English Channel (Fr. La Manche, the sleeve), the arm of the sea which separates England from France, extending, on the English side, from Dover to Land's End; and on the French, from Calais to the Island of Ushant. On the east it communicates with the North Sea by the Straits of Dover, 21 miles wide; and on the west it opens into the Atlantic by an entrance about 100 miles wide. At its greatest breadth it is about 150 miles. The pilchard and mackerel fisheries are very important. The advantages of a railway tunnel under the Channel at or near its narrowest part have been frequently urged; and an English company, formed in 1887 for constructing a tunnel from Dover, to meet a similar tunnel starting from near Calais, has pushed an excavation under the sea for over 2000 yards. The plan, opposed by the British Government for military reasons in 1907, has now been approved of. Plans have also been put forward for a railway bridge across the Straits of Dover.
Engraving, the art of drawing or writing on metal, wood, precious stones, &c., by means of incisions made with instruments variously adapted to the substances operated upon and the description of work intended. The term is also applied to the work so performed, and to impressions taken on paper or similar material from the engraved work. Impressions from metal plates are called engravings, prints, or plates; those printed from wood being termed indifferently wood engravings or wood-cuts. While, however, these impressions are not altogether dissimilar in appearance, the processes are distinct. As a rule, in prints from metal the lines intended to print are incised, and in order to take an impression the plate is daubed over with a thick ink which fills all the lines. The surface is then wiped perfectly clean, leaving only the incised lines filled with ink. A piece of damp paper is then laid on the face of the plate, and both are passed through the press, which causes the ink to pass from the plate to the paper. This operation needs to be repeated for every impression. In the wood block, on the contrary, the spaces between the lines of the drawing are cut out, leaving the lines standing up like type, the printing being from the inked surface of the raised lines, and effected much more rapidly than plate printing. This process has also been used to a certain extent with metal.
Engraving on wood, intended for printing or impressing from, long preceded engraving on metals. The art is of Eastern origin, and at least as early as the tenth century engraving and
printing from wood blocks was common in China. We first hear of wood engraving being cultivated in Europe by the Italians and Germans for impressing patterns on textiles, but no paper impressions earlier than the fourteenth century are known. For a hundred years there is small indication of the practice of the art, which was at first confined to the production of block-books, playing-cards, and religious prints. According to Vasari, the art of printing from engraved plates was discovered in Florence by Maso Finiguerra about 1460, but engravings of earlier date are known to exist. Engraving had long been used as a means of decorating armour, metal vessels, &c., the engravers generally securing duplicates of their works before laying in the niello (a species of metallic enamel) by taking casts of them in sulphur, and rubbing the lines with black. The discovery of the practicability of taking impressions upon paper helped the development of engraving upon copper plates for the purpose of printing from. The date of the earliest known niello proof upon paper is 1452. The work of the Florentine engravers, however, was almost at once surpassed in Venice and elsewhere in North Italy by Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), Girolamo Mocetto, Jacopo de' Barbari, and others. In Marc Antonio Raimondi (1475-1534), who wrought under the guidance of Raphael, and reproduced many of his works, the art reached its highest point of the earlier period, and Rome became the centre of a new school, which included Marco da Ravenna (died 1527), Giulio Bonasone (1531-72), and Agostino de Musis (flourished 1536). In the meantime, in Germany the progress of the art had been not less rapid. Of the oldest school the most important engraver is Martin Schongauer (1420-88). He was, however, surpassed a generation later by Albert Dürer (1471-1528), who excelled both in copper and wood engraving, especially in the latter, and also etched a few plates. Among his most famous contemporaries and successors were Burgkmair and Lucas Cranach. The Dutch and Flemish schools, of which Dürer's contemporary Lucas van Leyden was the head, did much to enlarge the scope of the art, either by paying increased attention to the rendering of light and shade, and the expression of tone and surface quality, as in the case of Cornelius Cort and Bloemart; or by developing freedom and expression of line, as in the case of Goltzius and his pupils. Rubens (1577-1640) influenced engraving through the two Bolswerts, Vorstermann, Pontius, and P. de Jode, who engraved many of his works on a large size. Towards the end of the seventeenth century etching, which had before been rarely used, became more common, and was practised with supreme mastery by Rembrandt (1607-69) and other painters of that period. In France, Noel Garnier founded a school of engraving about the middle of the sixteenth century; but it produced no work of any high distinction until the reign of Louis