The art of engraving on copper and other metals, though not with the intention of taking impressions on paper, is of great antiquity. In the late Mr. Salt’s collection of Egyptian antiquities there was a small axe, probably a model, the head of which was formed of sheet-copper, and was tied, or rather bandaged, to the helve with slips of cloth. There were certain characters engraved upon the head in such a manner that if it were inked and submitted to the action of the rolling-press, impressions would be obtained as from a modern copper-plate. The axe, with other models of a carpenter’s tools, also of copper, was found in a tomb in Egypt, where it must have been deposited at a very early period. That the ancient Greeks and Romans were accustomed to engrave on copper and other metals in a similar manner, is evident from engraved pateræ and other ornamental works executed by people of those nations. Though no ancient writer makes mention of the art of engraving being employed for the purpose of producing impressions on paper, yet it has been conjectured by De Pauw, from a passage in Pliny,[I-28] that such an art was invented by Varro for the purpose of multiplying the portraits of eminent men. “No Greek,” says De Pauw, speaking of engraving, “has the least right to claim this invention, which belongs exclusively to Varro, as is expressed by Pliny in no equivocal terms, when he calls this method _inventum Varronis_. Engraved plates were employed which gave the profile and the principal traits of the figures, to which the appropriate colours and the shadows were afterwards added with the pencil. A woman, originally of Cyzica, but then settled in Italy, excelled all others in the talent of illumining such kind of prints, which were inserted by Varro in a large work of his entitled ‘_Imagines_’ or ‘_Hebdomades_,’ which was enriched with seven hundred portraits of distinguished men, copied from their statues and busts. The necessity of exactly repeating each portrait or figure in every copy of the work suggested the idea of multiplying them without much cost, and thus gave birth to an art till then unknown.”[I-29] The grounds, however, of this conjecture are extremely slight, and will not without additional support sustain the superstructure which De Pauw--an “ingenious” guesser, but a superficial inquirer--has so plausibly raised. A prop for this theory has been sought for by men of greater research than the original propounder, but hitherto without success.