button to main menu  Eleventh Exhibition, p.19
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page 19:-
various tones; if in one plate fifty degrees of strength are required, they must be produced by fifty applications of the acid. The soft ground has all the freedom of the black lead pencil, many of the plates have been finished by using the aquafortis once only; but the accomplishment of this desirable end requires extraordinary care and attention in the management, not only of the execution but of all the materials employed.
I should not here have troubled the reader with an account of my reasons for working in the soft ground in preference to any other line, had I not conceived it a duty I owe to the public and to myself, to remove impressions which, if not noticed, might tend to retard the progress of this department of art generally; and be injurious to me individually by its being supposed that the best line was to me unknown.
When I was in London in the year 1810, on calling on the worthy secretary of the society of Arts, I was informed that an important discovery had been made by Mr. Hassell, the aquatintist of a line which probably
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