The Sun.
London, England, 1829-02-27 00:00:00

BOOK ENGRAVINGS.

The abstract idea of a book-engraving is an in-
vention of the devil ; who, by the way, in all the
illustrated copies we have seen of the Bible and
" Paradise Lost," is amply ptinished for the device.
The business of a book-engraving, in general, we
take to be this : it is meant to serve.the purpose
of introducing a salutary fretfulness und disagree-
ment into the- intercourse of author and reader. If
the reader of an "illustrated" volume is so impru-
dent as to frame for himself, from the hints of the
writer, a vivid picture of a man or an occurrence, let
him but look to the frontispiece, and we will bet all
Mr. Westall's designs to the dullest of. Cruick-
shanks' scratchings, that he will cry to sleep again,
he will find a London school-miss instead of
Miranda, or a Prospero evidently imitated from that
great conjuror, Mr. Cobbett. A book-engraving,
above all other engines, is powerful to stuff out the
insignificant, and degrade the lofty, to change what
is universal, as containing more life than aliy thing
else, into that which is common-place, as containing
less. It renders the individual and peculiar, general
and indiscriminate. It has the true art of mutations
to change peasants into stage-players, - and gentle-
men into clowns. It makes Don Quixote what all
his madness could not make him, vulgar and
contemptible; it gives us, for the Duke and
Duchess, the Duke and Duchess. of St. Albans,
and plunders Sancho's face of. all its proverb-
honoured wisdom. How many a gay creature .of
the element has a book-engraving' changed into
a Caliban ! How many a band of heroes hath it,
like Collins, converted into swine! Itow • many a
fair lady of song bath it smitten, in the turning of
a page, with leprosyiand deformed with affectation:
'I he burin is the true Ithuriers spear to give us
fiends fur angels; it is the real sword of war, which
desolates fair landscapvs into wildernesies. At its
touch the butterflies of poetry grow back to grubs-
Egyptian-like, it seats its skeletons beside its gay
and revelling thoughts, and mocks us with the con-
trast. It takes us from the pleasant gardens and
the stately chambers of the fancy to . a region of
shadows and monsters ; and a bookseller stands
warder at the gate, and tells us, forsoOth, - that we
must pay for adMittance. Thank Heaven!. there.
are cheap and unillustrated editions of Shakspeare.
We are not, always compelled to put tip with a coal-
heaver instead of Orlando, and be content to think
Beatrice a hoyden ; or, rather, those resplendent
beings are not doomed to be always followed by
the grimaces and screamings of the apes and pea-
cocks from the engraver's Tarshish. We are some-
times allowed to read Homer without being-told
that a sac-simile of Thersit es is:a portrait of Achilles
and to see Nausicaa at the river in another likeness
than that of a modern washerwoman. Praise be to
the Bible Society, praise to the folios of 'Our fathers!,
that there are Bibles without engravings;
.thiit we
still think of Moses pointing to the brazen serpent,
as somewhat differen. in look and bearing from a
showman-at the Tower ; and that we- yet conceive
the form of Christ as rather that of a carpenter than
a Saviour.

There are many persons, no doubt, who would
derive no image whatever of an author's meaning
from his writing; and for these we suppose it is
that book-engravings are peculiarly intended. And
in these cases, undoubtedly, they are generally such
us exhibit a wise adaptation of means to ends.-
Minds that can make to themselves, by the aid of .
books, no notion of any thing that is in nature, are
very fit to be entertained by sketches of what is
completely unnatural. We would suggest,.: that
even fot such people it is needless to connect the
picture with the book, as a- volume is rather a
clumsy frame for a copper-plate. Buff& this class,
of readers the greatest possible difference' bet Ween
the author's mind and the artist's is of no import
ance whatever. If, indeed, . they could suspect, foea
moment that there is a similarity of intention be-
tween the anthor's mind and the artist's,-the conse-
quence would be a trouldesome and futile attempt -to
,trace out the connection, and a great deal of time
would be vainly wasted in an enterprise which from
the first would, for the greater part of the- "reading
public,"‘ be absolutely desperate. But there is in
truth no such danger.- And in this point of View
we have always particularly admired fi Boydell'o-
Shakspeare Gallery," which exhibits on a large.
scale the forms and gestures of certain fantastic be-
ings a; amusing as the fantoccini, or the dancing
dogs, or learned cats ; and whose identity with the
" line spirits" of the poet will never for an instant be
questioned by our unsuspicious public.--Athenceunt.
• -

THE MARKETS.

COUNTRY CORN MARRETS DURING THE WEEK-

heat. Barley. °att. Beane.
Per Quarter. a. to e. 8. to 8. e. to 8. a. to- I-
Blandlord 78 35 32
65 70 30 35 20 25 30 42
Cambridge 72 • 26 17 . 31
Chard . 56 76 32 3t& 24 30 42 41
Huntingdon...—. 66 . 70 27 32 17 24 99 34
Long Sutton.-- 50 70 • 14 21 33 3S___
Louth . 65 • 76 26 32 11l 24 32
Lynn . :)0 70 22 32 12 24 31 :P.
Newark -- 63 78 29 35 . 18 28 88 41.
Nottingham 79 4143
Peterberoligh 78 37 40 19 25 37 42
Plymouth . 66 78 132 36 21 28
-- 69 36 2.2 -45
-
Sleaford 70 76 50 33 22 24 50 4.5
Ifilpingham CS St 23 40 YO 28 . 20 40
Wished) „— 151 68 —I 15 21 34 36

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