printing house and engraving shop, part ii
pages. Its full title is as follows: An essay on engraving and copper-plate printing. To which is added, Albumazar, or the professors of the black art, a vision. By J. Hanckwitz, copper-plate printer [rule] Good Nature and good Sense must ever join / To err is human, to forgive divine. Essay on Criticism. [rule] By J. Hanckwitz, Copper-Plate Printer. [rule] London: Printed in the Year M DCC XXXII. 14 Nothing is known about the author except what he tells us on the title page, that he is a copperplate printer, and in the second part of the poem, we learn that he works with two others, Smutty Dick and Black Tom. The poem is valuable for what it tells us about the status of engraving and, most significantly, brings out the very human aspects of the work of these ‘dismal smutty Printers’. A brief ‘Introduction’ is followed by the ‘Essay’ in which the author decries the state of engraving in Britain compared with that in France. This deficiency is attributed to the fact that our artists attempt engraving without a grounding in the rules of drawing and perspective, available to the French in the academies founded by Louis XIV. The value of engraving in disseminating information is illustrated by the example of a mariner’s chart. The second part, the ‘vision’, is headed ‘Albumazar; or, the Professors of the Black Art, &c.’ and occupies the remainder of the pamphlet. This is the most interesting part of the poem, as we know so little about the working life of the trade. No wonder that after ‘labouring most furiously; by glimm’ring Lights,’ when he finally retires to bed at midnight, ‘With limbs fatigu’d, and pond’ring Head’ the author’s mind is full of apparitions prompted by the appearance of the copperplate presses: Methought I stood upon a floor, Which three odd fashion’d Machines bore; Compos’d of Cylinders and Crosses, In modern Terms call’d Rolling-Presses, The cylinders are of course the rollers, the crosses, the windmill like arms of the press, or star wheel, on which the pressmen must 14 . My description of the copy in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France with an anno- tated transcript of the text is forthcoming in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society.
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