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 Every
apology is, however, due to the reader for the hasty and imperfect execution of the
plates. Having much more serious work in hand, and desiring merely to render them
illustrative of my meaning, I have sometimes very completely failed even of that humble
aim; and the text, being generally written before the illustration was completed,
sometimes naively describes as sublime or beautiful, features which the plate represents
by a blot. I shall be grateful if the reader will in such cases refer the expressions of
praise the the Architecture, and not to the illustrations.So far,however, as their coarseness and rudeness admit, the plates are valuable; being either copies of memoranda made upon the spot, or (Plate IX, and XI) enlarged and adapted from Daguerreotypes, taken under my own superintendence. Unfortunately, the great distance from the ground of the window which is the subject of plate IX, renders even the Daguerreotype indistinct; and I can not answer the accuracy of any of the mosaic details, more especially of those which surround the window, and which I rather imagine, in the original , to be sculptures in relief. The general proportions are, however, studiously preserved; the spirals of the safest are counted, and the effect of whole is as near that of thing itself, as is necessary for the purposes of illustration for which the plate is given. For the accuracy of the rest I can answer, even to the cracks in the stones, and the number of them; and though the looseness of the drawing, and the picturesque character which is necessarily given by an endeavour to draw old buildings as they actually appear, may perhaps diminish their credit for architectural veracity, they will do so unjustly. Preface to the first edition |
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 ...The
quite first edition, with the original plates, will always, I venture to say, bear a high
price in the market; for its etchings were not only, every line of them, by my own hand,
but bitten also (the last of them in my washhand basin at "La Cloche" of Dijon,)
by myself, with savage carelessness ( I being then, as now, utterly scornful of all sorts
of art dependent on blotch, or burr, or any other "process" than that of steady
hand and true line): -out of which disdain, nevertheless, some of the plates came
into effects both right and good for their purpose, and will, as I say, be always
hereafter valuable.The Copies of them,made for the second edition by Mr.Cuff, and here
reprinted, are quite as good as for all practical illustation, and much more admirable as
piece of careful and singular engraver's skill. For the original method of etching was not
easily imitated by straightforward engraving. Preface to the edition |
