includes seal-engraving (where a cast is taken), and also the chased ornamentation of plate or gems, &c.
The word itself is derived from an O. Fr. engraver (not to be confused with the same modern French word used for the running of a boat’s keel into the beach, or for the sticking of a cart’s wheels in the mud,—from grève, Provençal grava, sands of the sea or river shore; cf. Eng. “gravel”); it was at one time supposed that the Gr. γράφειν, to write, was etymologically connected, but this view is not now accepted, and (together with “grave,” meaning either to engrave, or the place where the dead are buried) the derivation is referred to a common Teutonic form signifying “to dig” (O. Eng. grafan, Ger. graben). The modern French graver, to engrave, is a later adoption. The idea of a furrow, by digging or cutting, is thus historically associated with an engraving, which may properly include the rudest marks cut into any substance. In old English literature it included carving and sculpture, from which it has become convenient to differentiate the terminology; and the ancients who chiselled their writing on slabs of stone were really “engraving.” The word is not applicable, therefore, either strictly to lithography (q.v.), nor to any of the photographic processes (see [Process]), except those in which the surface of the plate is actually eaten into or lowered. In the latter case, too, it is convenient to mark a distinction and to ignore the strict analogy. In modern times the term is, therefore, practically restricted—outside the spheres of gem-engraving and seal-engraving (see [Gem]), or the inscribing or ornamenting of stone, plate, glass, &c.—to the art of making original pictures (i.e. by the draughtsman himself, whether copies of an original painting or not), either by incised lines on metal plates (see [Line-Engraving]), or by the corrosion of the lines with acid (see [Etching]), or by the roughening of a metal surface without actual lines (see [Mezzotint]), or by cutting a wood surface away so as to leave lines in relief (see [Wood-Engraving]); the result in each case may be called generically an engraving, and in common parlance the term is applied, though incorrectly, to the printed reproduction or “print.”
Of these four varieties of engraving—line-engraving, etching, mezzotint or wood-engraving—the woodcut is historically the earliest. Line-engraving is now practically obsolete, while etching and mezzotint have recently come more and more to the front. To the draughtsman the difference in technical handling in each case has in most cases some relation to his own artistic impulse, and to his own feeling for beauty. A line engraver, as P.G. Hamerton said, will not see or think like an etcher, nor an etcher like an engraver in mezzotint. Each kind, with its own sub-varieties, has its peculiar effect and attraction. A real knowledge of engraving can only be attained by a careful study and comparison of the prints themselves, or of accurate facsimiles, so that books are of little use except as guides to prints when the reader happens to be unaware of their existence, or else for their explanation of technical processes. The value of the prints varies not only according to the artist, but also according to the fineness of the impression, and the “state” (or stage) in the making of the plate, which may be altered from time to time. “Proofs” may also be taken from the plate, and even touched up by the artist, in various stages and various degrees of fineness of impression.