If the ne plus ultra of wood-engraving were to produce imitations of metal-engraving of inferior effect, and with much greater labor, then Mr. Harvey’s Dentatus were the ne plus ultra of wood-engraving.
But wood, within its own legitimate bounds, is greater and more effective, in some peculiarities, than copper. Just as copper, in other peculiarities, is greater than wood. Neither was ever intended to clash or contend with the other. Each in its own empire is supreme.
It should be added here, before quitting the technical portion of the subject, that one advantage possessed by wood-cuts is this—that giving their impression from the elevated surfaces precisely as metallic types, the wood-blocks can be inserted in the same forms among the types; so that the impressions can be worked by the same press, and printed on the same pages, while the reverse sides can also be printed, either with letter-press or other wood-cuts, so as to form part and parcel of one continuous narrative. Metallic-plates, on the contrary, must be worked by an entirely different press, and on separate pages, apart from the letter-press, and on one side of the paper only.
This gives a great superiority for purposes of illustration, whether by anagrams or slight sketches of things described in the body of the work, to the wood-cut, above the copper-plate. And, indeed, this admitted advantage, with the extreme comparative cheapness of wood-engraving, and the rare delicacy and beauty which has been attained by the more modern artists of the day, has led to the very general adoption of this style of illustration for ornamented volumes.
It is, in fact, rapidly gaining the preference over metallic engraving; the great expense and very inferior durability of copper, and the coldness, hardness, and absence of richness which seem to be inherent to steel, having gone far to banish both from general use as ornaments or additions to printed books.
As the finest of all methods of reproducing large pictures and fine productions of art; as affording exquisite adornments for the walls of ornamented apartments—vastly superior, would people but believe it, to second-rate oil-paintings—as the legitimate treasures of hoarded portfolios, fine copperplate-engravings will and must ever hold their place. But for the illustration of books—as books must now be—accessible to the million, we fully believe that wood is the best, and soon to be almost the sole material.
The day of steel,[[1]] we think and hope, is already past, for though we have seen good things executed on that most thankless and intractable of substances, we never saw such that we did not regret the time, the talent, and the toil, so comparatively wasted.
Now, to return to the history of wood-cutting proper, we find that but little improvement was effected in the mechanical part, little filling in, very slight efforts at representing texture, and scarcely any chiaro-scuro having been attempted, previous to the invention of movable types and the use of the press.
It is probable that Gutenberg first conceived the idea of movable types, at Strasburg, in or about 1436; and that “with the aid of Faust’s money, and Sheffer’s ingenuity,”[[2]] the art was perfected at Mentz in or about 1452. “In the first book which appeared with a date and the printer’s name,” continues the author I have quoted above—“The Psalter printed by Faust and Scheffer at Mentz, in 1457—the large initial letters, engraved on wood, and printed in red and blue ink, are the most beautiful specimens of this kind of ornament which the united efforts of the wood-engraver and the pressman have produced. They have been imitated in modern times but not excelled. As they are the first letters, in point of time, printed with two colors, so are they likely to continue the first in point of excellence.”
From this time the art made rapid progress, as connected with the press, which in a very rude and primitive state now came generally into vogue, though the machine of 1460 was as far different from one of Hoe’s marvelous power-presses as is an Indian’s bark canoe from an Atlantic steamer.