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Collins Gem Scots Dictionary Collins Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Collins
ISBN(s): 9780007224128, 0007224125
Edition: New edition
File Details: PDF, 14.34 MB
Year: 2006
Language: english
D Collins gem
V

Scots

In colour
«
C Collins gem

Scots
Dictionary
H arperC oIlins P ublishers Acknowledgements
WesterhillRoad We would like to thank those
Bishopbriggs authors and publishers who
Glasgow kindly gave permission for
C642QT copyright material to be used in
Great Britain the CoUins Word Web. We would
also like to thank Times
First Edition 1995 Newspapers Ltd for providing
valuable data.
First published in this format
2003 AU rights reserved. No part of
this pubUcation may be
Latest Reprint 2006 reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted, in any
©HarperCoIlins Publishers 1995 form or by any means,
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ISBN-10 0-00-722412-5 otherwise, without the prior
permission of the pubUsher.
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 Contents
Introduction v
About this book v
W hat is, in this Dictionary? v
T he History o f Scots vii
T he Dialects o f Scots ix
T he Vocabulary o f Scots xi

Using this book xiii

Scots Dictionary
 EDITORIAL STAFF

Editorial Director
Diana Treffry

Managing Editor
Sheila Ferguson

Senior Lexicographer
Elspeth Summers

Lexicographers
Tom Shearer
Andrew Holm es Mike Munro
Ian Brookes Mary O 'Neill Lorna Gilmour

Northeastern Scots Consultant

Professor Sandy Fenton
School o f Scottish Studies
University o f Edinburgh

Pronunciation Editor
Alice Grandison

Editorial Assistance
Alison Foy

Computing Staff
Jane Creevy John Podbielski
 IN T R O D U C T IO N

A b o u t this Book
T he Collins Scots Gem is a dictionary o f living Scots;
but both "living” and "Scots" are terms which need
some clarification. By "living" we mean that the words
and terms defined are either in current everyday spoken
or written use, or are readily familiar to Scottish people.
By "Scots" we mean the language o f Germanic origin
spoken by m ost Scots which is neither standard British
English or general slang.
Over the years, a great deal o f excellent lexicographical
work has been done on literary and historical Scots; and
in recent years a num ber o f smaller scale dictionaries
dealing with the contem porary speech o f various
regions o f Scotland have appeared. T he aim o f this
book is to survey the m odern colloquial language o f
Scodand as a whole, while no t neglecting vital archaic or
formal terms.
W hat is in this D ictionary?
T his book covers three main types o f vocabulary:
everyday language, official and technical language, and
literary language.
Everyday language. T his consists o f the words and phrases
which people use in norm al informal conversation.
Some o f these are used almost universally in Scodand,
others only by people who speak broader forms o f
Scots rather than "Scottish English", and others are
restricted to one part o f the country. It is highly
Introduction V/

unlikely that any one person would use all the words in
this book as part o f their natural language. W here we
believe that a term is regional, we have indicated this in
the entry.
Dialects have been covered according to the num ber o f
speakers they have: roughly a quarter o f the population
o f Scotland lives w ithin twenty miles o f central
Glasgow, and the language o f urban W est Central
Scotland is therefore dealt with in more depth than the
language o f Caithness o r the Borders. (W est Central
Scots is also the dialect m ost often heard on television,
whether in comedies or in detective series). T his is not
to say that one dialect is better Scots than another,
simply that some are more widely spoken than others.
Official and technical terms. Scotland has its own
distinctive systems o f law, religion, education and local
government, and each o f these systems has its own
terminology. Many o f these terms are included. Also
included are words to do with specific Scottish activities
such as whisky-making, shinty, and piping.
Literary Scots. Different writers have used Scots in
different ways. Some have written in what is more or less
standard literary English, with a sprinkling o f Scots
words and idioms. O thers have chosen to write using a
language based on the speech o f one particular area, be
it Glasgow, Edinburgh or the rural N ortheast. Yet
others have attem pted to create a m odern literary Scots
by using words from all parts o f the country and, where
necessary, going back to the language o f Scots writers o f
vii Introduction

the past for vocabulary. T h e objection often raised to

this approach is that the result is far removed from the
natural speech o f any person from any part o f the
country. T his split between literary and colloquial
language is n o t unique to Scots —as the Scots language
poet Sydney Goodsir Sm ith pointed out, "wha the deil
spoke like King Lear?" — but because the standard
written language o f Scotland for the past three centuries
has been English, the difference is particularly
noticeable in Scots. For reasons o f space only the m ost
basic literary Scots has been included.

Th e H istory o f Scots
W hen the Angles, Jutes and Saxons began to settle in
Britain from the fourth century on, they brought with
them their own Germanic dialects, and these became
O ld English, the language o f the parts o f England and
Southern Scotland under Anglo-Saxon rule. T his
eventually developed into what is known as M iddle
English. Over the centuries, as the Scottish and English
states emerged as unitary wholes, and followed their
own historical paths, a language based on the
N orthum brian dialect o f M iddle English (that spoken
N o rth o f the H um ber) emerged as one o f the standard
languages o f Scotland. It is ultimately from this that
m odern Scots is descended.
Scots has always tended to define itself in terms o f
what it isn't: this early Anglo-Saxon derived tongue,
initially only spoken in Southeast Scotland, was known
as Inglis, to distinguish it from the Gaelic spoken in the
Introduction viii

Highlands and parts o f Southwest Scotland, the Welsh-

related language o f much o f West Central Scotland, the
Pictish o f the N ortheast, and the N orse o f the Islands
and the Far N orth. Only later, when it had emerged as
the chief adm inistrative and spoken language o f
Scotland (although Gaelic remained in widespread use),
did it became known as Scots to distinguish it from the
separate but closely related tongue o f England.

Over the years, Scots has been much influenced by the

English o f England. Indeed, there has never really been
a complete split: many N o rth ern English dialects have
descended from the same N orthum brian roots as Scots,
with words such as bairn (a child or baby), fell (a
m ountain or hill) and flit (to move house) being found
in Scots and N orthern English alike. T he main literary
and political language o f England (so-called Standard
English), however, was one based on the East Midlands
dialect spoken in London.