XIV, when Robert Nanteuil, his follower Gerard Edelinck, and Antoine Masson produced many fine portraits, and Gerard Audran engraved works by Nicolas Poussin and Le Brun. Jacques Callot also produced some admirable etchings. These were followed about the middle of the eighteenth century by Wille (1717-1807), a German resident in Paris, who gave new vitality to a waning art, and by the school of French illustrators. Before the middle of the seventeenth century England produced little noteworthy work, availing herself principally of the work of foreign engravers such as Wenzel Hollar, of whom many took up temporary and even permanent residence. The first English engraver of marked importance was William Hogarth (1697-1764), whose works are distinguished for a power of vivid characterization. Vivares (1712-82), a Frenchman by birth, laid the foundation of the English school of landscape engraving, which was still further developed by William Woollet (1735-85), who was also an excellent engraver of the human figure. In historical engraving a not less remarkable advance was made by Sir Robert Strange (1721-92); and Richard Earlom (1743-1822), Valentine Green, and J. R. Smith produced some admirable works in mezzotint. In succession to these came William Sharp (1746-1824), James Bazire (1730-1802), Bartolozzi (1727-1815), who practised stipple engraving, James Heath, Bromley, Raimbach, and others. The substitution of steel for copper plates (1820-30) gave the power of producing a much larger number of fine impressions, and opened new possibilities for highly finished work. During the closing years of the eighteenth century, line engraving attained a depth of colour and fullness of tone in which earlier works are often deficient, and during the following century it reached a perfectness of finish which it had not previously attained. A picture, whether figure or landscape, came to be translated by line engraving with all its depth of colour, delicacy of tone, and effect of light and shade; the various textures, whether of naked flesh, silk, satin, woollen, or velvet, were all successfully rendered by ingenious modes of laying the lines and combinations of lines of varying strength, width, and depth. At the same time, original work by engravers declined in quality. Among engravers who have produced historical works of large size and in the line manner the names of Raphael Morghen (1758-1833), Longhi (1766-1831), Anderloni (1784-1849), Garavaglia (1790-1835), and Toschi, in Italy; of Forster (1790-1872),
Henriquel-Dupont (born 1797), Bridoux (born 1812), and Blanchard (born 1819), in France; of John Burnet (1784-1868), J. H. Robinson (1796-1871), Geo. T. Doo (1800-86), J. H. Watt (1799-1867), and Lumb Stocks (1812-92), in England, stand pre-eminent. Among historical and portrait engravers in the stipple or dotted manner the names of H. T. Ryall, Henry Robinson, William Holl (1807-71), and Francis Holl may be mentioned. In the period 1820-60 landscape engraving attained a perfection in Great Britain which it had not attained in any other country, or at any other time. In fact, most of the work was done by etching, details being sharpened by the graver. Among landscape engravers the names of Geo. Cooke (1781-1834), William Miller (1796-1882), E. Goodall (1795-1870), J. Cousen (1804-80), R. Brandard (1805-62), and Wm. Forrest (born 1805) hold the foremost places. Most of these were associated with the reproduction of Turner's pictures, and owed much to his control and direction. In mezzotint engraving Samuel Cousins (1801-87) and David Lucas, who was associated with John Constable in the 'English Landscape' series, achieved considerable success. In the period 1830-45 various publications called Annuals, composed of light literature in prose and verse, and illustrated by highly finished engravings in steel, were very popular. The engravings were necessarily of small size, and are generally of great excellence. A number of them, both figure and landscape, are executed with such finish and completeness as to be esteemed perfect works. The illustrations of Rogers's Poems and Rogers's Italy after Turner and Stothard belong to this period. Many of the originals of the engravings in the Annuals were finished pictures of large size. A great part of the difficulty in engraving on a small scale from a large picture consists in determining what details can be left out, and still preserve the full effect and character of the original. The most noted engravers for work of this kind are Charles Heath, Charles Rolls, W. Finden, E. Finden, E. Portbury, J. Goodyear, F. Engleheart, Henry le Keux, E. Goodall, and W. Miller. Since 1870 many reproductions of paintings have been produced by means of etching, a comparatively cheap and rapid process. Such works have been fashionable and very popular with collectors. But while some of them have been excellent of their kind, the process is of limited resource, and the best works in this manner do not compare with the masterpieces of line engraving. In original work, however, etching and dry-point (q.v.) have produced some excellent work, notably in the hands of Charles Meryon, J. M. Whistler, Sir Seymour Haden, and Anders Zorn. A revival of mezzotint owes much to Sir Frank Short. Through lack of encouragement, change of fashion, and the adoption of other methods of reproduction, line engraving on metal has become almost a lost art in Great Britain, though a revival in wood engraving has taken place of recent years.
