With the Revolution the decline of the Book arrives, as that of all the arts. Moreau, friend of David, had become affected by the new ideas and the burlesque renaissance of Greek and Roman art. He made his apology on the altar of the gods, and engraved portraits on wood to punish himself for having painted the elegancies of fallen tyrants. At this game, nerve, as well as suppleness, was lost; and if he had had only the artistic knack of the Revolution, his daughter, married to Charles Vernet, could not have written of him, "That which can be most admired is, at the same time, the fecundity and flexibility of Moreau's talent, that marvellous facility of conceiving a picturesque scene and disposing it in an interesting and truthful manner in the least extended space." This was true before, but after? In spite of his passion for the ideas and men of the Revolution, Moreau found himself at the end of his resources. Renouard, the publisher, received him as he had received St. Aubin, to whom he advanced sum after sum to prevent him dying of hunger. Like most of his contemporaries, Moreau, pressed by want, "took, quitted, and retook the cuirass and the hair-shirt." He had drawn for everybody: for Louis XVI., for the Republic, for Napoleon I. The worst of it is that after his designs for Ovid, Molière, and Rousseau, dating from the reign of Louis XVI., he should have done them again in 1804, 1806, and 1808. The difference was great, even probably for his publishers, Renouard and Dupréel. It does not appear that the pontiff of the new school, David, knew of his distress; and Moreau succumbed in 1814 to a cancerous scirrhus of the right arm, forgotten and in the greatest misery. We have passed a little quickly to the end of the century because it is of no importance to name each of the publishers and artists, but only to sketch briefly their tastes or their manner. We have not dwelt long on the engravers so called, because of their number; but their dexterity remains proverbial; they handled etching with extreme suppleness, and often interpreted the drawings of illustrators in remitting them to the needle. Many of these, not to say all, made use themselves of the etching needle, St. Aubin for example, who knew how to give to the work of others his personal mark and distinction. [Illustration: Fig. 89.--Title designed by Moreau le Jeune in 1769 for the publisher Prault.]