For many centuries, Scots and English developed in

parallel: but the decision o f the Church o f Scotland to
adopt a version o f the Bible in English rather than in
Scots following the Reformation, and the U nion first o f
the Scottish and English crowns and later o f the
Scottish and English parliaments, m eant that Scots
came to have less and less social status. Many members
o f the Scottish nobility and middle-classes, eager to
prove themselves good N o rth Britons, made strenuous
efforts to avoid all Scottish idioms and pronunciations.
/x Introduction

But despite these attempts, Scots has remained in

constant use, if mainly as a spoken language. T he
language o f m odern Scotland remains distinct from
that o f England, with its own words, idioms and
grammar. A typical recent edition o f one o f the
Scottish national newspapers, for instance, mentions a
deputefiscal at a Sheriff Court, a wasp’s hike, and a Church
o f Scotland clergyman who had demitted his post as a
minister, S cottish greengrocers sell syboes; and in
Scotland’s pubs, drinkers continue to get guttered on
pints o f heavy and wee goldies.
It should also be noted that the trade between Scots and
English has n o t all been one way: such commonplace
English words as cuddle, eerie, and ¿reed were originally
Scots

The D ialects of Scots

M ost authorities divide Scots into four groups o f
dialects, the larger o f which have major subdivisions.
There are many more subtle changes o f dialect than can
be covered here, and, particularly in areas where the
majority o f the population have lived locally all their
lives, many people can distinguish between the speech o f
people from one town or village and their neighbours
from a nearby area.
Central Scots, despite its name, is spoken throughout the
area south and west o f the Tay, with the exception o f a
small area in the Borders and East Dumfriesshire. It is
the m ost widely spoken form o f Scots, and can be
Introduction

divided into East Central Scots, W est Central Scots,

and Southwestern Scots. One o f the chief differences
between them is that the vowel sound in words such as
ar, could and wa (all, cold, and wall) is pronounced aw in
the W est and ah elsewhere. T hroughout the Central
Scots area, the -w- or -wr- o r ~oo~ vowel in words such as
guid (good), school or moon is usually pronounced -i- (as
in English hid).
N o rth e rn Scots is the other main form o f Scots, within
which N ortheastern Scots, spoken in the area north o f
Stonehaven and East o f Inverness, forms a distinct
dialect. T h e m ost immediately obvious feature o f
N o rth ern Scots is that wh~ at the beginning o f a word
is usually pronounced/-, for instance in f it (what) otfite
(white). T he vowel in guid, school and moon is generally
pronounced with an -ee- (as in English heed), but in the
N ortheast when this sound follows a hard g or k it is
pronounced ~wee~ (gweed, skweet). All forms o f N orthern
Scots frequendy drop the initial tb- in words such as the,
this, and that A noticeable grammatical feature o f
N orthern dialects is the tendency to use this and that
instead o f these and those when referring to more than one
person or thing: did you see that two mannies?
Island Scots. Orkney and Shedand formerly spoke a
Scandinavian language known as N o rn which had been
superseded by Scots by the end o f the 18th century.
However many N o rn words, such as voe (a narrow bay)
have survived into the present day dialects. O ther
distinctive features o f Orkney and Shedand dialects are
xi Introduction

the preservation o f the distinction between the formal

you and the informal thou, and the pronunciation o f th as
d or t, as in tink (think), blide (blithe, happy) or da (the).
Southern Scots is spoken in Eastern Dumfriesshire and
along m ost o f the Border. Its speakers tend to say -ow
and -ey at the ends o f words, where people from
elsewhere in Scodand would say ~oo and ~ee . It is
sometimes referred to as the "yow and mey" dialect as a
result.
T he Highlands and the W estern Isles, where Gaelic was
(and some times still is) the main language, are generally
described as speaking H ighland English rather than
Scots, although many Scottish words are in common use
there.
The Vocabulary of S co ts
T he different histories o f Scodand and England have
meant that Scots and English have no t only emerged
from different Germanic dialects, but have absorbed
words from different sources.
M uch o f N o rth ern and Eastern Scodand was setded by
the Vikings, and their O ld N orse tongue has
contributed term s such as kirk (church), brig (bridge) and
lowp (leap), some o f which also exist in N orthern
English.
Later, political and trading alliances with France
provided words like ashet (a type o f plate), fash (to bother
or annoy), and gigot (a cut o f meat).
Other trade links with the Netherlands endowed Scots,
Introduction x/7

particularly its Eastern dialects, with a number o f

words, with howff (a. pub), loon (a boy or young m an) and
pinkie (the litde finger) all coming from Dutch or
Flemish.
Gaelic was formerly much more widely spoken than it is
today, and many words have passed from it into Scots.
Some words, such as glen (a narrow valley), keelie (a
generally derogatory term for an urban working-class
m an) and partan (a crab), are general Scots, others, such
as bourach (a heap or a mess), cailleach (an old woman),
and laroch (a ruin) are restricted to areas in the N o rth or
West where Gaelic was historically strongest or where
there has been large-scale immigration from Gaelic­
speaking areas.
Scots also shares a num ber o f words, such as hooley (a
wild party), with Irish English: over the centuries there
has been a long tradition o f migration between the two
countries, to the extent that dialectologists regard the
language o f some parts o f N ortheastern Ireland as
"U lster Scots" rather than a dialect o f Irish English.
Lastly, there are a num ber o f words that have come into
Scots, and particularly its Eastern and N o rth e rn
dialects, from the language o f the travelling people, for
example barrie (excellent) and gadgie (a man or youth).
 USING THIS BOOK

Headwords are shown in bold.

