VOLUME XVI SLICE VII Liquid Gases to Logar (continued 4)

On graduation as bachelor of medicine, Lister went to Edinburgh, where he soon afterwards became house-surgeon to Mr Syme; and he was much impressed by the skill and judgment of this great surgeon, and also by the superiority of his method of dressing recent wounds with dry lint, as compared with the “water dressing” in use at University College. Yet under these more favourable conditions the amelioration was only one of degree; in most wounds indeed “union by first intention” was rendered impossible by the presence of the silk ligatures employed for arresting bleeding, for these could come away only by a process of suppuration. On the expiry of his house-surgeoncy in Edinburgh, Lister started in that city an extra-academical course of lectures on surgery; and in preparation for these he entered on a series of investigations into inflammation and allied subjects. These researches, which were detailed fully in three papers in Phil. Trans. (1859), and in his Croonian lecture to the Royal Society in 1863, testified to an earnestness of purpose, a persevering accuracy of observation and experiment and an insight of scientific conception which show that if Lister had never developed the aseptic method of surgery, he would have taken a very high place in pathology. In his speech in Paris at the Thirteenth International Congress of Medicine in 1900, Lord Lister said that he had done no more than seize upon Pasteur’s discoveries and apply them to surgery. But though Lister saw the vast importance of the discoveries of Pasteur, he saw it because he was watching on the heights; and he was watching there alone. From Pasteur Lister derived no doubt two fruitful ideas: first, that decomposition in organic substances is due to living “germs”; and, secondly, that these lowly and minute forms of vegetable life spring always, like higher organisms, from parents like themselves, and cannot arise de novo in the animal body. After his appointment to the Glasgow chair in 1860, Lister had continued his researches on inflammation; and he had long been led to suspect that decomposition of the blood in the wound was the main cause of suppuration. The two great theories established by Pasteur seemed to Lister to open out the possibility of what had before appeared hopeless—namely, the prevention of putrefaction in the wound, and consequently the forestalling of suppuration. To exclude the oxygen of the air from wounds was impossible, but it might be practicable to protect them from microbes.

The first attempt to realize this idea was made upon compound fractures; and the means first employed was carbolic acid, the remarkable efficacy of which in deodorizing sewage made Lister regard it as a very powerful germicide. It was applied to the wound undiluted, so as to form with the blood a dense crust, the surface of which was painted daily with the acid till all danger had passed. The results, after a first failure, were in the highest degree satisfactory, so that, as Lister said in his presidential address to the British Association in Liverpool, he “had the joy of seeing these formidable injuries follow the same safe and tranquil course as simple fractures.” The caustic property of undiluted carbolic acid, though insignificant in comparison with the far greater evils to be avoided in compound fracture, made it unsuited for general surgery. To make it applicable to the treatment of abscesses and incised wounds, it was necessary to mitigate its action by blending it with some inert body; and the endeavour to find the best medium for this purpose, such as to combine perfect antiseptic efficiency with the least possible irritation of the tissues, formed the subject of experiments continued for many years in the laboratory and in the ward. At one stage in these inquiries an attempt was made to provide an atmosphere free from living organisms by means of a fine spray of a watery solution of carbolic acid; for it was then supposed by Lister to be necessary not only to purify the surgeon’s hands and instruments and the skin of the patient about the seat of operation, but also to wage war with the microbes which, as Pasteur had shown, people every cubic inch of the air of an inhabited room. Under the use of the spray better results were obtained than ever before, and this success encouraged its use. But researches carried on for several years into the relations of the blood to micro-organisms led Lister to doubt the harmfulness of the atmospheric dust. At the London Congress in 1881 he narrated experiments which proved that the serum of the blood is a very unfavourable soil for the development of the bacteria diffused through the air, and others which showed that the cells of an organizing blood-clot have a very remarkable power of disposing of microbes and of limiting their advance. Hence he considered it probable that in surgical operations the atmosphere might be disregarded altogether.1 As long, however, as this was only a matter of probability, he did not dare to discard the spray. But at length, at the Berlin Congress in 1890, he was able to announce that the certainty he had so long desired had been arrived at. A careful consideration of the physical constitution of the spray had shown him that the microbes of the dust involved in its vortex could not possibly have their vitality destroyed or even impaired by it. Such being the case, the uniform success obtained when he had trusted the spray implicitly as an aseptic atmosphere, abandoning completely certain other precautions which he had before deemed essential, proved conclusively to his mind that the air might safely be left entirely out of consideration in operating.2 Thus he learnt that not the spray only, but all antiseptic irrigations or washings of the wound also, with their attendant irritation of the cut surfaces, might be dispensed with—a great simplification, indirectly due to experiments with the spray. The spray had also served a very useful purpose by maintaining a pure condition of the entourage of the operation; not indeed in the way for which it was devised, but as a very mild form of irrigation. And Lister took care to emphasize the necessity for redoubled vigilance on the part of the surgeon and his assistants when this “unconscious caretaker,” as he called it, had been discarded.

The announcement that he had given up the spray was absurdly interpreted in some quarters to mean that he had virtually abandoned his theory and his antiseptic methods. The truth is that the spray was only one of many devices tried for a while in the course of the long-continued endeavour to apply the antiseptic principle to the best advantage, and abandoned in favour of something better. Two main objects were always kept steadily in view by him—during the operation to guard the wound against septic microbes by such means as existing knowledge indicated, and afterwards to protect it against their introduction, avoiding at the same time all needless irritation of the tissues by the antiseptic. Upon the technical methods of attaining these ends this is not the place to enlarge; suffice it to say that the endowments and the industry of the discoverer, as seen in the rapidity and flexibility of mind with which he seized upon and selected the best means, were little less remarkable than the activity of the same faculties in his original ideas.

