The work of these engravers was almost exclusively in etching, biting with acid a copper plate covered with varnish, on which the drawing was made by means of a point. This process, always previously used for sketches, served also for finishing vignettes, which up to then had been finished by the burin. The suppleness of the work was greater, and the artist remained more himself than he could be with the stiff cutting instrument of the seventeenth century. The sizes of books had not yet all come to octavo or duodecimo. The works of Molière published by Prault in 1734 in six volumes quarto, under the direction of Marc Antoine Joly, give the idea of an important work, not at all of theatrical pieces. To tell the truth, these somewhat exaggerated dimensions allow artists more room for illustration; later, when smaller forms predominated, text and engravings were so compressed that they were not always clear and readable to every eye; but the quarto was not graceful, it was not in harmony with the finikin, the pastoral pieces, then presented, and it had to disappear as a current size in illustrated publications. The class of artisans employed on the Book is not identical in the eighteenth century with that of printers and publishers. In the beginning, as we have seen, the cutters of wood blocks and the printers were often the same people, preparing their characters or their blocks, and afterwards putting them under the press. Large printing offices had very quickly changed that. Each particular work had its special workman. Typography had its type-founders, compositors, forwarders, inkers, and pressmen. In the eighteenth century this was complicated by designers, engravers, plate-printers, and these different professions occupied themselves on the Book in manipulating the sheets in their turn. In the midst of this crowd, the designers and engravers, esteemed as was their collaboration, were not the most honoured. Their homes often reflected the effect of their life as clever artists, quick to spend the money earned during the week; and we shall have occasion to name some of the more miserable among them.