Variant Spellings. M odern Scots is more often spoken

than written, and many words therefore have variant
spellings based on the writer’s attem pt to represent his
or her pronunctiation o f the word. T he main entry for
a word can be found at the spelling which we believe is
m ost common in current use. We have tried to minimise
the number o f variants shown to make the text easier to
follow, but where a num ber o f spellings are in common
use, the m ost common variant (or variants) is shown
after the headword, eg
cock>a-leekie or cockieleekie Cock-a-leekie is a
soup made from a fowl boiled with leeks. Some recipes
include prunes
fae (pronounced fay) or frae (pronounced fray) Fae
means from: some gayfae ToUcross; where1d he get thatfae?
T he variant form is given an entry o f its own, referring
the reader to the main entry, unless the variant would
come within five entries o f the headword. Hence, there
is an entry for frae but no t one for cockieleekie
frae (pronounced/ray) Another word for fae

Pronunciations are given for words which might be

difficult or confusing for the non-Scots speaker. They
are shown either by respelling, with the stressed syllable
in bold, or by rhyming them with a word with a similar
pronunciation.
Using this book______________ __________xiv

ca 1or caa (pronounced caw) . . .

caber (rhymes with labour) . . .
ceilidh (pronounced kale~ee) . . .
T here are a num ber o f regional variations in
pronunciation in Scotland: in general the form shown is
a W est Central Scodand one, that being the m ost widely
spoken dialect, but where a word is m ost common in a
particular area, the pronunciation appropriate to that
region is given.
W here more than one way o f pronouncing a word is in
widespread use, all these pronunciations are shown.
dicht (pronounced diCHt or dite) . . .
In respellings, each syllable has been shown in a form
likely to be clear to all speakers o f British English.
However, the following points should be noted:
g always represents the hard "g” in gun, never the soft
ii ff •
g
ch represents the “ch” in cheese or church
C H represents the guttural sound represented by the
“ch” in the Scots loch and in the Germ an composer
Bach
th represents the unvoiced “th ” in thin, three, or hath
T H represents the voiced “th ” in this, father, or bathe
iy represents a vowel sound used in Scots but no t in
English. It is the vowel in the norm al Scottish
pronunciation o f bite, pronounced a bit like “eye” but
XV Using this book

shorter. It is used in the Scots pronunciation o f Fife

and tide, as distinct from the longer vowel in Five and
tied
wh: words which, in southern English, start “wh-” but
are pronounced as i f they started “w-” (eg what, white)
are always pronounced with an initial “wh” sound in
Scots. T his sound is rather like the “h ” in hit and the
V ’ in wit pronounced almost simultaneously.
а', аа or aw (pronounced aw) Á means all: It’s a} the same
tae me,
Aberdeen Angus Aberdeen Angus is a breed o f
black hornless beef cattle originally bred in
Aberdeenshire and Angus.
Aberdeenshire (pronounced ab~er~dean~sher or ab~er~
dean-shire) A berdeenshire is a form er county in
N ortheast Scotland. It is now the name o f a single-tier
local council encom passing the old county plus
Kincardine and m ost o f Banff.
A berdo n ian An A berdonian is a person from
Aberdeen. T he dialect o f Scots spoken in Aberdeen is
also called Aberdonian. Something which is Aberdonian
comes from, or is typical of, Aberdeen,
ablow (pronounced а-blow) Ablow means below: in
ablow the sink.
a boot (pronounced а-boot) A boot means about: That}s
aayou incomers go on aboot.
abune (pronounced а-bin) or abeen (pronounced a-
been) Abune means above.
a ca d e m y 2

academy In Scotland, some secondary schools are

known as academies. Originally, an academy was a
public or private school in a burgh: Bathgate Academy; St
Margaret’s Academy.
ach (pronounced aCH) Ach is an expression o f
surprise, disgust, or resignation: Ach} you don’t really notice
the smell after a while.
act it To act it is to behave in a misleadingly innocent
way: He’s acting it if he says he didn’t know.
Adam An Adam house, interior, piece o f furniture, etc,
is one designed by the architect and decorator R obert
Adam (1728-92): a grand Adam mansion in Charlotte Street.
Adam successfully emulated the harmony and grace o f
classical and Italian Renaissance architecture in the
many British country houses he and his brother James
(1732-94) built. H is greatest Neo-Classical work is
undoubtedly Charlotte Square (1791) in Edinburgh.
T he exterior o f Culzean Castle in Ayrshire is a good
example o f his work in the Gothic Revival style,
advocate An advocate is a lawyer who has passed
certain extra exams and is perm itted to plead in the
H igh Court. T he English equivalent is a barrister.
Advocate Depute An Advocate D epute is a law
officer who prosecutes in im portant cases on behalf o f
the Lord Advocate. T he English equivalent is a public
prosecutor: The Advocate Depute asked him if he was aware of
the possible consequences of telling lies on oath.
ae rhymes with (pronounced bay) Ae means one or a
single: aejond kiss.
Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Reflections on
the painting and sculpture of the Greeks
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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eBook.

Title: Reflections on the painting and sculpture of the Greeks

with instructions for the connoisseur, and an essay on
grace in works of art

Author: Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Translator: Henry Fuseli

Release date: February 4, 2020 [eBook #61317]

Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file
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Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REFLECTIONS ON

THE PAINTING AND SCULPTURE OF THE GREEKS ***
 REFLECTIONS
ON THE

PAINTING
AND

SCULPTURE
OF THE

G R E E K S.

REFLECTIONS
ON THE

Painting and Sculpture

OF
THE GREEKS:
WITH

Instructions for the Connoisseur,

 AND

An Essay on Grace in Works of Art.

Translated from
The German Original of the Abbé W i n k e l m a n n,
Librarian of the V a t i c a n, F. R. S. &c. &c.

By H E N R Y F U S S E L I, A.M.

LONDON:
Printed for the Translator, and Sold by A. Millar,
in the Strand, 1765.
 TO
The Lord S c a r s d a l e.
My Lord,

W
ith becoming gratitude for your Lordship’s condescension in
granting such a noble Asylum to a Stranger, I humbly presume
to shelter this Translation under your Lordship’s Patronage.
If I have been able to do justice to my Author, your Lordship’s
accurate Jugment, and fine Taste, will naturally protect his Work: But
I must rely wholly on your known Candour and Goodness for the
pardon of many imperfections in the language.
I am, with the most profound respect,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s
Most obliged, most obedient, and most humble Servant,
Henry Fusseli.
London,
10 April, 1765.
GRAIIS INGENIUM
&c.
 ON THE

IMITATION
OF THE
Painting and Sculpture of the GREEKS.

