During the whole of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries the French school of engraving had neither method nor bent of its own; but meanwhile it was a whim of fashion that every one should handle the burin or the point. From the days of Henri II. to those of Louis XIII., craftsman or layman, everybody practised engraving. There were goldsmiths like Pierre Woeiriot, painters like Claude Corneille and Jean de Gourmont, architects like Androuet du Cerceau; there were noblemen; there were even ladies--as, for instance, Georgette de Montenay, who dedicated to Jeanne d'Albret a collection of mottoes and emblems, partly, it was said, of her own engraving. All the world and his wife, in fact, were gouging wood and scraping copper. It must be repeated that the prints of this time are for the most part borrowed--are copies feeble or stilted, or both, of foreign originals. Not until after some years of thraldom could the French engravers shake off the yoke of Italian art, create a special style, and constitute themselves a school. The revolution was prepared by Thomas de Leu and Léonard Gaultier, engravers of portraits and of historical subjects; but the hero of the French school is Jacques Callot. There are certain names in the history of the arts which retain an eternal odour of popularity; we remember them as those of men of talent, who were also in some sort heroes of romance, and our interest remains perennial. Jacques Callot is one of these. He is probably the only French engraver[29] whose name is yet familiar to the general public. That this is so is hardly the effect of his work, however excellent: it is rather the result of his adventures; of his flight from home in childhood; his wanderings with the gipsies; and the luck he had--his good looks aiding--with the ladies of Rome, and even (it is whispered) with the wife of Thomassin his master. [Illustration: FIG. 74.--THOMAS DE LEU. Henri IV.] We have said it is Callot's merit to have lifted the French school of engraving out of the rut in which it dragged, and to have opened for it a new path. He did not, however, accomplish the work with an entire independence, nor without some leanings towards that Italy in which he had been trained. After working in Florence under Canta-Gallina, whose freedom of style and fantastic taste could not but prove irresistible to the future artist of Franca Trippa and Fritellino, he had been obliged to return to Nancy. Thence he escaped a second time, and thither was a second time brought back by his eldest brother, who had been despatched in pursuit. A third journey took him to Rome; and there, whether glad to be rid of him or weary of debate, his family let him remain.