Ostade’s etched work is, considered as etching, unequal. Sometimes, as for instance in _The Cobbler_ (B. 27), the first biting was not a success; at other times, as in the _Man Laughing_ (B. 4), the _Saying Grace_ (B. 34), or the _Fiddlers_ (B. 45), the plate has been over-bitten. The plate which Bartsch calls _La Fileuse_ (_The Wife Spinning_. B. 31) [Plate I.], is one which represents very fully some of Ostade’s characteristic excellences as an etcher. It is a fine example of his success in bathing his subject in atmosphere. One feels the quiet afternoon warmth upon the cottage-front, as the woman who spins feels it, as the child feels it, as the two basking pigs feel it. That softness of air, which in our northern climate gives even to the near trees a kind of impalpable look, and which seems to clothe things with itself--that is what Ostade has sought to render with mere etched lines; and he has triumphed over immense difficulties. His figures detach themselves with a wonderful reality, with no hard brilliancy, no superfluous shadows. There is a fine absence of cleverness in such quiet mastery of means. More remarkable still is the little plate (B. 42) which is reproduced in Fig. 8. The amount of knowledge, of feeling for light and shadow, of subtle and sure draughtsmanship in this small etching is astonishing. The problem of painting daylight as it is diffused in a room through the window, which, of all painters in the world, Jan Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch, and, in a different way, Rembrandt and Ostade himself, have most fully mastered, is here attacked in etching, and with extraordinary success. What seems strange is that a problem so fascinating, one which had evidently a strong seduction for Ostade in his painting, should have been attempted by him so rarely in his etchings. _The Painter in his Studio_ (B. 32) is another success in the same line, while the _Players at Backgammon_ (B. 39) is partly a failure, through the biting having gone wrong. But, as a rule, Ostade prefers out-of-door effects. None of the etchings quite rivals, in the writer’s judgment at least, this little plate, _Peasant Paying his Reckoning_. But there are several typical small pieces which have a great charm. The _Spectacle-seller_ (B. 22, Fig. 1), for instance, is an admirable composition, and the [Illustration] etching rich. The _Humpbacked Fiddler_ (B. 44, Fig. 7), and the _Man and Woman Conversing_ (B. 25, Fig. 5), though the needle has been used somewhat differently in each, have similar merit. But the plates that interest, perhaps, most, are not always those which are etched the best. The chief glory of Ostade is his imaginative draughtsmanship, and akin to this are his vivid human sympathy and his humour. These are not so manifest in the plates we have mentioned as in some others. But before passing to those pieces which show these qualities at their [Illustration: _Fig. 10.--The Angler. By Ostade. B. 26._]