I. Nature.

T
o the Greek climate we owe the production of T a s t e, and from
thence it spread at length over all the politer world. Every
invention, communicated by foreigners to that nation, was but the
feed of what it became afterwards, changing both its nature and size
in a country, chosen, as Plato[1] says, by Minerva, to be inhabited by
the Greeks, as productive of every kind of genius.
But this T a s t e was not only original among the Greeks, but
seemed also quite peculiar to their country: it seldom went abroad
without loss; and was long ere it imparted its kind influences to
more distant climes. It was, doubtless, a stranger to the northern
zones, when Painting and Sculpture, those offsprings of Greece,
were despised there to such a degree, that the most valuable pieces
of Corregio served only for blinds to the windows of the royal stables
at Stockholm.
There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and
perhaps unequalled; I mean, by imitating the antients. And what we
are told of Homer, that whoever understands him well, admires him,
we find no less true in matters concerning the antient, especially the
Greek arts. But then we must be as familiar with them as with a
friend, to find Laocoon as inimitable as Homer. By such intimacy our
judgment will be that of Nicomachus: Take these eyes, replied he to
some paltry critick, censuring the Helen of Zeuxis, Take my eyes,
and she will appear a goddess.
With such eyes Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Poussin, considered
the performances of the antients. They imbibed taste at its source;
and Raphael particularly in its native country. We know, that he sent
young artists to Greece, to copy there, for his use, the remains of
antiquity.
An antient Roman statue, compared to a Greek one, will generally
appear like Virgil’s Diana amidst her Oreads, in comparison of the
Nausicaa of Homer, whom he imitated.
Laocoon was the standard of the Roman artists, as well as ours;
and the rules of Polycletus became the rules of art.
I need not put the reader in mind of the negligences to be met
with in the most celebrated antient performances: the Dolphin at the
feet of the Medicean Venus, with the children, and the Parerga of
the Diomedes by Dioscorides, being commonly known. The reverse
of the best Egyptian and Syrian coins seldom equals the head, in
point of workmanship. Great artists are wisely negligent, and even
their errors instruct. Behold their works as Lucian bids you behold
the Zeus of Phidias; Zeus himself, not his footstool.
It is not only Nature which the votaries of the Greeks find in their
works, but still more, something superior to nature; ideal beauties,
brain-born images, as Proclus says[2].
The most beautiful body of ours would perhaps be as much
inferior to the most beautiful Greek one, as Iphicles was to his
brother Hercules. The forms of the Greeks, prepared to beauty, by
the influence of the mildest and purest sky, became perfectly elegant
by their early exercises. Take a Spartan youth, sprung from heroes,
undistorted by swaddling-cloths; whose bed, from his seventh year,
was the earth, familiar with wrestling and swimming from his
infancy; and compare him with one of our young Sybarits, and then
decide which of the two would be deemed worthy, by an artist, to
serve for the model of a Theseus, an Achilles, or even a Bacchus.
The latter would produce a Theseus fed on roses, the former a
Theseus fed on flesh, to borrow the expression of Euphranor.
The grand games were always a very strong incentive for every
Greek youth to exercise himself. Whoever aspired to the honours of
these was obliged, by the laws, to submit to a trial of ten months at
Elis, the general rendezvous; and there the first rewards were
commonly won by youths, as Pindar tells us.[3]To be like the God-
like Diagoras, was the fondest wish of every youth.
Behold the swift Indian outstripping in pursuit the hart: how
briskly his juices circulate! how flexible, how elastic his nerves and
muscles! how easy his whole frame! Thus Homer draws his heroes,
and his Achilles he eminently marks for “being swift of foot.”
By these exercises the bodies of the Greeks got the great and
manly Contour observed in their statues, without any bloated
corpulency. The young Spartans were bound to appear every tenth
day naked before the Ephori, who, when they perceived any
inclinable to fatness, ordered them a scantier diet; nay, it was one of
Pythagoras’s precepts, to beware of growing too corpulent; and,
perhaps for the same reason, youths aspiring to wrestling-games
were, in the remoter ages of Greece, during their trial, confined to a
milk diet.
They were particularly cautious in avoiding every deforming
custom; and Alcibiades, when a boy, refusing to learn to play on the
flute, for fear of its discomposing his features, was followed by all
the youth of Athens.
In their dress they were professed followers of nature. No modern
stiffening habit, no squeezing stays hindered Nature from forming
easy beauty; the fair knew no anxiety about their attire, and from
their loose and short habits the Spartan girls got the epithet of
Phænomirides.
We know what pains they took to have handsome children, but
want to be acquainted with their methods: for certainly Quillet, in his
Callipædy, falls short of their numerous expedients. They even
attempted changing blue eyes to black ones, and games of beauty
were exhibited at Elis, the rewards consisting of arms consecrated to
the temple of Minerva. How could they miss of competent and
learned judges, when, as Aristotle tells us, the Grecian youths were
taught drawing expressly for that purpose? From their fine
complexion, which, though mingled with a vast deal of foreign blood,
is still preserved in most of the Greek islands, and from the still
enticing beauty of the fair sex, especially at Chios; we may easily
form an idea of the beauty of the former inhabitants, who boasted
of being Aborigines, nay, more antient than the moon.
And are not there several modern nations, among whom beauty is
too common to give any title to pre-eminence? Such are
unanimously accounted the Georgians and the Kabardinski in the
Crim.
Those diseases which are destructive of beauty, were moreover
unknown to the Greeks. There is not the least hint of the small-pox,
in the writings of their physicians; and Homer, whose portraits are
always so truly drawn, mentions not one pitted face. Venereal
plagues, and their daughter the English malady, had not yet names.
And must we not then, considering every advantage which nature
bestows, or art teaches, for forming, preserving, and improving
beauty, enjoyed and applied by the Grecians; must we not then
confess, there is the strongest probability that the beauty of their
persons excelled all we can have an idea of?
Art claims liberty: in vain would nature produce her noblest
offsprings, in a country where rigid laws would choak her
progressive growth, as in Egypt, that pretended parent of sciences
and arts: but in Greece, where, from their earliest youth, the happy
inhabitants were devoted to mirth and pleasure, where narrow-
spirited formality never restrained the liberty of manners, the artist
enjoyed nature without a veil.
The Gymnasies, where, sheltered by public modesty, the youths
exercised themselves naked, were the schools of art. These the
philosopher frequented, as well as the artist. Socrates for the
instruction of a Charmides, Autolycus, Lysis; Phidias for the
improvement of his art by their beauty. Here he studied the elasticity
of the muscles, the ever varying motions of the frame, the outlines
of fair forms, or the Contour left by the young wrestler on the sand.
Here beautiful nakedness appeared with such a liveliness of
expression, such truth and variety of situations, such a noble air of
the body, as it would be ridiculous to look for in any hired model of
our academies.
Truth springs from the feelings of the heart. What shadow of it
therefore can the modern artist hope for, by relying upon a vile
model, whose soul is either too base to feel, or too stupid to express
the passions, the sentiment his object claims? unhappy he! if
experience and fancy fail him.
The beginning of many of Plato’s dialogues, supposed to have
been held in the Gymnasies, cannot raise our admiration of the
generous souls of the Athenian youth, without giving us, at the same
time, a strong presumption of a suitable nobleness in their outward
carriage and bodily exercises.
The fairest youths danced undressed on the theatre; and
Sophocles, the great Sophocles, when young, was the first who
