Morin, Nanteuil, Masson, and the other portrait engravers of the period, in spite of the variety of their talent, left their immediate successors a similar body of doctrine and a common tradition. Now the works of the painter Rigaud, whose importance had considerably increased towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV., made certain modifications of this severe tradition necessary on the part of the artists employed to engrave them. Portraits, for the most part bust portraits, relieved against an almost naked background, were no longer in fashion. To render a crowd of accessories which, while enriching the composition, frequently encumbered it beyond measure, became the problem in engraving. It was successfully solved by Pierre Drevet, his son Pierre Imbert, and his nephew Claude Drevet, this last the author, amongst other plates now much prized, of a "Guillaume de Vintimille" and a "Count Zinzendorff." The first of these three engravers--at Lyons the pupil of Germain Audran, and at Paris of Antoine Masson--engraved, with some few exceptions, only portraits, the best known of which are a full-length "Louis XIV.," "Louis XV. as a Child," "Cardinal Fleury," and "Count Toulouse;" they attest an extreme skill of hand, and a keen perception of the special characteristics of the originals. The second, the similarity of whose Christian name has often caused him to be mistaken for his father, showed himself from the first still more skilful and more certain of his own powers. He was only twenty-six when he finished his full-length "Bossuet," in which the precision of the handling, the exactness and brilliancy of the burin work, seem to indicate a talent already arrived at maturity. In this plate, indeed, and in some others by the same engraver--as the "Cardinal Dubois," the "Adrienne Lecouvreur," and others--there are parts, perhaps, that seem almost worthy of Nanteuil himself. It is impossible to imitate with greater nicety the richness of ermine, the delicacy of lace, and the polish and brilliancy of gilding; but the subtle delicacy of physiognomy, the elasticity of living flesh which animated the portraits of the earlier masters, will here be looked for in vain. Such work is the outcome of an art no longer supreme, albeit of a very high order still. As much may be said of the best historical plates engraved in France under the Regency, and in the first years of Louis XV. The older manner, it is true, was still perceptible, but it was beginning to change, and was soon to be concealed more and more under a parade of craftsmanship amusingly self-conscious, and an elegance refined to the point of affectation. [Illustration: FIG. 87.--LAURENT CARS. "L'Avare." From Boucher's "Molière."]