The Excellency of the pen and pencil exemplifying the uses of them in the most exquisite and mysterious arts of drawing, etching, engraving, limning, painting in oyl, washing of maps & pictures, also the way to cleanse any old painting, and preserve the colours : collected from the writings of the ablest masters both ancient and modern, as Albert Durer, P. Lomantius, and divers others ; furnished with divers cuts in copper, being copied from the best masters ...

SECT. VI. How to take off any Picture, or Map-letters, &c. upon your Copper.

TAke your Plate and heat it over the fire, and having a piece of yellow Bees wax, put into, and tyed up in a fine Holland rag, try if your Plate be hot enough to melt your Wax, if it be, lightly wipe over your plate with that wax, until you see it be covered over with wax, but let it be but thin; if it be not even, after it is cold you may heat it again, and with a feather lay it even, which at first you will find a little difficult.

Now if wh••t you are to imitate be an exact copy, you must note it must stand the contrary way in the plate, and therefore your best way will be to track it over in every limb with a good Black-lead Pencil, especially if it be an old picture, which having done, take an old Ivory haft of a knife, and placing your

picture exactly on your copper, the face downward, take your haft and lightly rub over your print, and you shall perceive the perfect proportion remain upon the wax that is upon the plate; then take a long Graver, or another piece of steel grownd sharp, and with the point thereof go over every particular limb in the out-stroke, and there will be no difficulty to mark out all the shadows as you go to engrave your work, having the proportion before you.

And it will be more ready, if also you note your shadows how far they be dark, and how far light with your black-lead, before you rub it off; but a learner may be puzzeled at first with too many observations.

At first you will find some difficulty for carrying your hand, and for the depth of your stroke you are to engrave; but take this experiment in your first beginning; learn to carry your hand with such a slight, that you may end your stroke with as light a stroke as you began it, and though you may have occasion to have one part deeper or blacker than another, do that by degrees; and that you may the more distinctly do it, observe your strokes that they be not too close nor too wide: and for your more exact observation, practice by those prints that are more loosly shadowed at first, left by imi∣tating those dark and more shadowed, you be at a loss where to begin or where to end; which to know, is only got by practice: Thus for Pictures.

Now for Letters, if copies, every word and let∣ter must be either writ with ungumm'd Ink, or else gone over with Black-lead, and rubb'd on the

plate when it is waxed, as before; but if a Map or other Mathematical Instrument, every circle, square, or perpendicular must be drawn over as be∣fore, or else you cannot exactly imitate the same; but if you be to cut any Face, Armes, Instruments, or Map not to be printed, then if you black over the back-side, as you are directed for your design in Etching, that will serve your turn; onely for Etching you use a mixt ground, and for to Engrave you onely use wax.

And thus, in a plain style, I have given you an account of the whole mysterie of Engraving.