dared to entertain his fellow-citizens in this manner. Phryne went to
bathe at the Eleusinian games, exposed to the eyes of all Greece,
and rising from the water became the model of Venus Anadyomene.
During certain solemnities the young Spartan maidens danced naked
before the young men: strange this may seem, but will appear more
probable, when we consider that the christians of the primitive
church, both men and women, were dipped together in the same
font.
Then every solemnity, every festival, afforded the artist
opportunity to familiarize himself with all the beauties of Nature.
In the most happy times of their freedom, the humanity of the
Greeks abhorred bloody games, which even in the Ionick Asia had
ceased long before, if, as some guess, they had once been usual
there. Antiochus Epiphanes, by ordering shews of Roman gladiators,
first presented them with such unhappy victims; and custom and
time, weakening the pangs of sympathizing humanity, changed even
these games into schools of art. There Ctesias studied his dying
gladiator, in whom you might descry “how much life was still left in
him[4].”
These frequent occasions of observing Nature, taught the Greeks
to go on still farther. They began to form certain general ideas of
beauty, with regard to the proportions of the inferiour parts, as well
as of the whole frame: these they raised above the reach of
mortality, according to the superiour model of some ideal nature.
Thus Raphael formed his Galatea, as we learn by his letter to
Count Baltazar Castiglione[5], where he says, “Beauty being so
seldom found among the fair, I avail myself of a certain ideal image.”
According to those ideas, exalted above the pitch of material
models, the Greeks formed their gods and heroes: the profile of the
brow and nose of gods and goddesses is almost a streight line. The
same they gave on their coins to queens, &c. but without indulging
their fancy too much. Perhaps this profile was as peculiar to the
antient Greeks, as flat noses and little eyes to the Calmucks and
Chinese; a supposition which receives some strength from the large
eyes of all the heads on Greek coins and gems.
From the same ideas the Romans formed their Empresses on their
coins. Livia and Agrippina have the profile of Artemisia and
Cleopatra.
We observe, nevertheless, that the Greek artists in general,
submitted to the law prescribed by the Thebans: “To do, under a
penalty, their best in imitating Nature.” For, where they could not
possibly apply their easy profile, without endangering the
resemblance, they followed Nature, as we see instanced in the
beauteous head of Julia, the daughter of Titus, done by Euodus[6].
 But to form a “just resemblance, and, at the same time, a
handsomer one,” being always the chief rule they observed, and
which Polygnotus constantly went by; they must, of necessity, be
supposed to have had in view a more beauteous and more perfect
Nature. And when we are told, that some artists imitated Praxiteles,
who took his concubine Cratina for the model of his Cnidian Venus;
or that others formed the graces from Lais; it is to be understood
that they did so, without neglecting these great laws of the art.
Sensual beauty furnished the painter with all that nature could give;
ideal beauty with the awful and sublime; from that he took the
Humane, from this the Divine.
Let any one, sagacious enough to pierce into the depths of art,
compare the whole system of the Greek figures with that of the
moderns, by which, as they say, nature alone is imitated; good
heaven! what a number of neglected beauties will he not discover!
For instance, in most of the modern figures, if the skin happens to
be any where pressed, you see there several little smart wrinkles:
when, on the contrary, the same parts, pressed in the same manner
on Greek statues, by their soft undulations, form at last but one
noble pressure. These master-pieces never shew us the skin forcibly
stretched, but softly embracing the firm flesh, which fills it up
without any tumid expansion, and harmoniously follows its direction.
There the skin never, as on modern bodies, appears in plaits distinct
from the flesh.
Modern works are likewise distinguished from the antient by parts;
a crowd of small touches and dimples too sensibly drawn. In antient
works you find these distributed with sparing sagacity, and, as
relative to a completer and more perfect Nature, offered but as
hints, nay, often perceived only by the learned.
The probability still increases, that the bodies of the Greeks, as
well as the works of their artists, were framed with more unity of
system, a nobler harmony of parts, and a completeness of the
whole, above our lean tensions and hollow wrinkles.
 Probability, ’tis true, is all we can pretend to: but it deserves the
attention of our artists and connoisseurs the rather, as the
veneration professed for the antient monuments is commonly
imputed to prejudice, and not to their excellence; as if the numerous
ages, during which they have mouldered, were the only motive for
bestowing on them exalted praises, and setting them up for the
standards of imitation.
Such as would fain deny to the Greeks the advantages both of a
more perfect Nature and of ideal Beauties, boast of the famous
Bernini, as their great champion. He was of opinion, besides, that
Nature was possessed of every requisite beauty: the only skill being
to discover that. He boasted of having got rid of a prejudice
concerning the Medicean Venus, whose charms he at first thought
peculiar ones; but, after many careful researches, discovered them
now and then in Nature[7].
He was taught then, by the Venus, to discover beauties in
common Nature, which he had formerly thought peculiar to that
statue, and but for it, never would have searched for them. Follows
it not from thence, that the beauties of the Greek statues being
discovered with less difficulty than those of Nature, are of course
more affecting; not so diffused, but more harmoniously united? and
if this be true, the pointing out of Nature as chiefly imitable, is
leading us into a more tedious and bewildered road to the
knowledge of perfect beauty, than setting up the ancients for that
purpose: consequently Bernini, by adhering too strictly to Nature,
acted against his own principles, as well as obstructed the progress
of his disciples.
The imitation of beauty is either reduced to a single object, and is
individual, or, gathering observations from single ones, composes of
these one whole. The former we call copying, drawing a portrait; ’tis
the straight way to Dutch forms and figures; whereas the other
leads to general beauty, and its ideal images, and is the way the
Greeks took. But there is still this difference between them and us:
they enjoying daily occasions of seeing beauty, (suppose even not
superior to ours,) acquired those ideal riches with less toil than we,
confined as we are to a few and often fruitless opportunities, ever
can hope for. It would be no easy matter, I fancy, for our nature, to
produce a frame equal in beauty to that of Antinous; and surely no
idea can soar above the more than human proportions of a deity, in
the Apollo of the Vatican, which is a compound of the united force of
Nature, Genius, and Art.
Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused
through Nature, shewing in the other the pitch to which the most
perfect Nature can elevate herself, when soaring above the senses,
will quicken the genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he
will learn to think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed
limits of human and divine beauty.
Building on this ground, his hand and senses directed by the
Greek rule of beauty, the modern artist goes on the surest way to
the imitation of Nature. The ideas of unity and perfection, which he
acquired in meditating on antiquity, will help him to combine, and to
ennoble the more scattered and weaker beauties of our Nature.
Thus he will improve every beauty he discovers in it, and by
comparing the beauties of nature with the ideal, form rules for
himself.
Then, and not sooner, he, particularly the painter, may be allowed
to commit himself to Nature, especially in cases where his art is
beyond the instruction of the old marbles, to wit, in drapery; then,
like Poussin, he may proceed with more liberty; for “a timid follower
will never get the start of his leaders, and he who is at a loss to
produce something of his own, will be a bad manager of the
productions of another,” as Michael Angelo says; Minds favoured by
Nature,

