A bit of good luck and of
inspiration often does more than a methodical rule, whether we are
engaged on subjects of our own invention,--_capricci_, as the Italians
call them,--or whether we are drawing from nature directly on the
copper. The great aim is to arrive at the first onset at the realization
of our ideas as they are present in our mind. An etching must be
virginal, like an improvisation.

9. =Expression of Individuality in Etching.=--Having once mastered the
processes, the designer or painter need only carry his own individuality
into a species of work which will no longer be strange to him, there to
find again the expression of the talent which he displayed in another
field of art. He will comprehend that etching has this essentially vital
element,--and in it lies the strength of its past and the guaranty of
its future,--that, more than any other kind of engraving on metal, it
bears the imprint of the character of the artist. It personifies and
represents him so well, it identifies itself so closely with his idea,
that it often seems on the point of annihilating itself as a process in
favor of this idea. Rembrandt furnishes a striking example of this: by
the intermixture and diversity of the methods employed by him, he
arrived at a suavity of expression which may be called magical; he
diffused grace and depth throughout his work. In some of his plates the
processes lend themselves so marvellously to the severest requirements
of modelling, and attain such an extreme limit of delicacy, that the eye
can no longer follow them, thus leaving the completest enjoyment to the
intellect alone.

Claude Lorrain, on the other hand, knew how to conciliate freedom of
execution with majesty of style.

10. =Value of Etching to Artists.=--Speaking of this subordination of
processes in etching to feeling, I am induced to point out how many of
the masters of our time, judging by the character of their work, might
have added to their merits had they but substituted the etcher's needle
for the crayon. Was not Decamps, who handled the point but little, an
etcher in his drawings and his lithographs? Ingres only executed one
solitary etching, and yet, simply by virtue of his great knowledge, it
seems as if in it he had given a presentiment of all the secrets of the
craft. And did not Gigoux give us a foretaste of the work of the acid,
when he produced the illustrations to his "Gil Blas," conceived in the
spirit of an etcher, whic