The Count de Caylus tells the story. Gillot had quitted the pencil for the etching needle on seeing the work of his pupil. He had no reason to complain; his pictures were of no value, and his prints gave other artists the idea of imitating them. The whole French school of the eighteenth century may have had its origin in this forgotten book, illustrated by the master of Watteau. In fact, in the manner of the little etching here given we may easily perceive the coquetry and affectation that were later the dominant tone of vignettes. For, it may well be said, the graceful, feminine, and arch manner of which we speak was, above all, conventional and false. In opposition to the designers and engravers of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, who reproduced naturally scenes of daily life in ideal conceptions, it came, through the moral education of the artists, that they put forth the ideal in the most ordinary things of life. Shepherds were no longer the gross, rustic peasants that we find in primitive Flemish paintings or in the "Hours" of Simon Vostre; they were coxcombs, pomaded and adorned with ribbons, playing the bagpipes, and making love to the shepherdesses of the court. At first it was Watteau who influenced all the engravers in the pretty and the smart; Boucher did the rest; and fatally the Book followed, and followed impetuously, surpassing, if possible, the painted works. If the severe poses, the grave touch, of the preceding century are no longer found, they often go a little far in the contrary sense. It may be well said here that the arts are ordinarily the result of the manners of an epoch. The system of Law was not without influence on the entire eighteenth century, by the terrible manner in which he upset fortunes, awoke appetites, gave rein to aspirations hitherto held in check. Claude Gillot, the designer, was one of the first victims of the Scotch banker; he lost his fortune on the Exchange; but who may say what his artistic ambition dreamed of in the midst of all these disorders? One thing is certain: that Watteau, his pupil, broke off very short with the style of the seventeenth century. Laurent Cars was the engraver who multiplied the compositions of Boucher, and made them the fashion. He engraved also, after the painter of shepherds and nymphs, illustrations to Molière, the most agreeable that there are for style and spirit. In engraving certain works of Lemoyne, Cars did not completely desert the ancient school. He appears at the beginning of the eighteenth century as if divided between two manners each equally possible to him.