Quibus Arte benigna,

Et meliore luto, finxit præcordia Titan,

have here a plain way to become originals.

 Thus the account de Piles gives, ought to be understood, that
Raphael, a short time before he was carried off by death, intended
to forsake the marbles, in order to addict himself wholly to Nature.
True antient taste would most certainly have guided him through
every maze of common Nature; and whatever observations,
whatever new ideas he might have reaped from that, they would all,
by a kind of chymical transmutation, have been changed to his own
essence and soul.
He, perhaps, might have indulged more variety; enlarged his
draperies; improved his colours, his light and shadow: but none of
these improvements would have raised his pictures to that high
esteem they deserve, for that noble Contour, and that sublimity of
thoughts, which he acquired from the ancients.
Nothing would more decisively prove the advantages to be got by
imitating the ancients, preferably to Nature, than an essay made
with two youths of equal talents, by devoting the one to antiquity,
the other to Nature: this would draw Nature as he finds her; if
Italian, perhaps he might paint like Caravaggio; if Flemish, and lucky,
like Jac. Jordans; if French, like Stella: the other would draw her as
she directs, and paint like Raphael.

II. Contour.

B
ut even supposing that the imitation of Nature could supply all
the artist wants, she never could bestow the precision of
Contour, that characteristic distinction of the ancients.
The noblest Contour unites or circumscribes every part of the
most perfect Nature, and the ideal beauties in the figures of the
Greeks; or rather, contains them both. Euphranor, famous after the
epoch of Zeuxis, is said to have first ennobled it.
Many of the moderns have attempted to imitate this Contour, but
very few with success. The great Rubens is far from having attained
either its precision or elegance, especially in the performances which
he finished before he went to Italy, and studied the antiques.
The line by which Nature divides completeness from superfluity is
but a small one, and, insensible as it often is, has been crossed even
by the best moderns; while these, in shunning a meagre Contour,
became corpulent, those, in shunning that, grew lean.
Among them all, only Michael Angelo, perhaps, may be said to
have attained the antique; but only in strong muscular figures,
heroic frames; not in those of tender youth; nor in female bodies,
which, under his bold hand, grew Amazons.
The Greek artist, on the contrary, adjusted his Contour, in every
figure, to the breadth of a single hair, even in the nicest and most
tiresome performances, as gems. Consider the Diomedes and
Perseus of Dioscorides[8], Hercules and Iole by Teucer[9], and
admire the inimitable Greeks.
Parrhasius, they say, was master of the correctest Contour.
This Contour reigns in Greek figures, even when covered with
drapery, as the chief aim of the artist; the beautiful frame pierces
the marble like a transparent Coan cloth.
The high-stiled Agrippina, and the three vestals in the royal
cabinet at Dresden, deserve to be mentioned as eminent proofs of
this. This Agrippina seems not the mother of Nero, but an elder one,
the spouse of Germanicus. She much resembles another pretended
Agrippina, in the parlour of the library of St. Marc, at Venice[10].
Ours is a sitting figure, above the size of Nature, her head inclined
on her right hand; her fine face speaks a soul “pining in thought,”
absorbed in pensive sorrow, and senseless to every outward
impression. The artist, I suppose, intended to draw his heroine in
the mournful moment she received the news of her banishment to
Pandataria.
The three vestals deserve our esteem from a double title: as being
the first important discoveries of Herculaneum, and models of the
sublimest drapery. All three, but particularly one above the natural
size, would, with regard to that, be worthy companions of the
Farnesian Flora, and all the other boasts of antiquity. The two others
seem, by their resemblance to each other, productions of the same
hand, only distinguished by their heads, which are not of equal
goodness. On the best the curled hairs, running in furrows from the
forehead, are tied on the neck: on the other the hair being smooth
on the scalp, and curled on the front, is gathered behind, and tied
with a ribband: this head seems of a modern hand, but a good one.
There is no veil on these heads; but that makes not against their
being vestals: for the priestesses of Vesta (I speak on proof) were
not always veiled; or rather, as the drapery seems to betray, the veil,
which was of one piece with the garments, being thrown backwards,
mingles with the cloaths on the neck.
’Tis to these three inimitable pieces that the world owes the first
hints of the ensuing discovery of the subterranean treasures of
Herculaneum.
Their discovery happened when the same ruins that overwhelmed
the town had nearly extinguished the unhappy remembrance of it:
when the tremendous fate that spoke its doom was only known by
the account which Pliny gives of his uncle’s death.
These great master-pieces of the Greek art were transplanted, and
worshipped in Germany, long before Naples could boast of one
single Herculanean monument.
They were discovered in the year 1706 at Portici near Naples, in a
ruinous vault, on occasion of digging the foundations of a villa, for
the Prince d’Elbeuf, and immediately, with other new discovered
marble and metal statues, came into the possession of Prince
Eugene, and were transported to Vienna.
Eugene, who well knew their value, provided a Sala Terrena to be
built expressly for them, and a few others: and so highly were they
esteemed, that even on the first rumour of their sale, the academy
and the artists were in an uproar, and every body, when they were
transported to Dresden, followed them with heavy eyes.
The famous Matielli, to whom

His rule Polyclet, his chissel Phidias gave,

Algarotti.

copied them in clay before their removal, and following them some
years after, filled Dresden with everlasting monuments of his art: but
even there he studied the drapery of his priestesses, (drapery his
chief skill!) till he laid down his chissel, and thus gave the most
striking proof of their excellence.