Line Engraving, as implied by the term, is executed entirely in lines. The tools are few and simple. They consist of the graver or burin, the scraper, to remove the burr left by the graver, and the burnisher; an oil-stone or hone, dividers, a parallel square, a magnifying lens; a bridge on which to rest the hand; a blind or shade of tissue paper, to make the light fall equally on the plate, callipers for levelling important erasures, a small steel anvil, a small pointed hammer, and punches. In etching, the following articles are required: a resinous mixture called etching-ground, capable, when spread very thinly over the plate, of resisting the action of the acids used; a dabber for laying the ground equally; an etching needle; a hand-vice; some brushes of different sizes; and bordering wax, made of burgundy-pitch, bees'-wax, and a little oil.
In etching, the plate, which is highly polished and must be free from all scratches, is first prepared by spreading over it a thin layer of ground. The surface is then smoked, and the outline of the picture transferred to it by pressure from the paper on which it has been drawn in fine outlines by a black-lead pencil. The picture is then drawn on the ground with the etching-needle, which removes the ground in every form produced by it, and leaves the bright metal exposed. Sometimes, however, the drawing is made direct, without the use of tracing. A bank of wax is then put round the plate and diluted acid poured on it, which eats out the metal from the lines from which the ground has been removed, but leaves the rest of the plate untouched. (See also Dry-point.) In landscape engraving, as practised in England in the early nineteenth century, the plate is then gone over with the graver, the etched lines clearly defined, broken lines connected, new lines added, &c. Sometimes the plate is rebitten more than once, those parts which are sufficiently bitten in the first treatment being stopped with varnish, and only the selected parts exposed to after-biting. Finally the burnisher is brought into play alternately with the graver and point to give perfectness and finish. In engraving proper, the lines are first drawn on the metal with a fine point and then cut in by the graver, first making a fine line, and afterwards entering and re-entering till the desired width and depth of lines is attained. Much of the excellence of such engravings depends on the mode in which the lines are laid, their relative thickness, and the manner in which they cross each other. In this
method of engraving etching is but little used, if at all, and then only for accessories and the less important parts.
Soft-ground Etching.—The ground, made by mixing lard with common etching-ground, is laid on the plate and smoked as before, but its extreme softness renders it very liable to injury. The outline of the subject is drawn on a piece of paper larger than the plate. The paper is then damped, and laid gently over the ground, face upwards, and the margins folded over and pasted down on the back of the plate. When the paper is dry and tightly stretched, a bridge is laid across, and with a hardish pencil and firm pressure the drawing is completed in the usual manner. The pressure makes the ground adhere to the back of the paper at all parts touched by the pencil, and on the paper being lifted carefully off, these parts of the ground are lifted with it, and the corresponding parts of the plate thus left bare are exposed to the subsequent action of the acid. The granulated surface of the paper, causing similar granulations in the touches on the ground, gives the character of a chalk drawing. The biting-in is effected in the same manner as already described, and the subject may be finished by rebiting and dotting with the graver. See Etching.
Stipple, or Chalk Engraving, in its pure state, is exclusively composed of dots, made with a special form of graver, varying in size and form as the nature of the subject demands, but few stipple plates are now produced without a large admixture of line in all parts, flesh excepted. Etching is often used to put in the more important lines and tone masses.