light. Archimedes defines a straight line as the shortest distance between two points.
A better criterion of rectilinearity is that of Simplicius, an Arabian commentator of the 5th century: Linea recta est quaecumque super duas ipsius extremitates rotata non movetur de loco suo ad alium locum (“a straight line is one which when rotated about its two extremities does not change its position”). This idea was employed by Leibnitz, and most auspiciously by Gierolamo Saccheri in 1733.
The drawing of a straight line between any two given points forms the subject of Euclid’s first postulate—ᾐιτήσθω ἀπὸ παντὸς σημείου ἐπὶ πᾶν σημεῖον εὐθεῖαν γραμμὴν ἀγάγειν, and the producing of a straight line continuously in a straight line is treated in the second postulate—καὶ πεπερασμένην εὐθεῖαν κατὰ τὸ συνεχὲς ἐπ᾽ εὐθείας ἐκβαλεῖν.
For a detailed analysis of the geometrical notion of the line and rectilinearity, see W. B. Frankland, Euclid’s Elements (1905). In analytical geometry the right line is always representable by an equation or equations of the first degree; thus in Cartesian coordinates of two dimensions the equation is of the form Ax + By + C = 0, in triangular coordinates Ax + By + Cz = 0. In three-dimensional coordinates, the line is represented by two linear equations. (See Geometry, Analytical.) Line geometry is a branch of analytical geometry in which the line is the element, and not the point as with ordinary analytical geometry (see Geometry, Line).
LINE ENGRAVING, on plates of copper or steel, the method
of engraving (q.v.), in which the line itself is hollowed, whereas
in the woodcut when the line is to print black it is left in relief,
and only white spaces and white lines are hollowed.
The art of line engraving has been practised from the earliest ages. The prehistoric Aztec hatchet given to Humboldt in Mexico was just as truly engraved as a modern copper-plate which may convey a design by Flaxman; the Aztec engraving is ruder than the European, but it is the same art. The important discovery which made line engraving one of the multiplying arts was the discovery how to print an incised line, which was hit upon at last by accident, and known for some time before its real utility was suspected. Line engraving in Europe does not owe its origin to the woodcut, but to the chasing on goldsmiths’ work. The goldsmiths of Florence in the middle of the 15th century were in the habit of ornamenting their works by means of engraving, after which they filled up the hollows produced by the burin with a black enamel made of silver, lead and sulphur, the result being that the design was rendered much more visible by the opposition of the enamel and the metal. An engraved design filled up in this manner was called a niello. Whilst a niello was in progress the artist could not see it so well as if the enamel were already in the lines, yet he did not like to put in the hard enamel prematurely, as when once it was set it could not easily be got out again. He therefore took a sulphur cast of his niello in progress, on a matrix of fine clay, and filled up the lines in the sulphur with lampblack, thus enabling himself to judge of the state of his engraving. At a later period it was discovered that a proof could be taken on damped paper by filling the engraved lines with a certain ink and wiping it off the surface of the plate, sufficient pressure being applied to make the paper go into the hollowed lines and fetch the ink out of them. This was the beginning of plate printing. The niello engravers thought it a convenient way of proving their work—the metal itself—as it saved the trouble of the sulphur cast, but they saw no further into the future. They went on engraving nielli just the same to ornament plate and furniture; nor was it until the 16th century that the new method of printing was carried out to its great and wonderful results. There are, however, certain differences between plate-printing and block-printing which affect the essentials of art. When paper is driven into a line so as to fetch the ink out of it, the line may be of unimaginable fineness, it will print all the same; but when the paper is only pressed upon a raised line, the line must have some appreciable thickness; the wood engraving, therefore, can never—except in a tour de force—be so delicate as plate engraving. Again, not only does plate-printing excel block-printing in delicacy; it excels it also in force and depth. There never was, and there will never be, a woodcut line having the power of a deep line in a plate, for in block-printing the line is only a blackened surface of paper slightly impressed, whereas in plate-printing it is a cast with an additional thickness of printing ink.
The most important of the tools used in line-engraving is the burin, which is a bar of steel with one end fixed in a handle rather like a mushroom with one side cut away, the burin itself being shaped so that the cutting end when sharpened takes the form of a lozenge, point downwards. The burin acts exactly like a plough; it makes a furrow and turns out a shaving of metal as the plough turns the soil of a field. The burin, however, is pushed while the plough is pulled, and this peculiar character of the burin, or graver, as a pushed instrument at once establishes a wide separation between it and all the other instruments employed in the arts of design, such as pencils, brushes, pens and etching needles.
The elements of engraving with the burin upon metal will be best understood by an example of a very simple kind, as in the engraving of letters. The capital letter B contains in itself the rudiments of an engraver’s education. As at first drawn, before the blacks are inserted, this letter consists of two perpendicular straight lines and four curves, all the curves differing from each other. Suppose, then, that the engraver has to make a B, he will scratch these lines, reversed, very lightly with a sharp point or style. The next thing is to cut out the blacks (not the whites, as in wood engraving), and this would be done with two different burins. The engraver would get his vertical black line by a powerful ploughing with the burin between his two preparatory first lines, and then take out some copper in the thickest parts of the two curves. This done, he would then take a finer burin and work out the gradation from the thick line in the midst of the curve to the thin extremities which touch the perpendicular. When there is much gradation in a line the darker parts of it are often gradually ploughed out by returning to it over and over again. The hollows so produced are afterwards filled with printing ink, just as the hollows in a niello were filled with black enamel; the surplus printing ink is wiped from the smooth surface of the copper, damped paper is laid upon it, and driven into the hollowed letter by the pressure of a revolving cylinder; it fetches the ink out, and you have your letter B in intense black upon a white ground.
When the surface of a metal plate is sufficiently polished to be used for engraving, the slightest scratch upon it will print as a black line, the degree of blackness being proportioned to the depth of the scratch. An engraved plate from which visiting cards are printed is a good example of some elementary principles of engraving. It contains thin lines and thick ones, and a considerable variety of curves. An elaborate line engraving, if it is a pure line engraving and nothing else, will contain only these simple elements in different combinations. The real line engraver is always engraving a line more or less broad and deep in one direction or another; he has no other business than this.
In the early Italian and early German prints, the line is used with such perfect simplicity of purpose that the methods of the artists are as obvious as if we saw them actually at work.
The student may soon understand the spirit and technical quality of the earliest Italian engraving by giving his attention to a few of the series which used erroneously to be called the “Playing Cards of Mantegna,” but which have been shown by Mr Sidney Colvin to represent “a kind of encyclopaedia of knowledge.”
The history of these engravings is obscure. They are supposed to be Florentine; they are certainly Italian; and their technical manner is called that of Baccio Baldini. But their style is as clear as a style can be, as clear as the artist’s conception of his art. In all these figures the outline is the main thing, and next to that the lines which mark the leading folds of the drapery; lines quite classical in purity of form and severity of selection, and especially characteristic in this, that they are always really engraver’s lines, such as may naturally be done with the burin, and they never imitate the freer line of the pencil or etching needle. Shading is used in the greatest moderation with thin straight strokes of the burin, that never overpower the stronger organic lines of the design. Of chiaroscuro, in any complete sense, there is none. The sky behind the figures is represented by white paper, and the foreground is sometimes occupied by flat decorative engraving, much nearer in feeling to calligraphy than to modern painting. Sometimes there is a cast shadow, but it is not studied, and is only used to give relief. In this