III. Drapery.

B
y Drapery is to be understood all that the art teaches of covering
the nudities, and folding the garments; and this is the third
prerogative of the ancients.
The Drapery of the vestals above, is grand and elegant. The
smaller foldings spring gradually from the larger ones, and in them
are lost again, with a noble freedom, and gentle harmony of the
whole, without hiding the correct Contour. How few of the moderns
would stand the test here!
Justice, however, shall not be refused to some great modern
artists, who, without impairing nature or truth, have left, in certain
cases, the road which the ancients generally pursued. The Greek
Drapery, in order to help the Contour, was, for the most part, taken
from thin and wet garments, which of course clasped the body, and
discovered the shape. The robe of the Greek ladies was extremely
thin; thence its epithet of Peplon.
Nevertheless the reliefs, the pictures, and particularly the busts of
the ancients, are instances that they did not always keep to this
undulating Drapery[11].
 In modern times the artists were forced to heap garments, and
sometimes heavy ones, on each other, which of course could not fall
into the flowing folds of the ancients. Hence the large-folded
Drapery, by which the painter and sculptor may display as much skill
as by the ancient manner. Carlo Marat and Francis Solimena may be
called the chief masters of it: but the garments of the new Venetian
school, by passing the bounds of nature and propriety, became stiff
as brass.

IV. Expression.

T
he last and most eminent characteristic of the Greek works is a
noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Gesture and Expression.
As the bottom of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface, a
great soul lies sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures.
’Tis in the face of Laocoon this soul shines with full lustre, not
confined however to the face, amidst the most violent sufferings.
Pangs piercing every muscle, every labouring nerve; pangs which we
almost feel ourselves, while we consider—not the face, nor the most
expressive parts—only the belly contracted by excruciating pains:
these however, I say, exert not themselves with violence, either in
the face or gesture. He pierces not heaven, like the Laocoon of
Virgil; his mouth is rather opened to discharge an anxious
overloaded groan, as Sadolet says; the struggling body and the
supporting mind exert themselves with equal strength, nay balance
all the frame.
Laocoon suffers, but suffers like the Philoctetes of Sophocles: we
weeping feel his pains, but wish for the hero’s strength to support
his misery.
The Expression of so great a soul is beyond the force of mere
nature. It was in his own mind the artist was to search for the
strength of spirit with which he marked his marble. Greece enjoyed
artists and philosophers in the same persons; and the wisdom of
more than one Metrodorus directed art, and inspired its figures with
more than common souls.
Had Laocoon been covered with a garb becoming an antient
sacrificer, his sufferings would have lost one half of their Expression.
Bernini pretended to perceive the first effects of the operating
venom in the numbness of one of the thighs.
Every action or gesture in Greek figures, not stamped with this
character of sage dignity, but too violent, too passioniate, was called
“Parenthyrsos.”
For, the more tranquillity reigns in a body, the fitter it is to draw
the true character of the soul; which, in every excessive gesture,
seems to rush from her proper centre, and being hurried away by
extremes becomes unnatural. Wound up to the highest pitch of
passion, she may force herself upon the duller eye; but the true
sphere of her action is simplicity and calmness. In Laocoon
sufferings alone had been Parenthyrsos; the artist therefore, in order
to reconcile the significative and ennobling qualities of his soul, put
him into a posture, allowing for the sufferings that were necessary,
the next to a state of tranquillity: a tranquillity however that is
characteristical: the soul will be herself—this individual—not the soul
of mankind; sedate, but active; calm, but not indifferent or drowsy.
What a contrast! how diametrically opposite to this is the taste of
our modern artists, especially the young ones! on nothing do they
bestow their approbation, but contorsions and strange postures,
inspired with boldness; this they pretend is done with spirit, with
Franchezza. Contrast is the darling of their ideas; in it they fancy
every perfection. They fill their performances with comet-like
excentric souls, despising every thing but an Ajax or a Capaneus.
Arts have their infancy as well as men; they begin, as well as the
artist, with froth and bombast: in such buskins the muse of Æschilus
stalks, and part of the diction in his Agamemnon is more loaded with
hyperboles than all Heraclitus’s nonsense. Perhaps the primitive
Greek painters drew in the same manner that their first good
tragedian thought in.
In all human actions flutter and rashness precede, sedateness and
solidity follow: but time only can discover, and the judicious will
admire these only: they are the characteristics of great masters;
violent passions run away with their disciples.
The sages in the art know the difficulties hid under that air of
easiness:

ut sibi quivis
Speret idem, sudet multum, frustraque laboret
Ausus idem.
Hor.

La Fage, though an eminent designer, was not able to attain the

purity of ancient taste. Every thing is animated in his works; they
demand, and at the same time dissipate, your attention, like a
company striving to talk all at once.
This noble simplicity and sedate grandeur is also the true
characteristical mark of the best and maturest Greek writings, of the
epoch and school of Socrates. Possessed of these qualities Raphael
became eminently great, and he owed them to the ancients.
That great soul of his, lodged in a beauteous body, was requisite
for the first discovery of the true character of the ancients: he first
felt all their beauties, and (what he was peculiarly happy in!) at an
age when vulgar, unfeeling, and half-moulded souls overlook every
higher beauty.
Ye that approach his works, teach your eyes to be sensible of
those beauties, refine your taste by the true antique, and then that
solemn tranquillity of the chief figures in his Attila, deemed insipid by
the vulgar, will appear to you equally significant and sublime. The
Roman bishop, in order to divert the Hun from his design of assailing
Rome, appears not with the air of a Rhetor, but as a venerable man,
whose very presence softens uproar into peace; like him drawn by
Virgil:

