ch, or depart, with your point at finely gradated
intervals, may be your next exercise, if you find the first unexpectedly
easy.

119. When the line is thus described in its proper course, it is plowed
deeper, where depth is needed, by a second cut of the burin, first on
one side, then on the other, the cut being given with gradated force so
as to take away most steel where the line is to be darkest. Every line
of gradated depth in the plate has to be thus cut eight or ten times
over at least, with retouchings to smooth and clear all in the close.
Jason has to plow his field ten-furrow deep, with his fiery oxen well in
hand, all the while.

When the essential lines are thus produced in their several directions,
those which have been drawn across each other, so as to give depth of
shade, or richness of texture, have to be farther enriched by dots in
the interstices; else there would be a painful appearance of network
everywhere; and these dots require each four or five jags to produce
them; and each of these jags must be done with what artists and
engravers alike call 'feeling,'--the sensibility, that is, of a hand
completely under mental government. So wrought, the dots look soft, and
like touches of paint; but mechanically dug in, they are vulgar and
hard.

120. Now, observe, that, for every piece of shadow throughout the work,
the engraver has to decide with what quantity and kind of line he will
produce it. Exactly the same quantity of black, and therefore the same
depth of tint in general effect, may be given with six thick lines; or
with twelve, of half their thickness; or with eighteen, of a third of
the thickness. The second six, second twelve, or second eighteen, may
cross the first six, first twelve, or first eighteen, or go between
them; and they may cross at any angle. And then the third six may be put
between the first six, or between the second six, or across both, and at
any angle. In the network thus produced, any kind of dots may be put in
the severally shaped interstices. And for any of the series of
superadded lines, dots, of equivalent value in shade, may be
substituted. (Some engravings are wrought in dots altogether.) Choice
infinite, with multiplication of infinity, is, at all events, to be
made, for every minute space, from one side of the plate to the other.

121. The excellence of a beautiful engraving is primarily in the use of
these resources to exhibit the qualities of the original pictur