Tum pietate gravem ac meritis, si forte virum quem

Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant:
Æn. I.

full of confidence in God, he faces down the barbarian: the two

Apostles descend not with the air of slaughtering angels, but (if
sacred may be compared with profane) like Jove, whose very nod
shakes Olympus.
Algardi, in his celebrated representation of the same story, done in
bas-relief on an altar in St. Peter’s church at Rome, was either too
negligent, or too weak, to give this active tranquillity of his great
predecessor to the figures of his Apostles. There they appear like
messengers of the Lord of Hosts: here like human warriors with
mortal arms.
How few of those we call connoisseurs have ever been able to
understand, and sincerely to admire, the grandeur of expression in
the St. Michael of Guido, in the church of the Capuchins at Rome!
they prefer commonly the Archangel of Concha, whose face glows
with indignation and revenge[12]; whereas Guido’s Angel, after
having overthrown the fiend of God and man, hovers over him
unruffled and undismayed.
Thus, to heighten the hero of The Campaign, victorious
Marlborough, the British poet paints the avenging Angel hovering
over Britannia with the like serenity and awful calmness.
The royal gallery at Dresden contains now, among its treasures,
one of Raphael’s best pictures, witness Vasari, &c. a Madonna with
the Infant; St. Sixtus and St. Barbara kneeling, one on each side,
and two Angels in the fore-part.
It was the chief altar-piece in the cloister of St. Sixtus at Piacenza,
which was crouded by connoisseurs, who came to see this Raphael,
in the same manner as Thespis was in the days of old, for the sake
of the beautiful Cupid of Praxiteles.
Behold the Madonna! her face brightens with innocence; a form
above the female size, and the calmness of her mien, make her
appear as already beatified: she has that silent awfulness which the
ancients spread over their deities. How grand, how noble is her
Contour!
The child in her arms is elevated above vulgar children, by a face
darting the beams of divinity through every smiling feature of
harmless childhood.
St. Barbara kneels, with adoring stillness, at her side: but being
far beneath the majesty of the chief figure, the great artist
compensated her humbler graces with soft enticing charms.
The Saint opposite to her is venerable with age. His features seem
to bear witness of his sacred youth.
The veneration which St. Barbara declares for the Madonna,
expressed in the most sensible and pathetic manner, by her fine
hands clasped on her breast, helps to support the motion of one of
St. Sixtus’s hands, by which he utters his extasy, better becoming
(as the artist judiciously thought, and chose for variety’s sake) manly
strength, than female modesty.
Time, ’tis true, has withered the primitive splendour of this
picture, and partly blown off its lively colours; but still the soul, with
which the painter inspired his godlike work, breathes life through all
its parts.
Let those that approach this, and the rest of Raphael’s works, in
hopes of finding there the trifling Dutch and Flemish beauties, the
laboured nicety of Netscher, or Douw, flesh ivorified by Van der
Werf, or even the licked manner of some of Raphael’s living
countrymen; let those, I say, be told, that Raphael was not a great
master for them.
 V. Workmanship in Sculpture.

A
fter these remarks on the Nature, the Contour, the Drapery, the
simplicity and grandeur of Expression in the performances of the
Greek artists, we shall proceed to some inquiries into their method
of working.
Their models were generally made of wax; instead of which the
moderns used clay, or such like unctuous stuff, as seeming fitter for
expressing flesh, than the more gluey and tenacious wax.
A method however not new, though more frequent in our times:
for we know even the name of that ancient who first attempted
modelling in wet clay; ’twas Dibutades of Sicyon; and Arcesilaus, the
friend of Lucullus, grew more famous by his models of clay than his
other performances. He made for Lucullus a figure of clay
representing Happiness, and received 60,000 sesterces: and
Octavius, a Roman Knight, paid him a talent for the model only of a
large dish, in plaister, which he designed to have finished in gold.
Of all materials, clay might be allowed to be the fittest for shaping
figures, could it preserve its moistness; but losing that by time or
fire, its solider parts, contracting by degrees, lessen the bulk of the
mass; and that which is formed, being of different diameters, grows
sooner dry in some parts than in others, and the dry ones being
shrunk to a smaller size, there will be no proportion kept in the
whole.
From this inconvenience wax is always free: it loses nothing of its
bulk; and there are also means to give it the smoothness of flesh,
which is refused to modelling; viz. you make your model of clay,
mould it with plaister, and cast the wax over it.
But for transferring their models to the marble, the Greeks seem
to have possessed some peculiar advantages, which are now lost:
for you discover, every where in their works, the traces of a
confident hand; and even in those of inferior rank, it would be no
easy matter to prove a wrong cut. Surely hands so steady, so
secure, must of necessity have been guided by rules more
determinate and less arbitrary than we can boast of.
The usual method of our sculptors is, to quarter the well-prepared
model with horizontals and perpendiculars, and, as is common in
copying a picture, to draw a relative number of squares on the
marble.
Thus, regular gradations of a scale being supposed, every small
square of the model has its corresponding one on the marble. But
the contents of the relative masses not being determinable by a
measured surface, the artist, though he gives to his stone the
resemblance of the model, yet, as he only depends on the
precarious aid of his eye, he shall never cease wavering, as to his
doing right or wrong, cutting too flat or too deep.
Nor can he find lines to determine precisely the outlines, or the
Contour of the inward parts, and the centre of his model, in so fixed
and unchangeable a manner, as to enable him, exactly, to transfer
the same Contours upon his stone.
To all this add, that, if his work happens to be too voluminous for
one single hand, he must trust to those of his journeymen and
disciples, who, too often, are neither skilful nor cautious enough to
follow their master’s design; and if once the smallest trifle be cut
wrong, for it is impossible to fix, by this method, the limits of the
cuts, all is lost.
It is to be remarked in general, that every sculptor, who carries on
his chisselings their whole length, on first fashioning his marble, and
does not prepare them by gradual cuts for the last final strokes; it is
to be remarked, I say, that he never can keep his work free from
faults.
Another chief defect in that method is this: the artist cannot help
cutting off, every moment, the lines on his block; and though he
restore them, cannot possibly be sure of avoiding mistakes.
On account of this unavoidable uncertainty, the artists found
themselves obliged to contrive another method, and that which the
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