To illustrate this opinion, his work on the ligature may be taken. It had long been the universal practice of surgeons to employ threads of silk or flax for tying arteries, long ends being left to provide escape of the pus (invariably formed during the tedious process of the separation of the ligature) together with the portion of the arterial coats included in the knot. Lister hoped that if, by antiseptic means, the thread were deprived of living microbes, it would no longer cause suppuration, but might be left with short cut ends to become embedded permanently among the tissues of the wound, which thus would be allowed to heal by primary union throughout. A trial of this method upon the carotid artery of a horse having proved perfectly successful, he applied it in a case of aneurysm in the human subject; and here again the immediate results were all that could be desired. But a year later, the patient having died from other causes, the necropsy showed remnants of the silk thread incompletely absorbed, with appearances around them which seemed to indicate that they had been acting as causes of disturbance. Thus was suggested to him the idea of employing for the ligature some material susceptible of more speedy absorption; and the antiseptic treatment of contused wounds having shown that dead tissue, if protected from putrefaction, is removed by the surrounding structures without the intervention of suppuration, he resolved to try a thread of some such nature. Catgut, which is prepared from one of the constituents of the small intestine of the sheep, after steeping in a solution of carbolic acid, was used in a preliminary trial upon the carotid artery of a calf. The animal was killed a month later, when, on dissection, a very beautiful result was disclosed. The catgut, though removed, had not been simply absorbed; pari passu with its gradual removal, fibrous tissue of new formation had been laid down, so that in place of the dead catgut was seen a living ligature embracing the artery and incorporated with it. The wound meanwhile had healed without a trace of suppuration. This success appeared to justify the use of the catgut ligature in the human subject, and for a while the results were entirely satisfactory. But though this was the case with the old samples of catgut first employed, which, as Lister was afterwards led to believe, had been “seasoned” by long keeping, it was found that when catgut was used fresh as it comes from the makers, it was unsuited in various ways for surgical purposes. The attempt by special preparation to obtain an article in all respects trustworthy engaged his attention from time to time for years afterwards. To quote the words of Sir Hector Cameron, who was for several years assistant to Lord Lister, it required “labour and toilsome investigation and experiment of which few can have any adequate idea.”

In 1869 Lister succeeded his father-in-law, Syme, in the chair of clinical surgery of Edinburgh. In 1877 he accepted an invitation to the chair of surgery at King’s College, London, in the anticipation that here he would be more centrally placed for communication with the surgical world at home and abroad, and might thus exercise his beneficent mission to more immediate advantage. In 1896 Lister retired from practice, but not from scientific study. From 1895 to 1900 he was President of the Royal Society. In 1883 he was created a baronet, and in 1897 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lister of Lyme Regis. Among the Coronation honours in 1902, he was nominated an original member of the new Order of Merit.

In England Lister’s teaching was slow in making its way. The leading surgeons of Germany were among the first to seize upon the new idea with avidity and practical success; so early as 1875, in the course of a tour he made on the Continent, great festivals were held in his honour in Munich and Leipzig. The countrymen of Pasteur did not lag far behind; and it is no exaggeration to speak of Lister’s appearances in foreign countries at this time as triumphal.

The relation of Semmelweiss to Lister is of historical importance. Lister’s work on the antiseptic system began in 1864; his first publication on the subject was in March 1867. At this date, and for long afterwards, Semmelweiss was unknown, or ignored, not only by French and Germans, but also by his own Hungarian people; and this neglect broke his heart. The French Academy pronounced against his opinions, and so did the highest pathological authority in Germany. In England, till long after his death, probably his name was not so much as mentioned. In the early ’seventies Lister’s method was in full operation in Hungary as elsewhere, yet none of the surgeons of Budapest ever mentioned Semmelweiss; not even when, in 1883, they gave a great banquet to Lister. It was after this occasion that Dr Duka, a Hungarian physician practising in London, wrote a biography of Semmelweiss, which he sent to Lister, and thus brought Semmelweiss before him for the first time. Thenceforth Lister generously regarded Semmelweiss as in some measure his forerunner; though Semmelweiss was not aware of the microbic origin of septic poisons, nor were his methods, magnificent as was their success in lying-in hospitals, suitable for surgical work.

In public Lord Lister’s speeches were simple, clear and graceful, avoiding rhetorical display, earnest for the truth, jealous for his science and art, forgetful of himself. His writings, in like manner plain, lucid and forcible, scarcely betray the labour and thought of their production. With the courtesy and serenity of his carriage he combined a passionate humanity, so often characteristic of those who come of the Society of Friends, and a simple love of truth which showed itself in his generous encouragement of younger workers.

(T. C. A.)

1 See Trans. of the International Medical Congress (1881), vol. ii. p. 373.

2 See Verhandlungen des X internationalen Congresses, Bd. i. p. 33.

LISTER, MARTIN (c. 1638-1712), English naturalist and physician, was born at Radclive, near Buckingham. He was nephew of Sir Matthew Lister, physician to Anne, queen of James I., and to Charles I. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, 1655, graduated in 1658/9, and was elected a fellow in 1660. He became F.R.S. in 1671. He practised medicine at York until 1683, when he removed to London. In 1684 he received the degree of M.D. at Oxford, and in 1687 became F.R.C.P. He contributed numerous articles on natural history, medicine and antiquities to the Philosophical Transactions. His principal works were Historiae animalium Angliae tres tractatus (1678); Historiae Conchyliorum (1685-1692), and Conchyliorum Bivalvium (1696). As a conchologist he was held in high esteem, but while he recognized the similarity of fossil mollusca to living forms, he regarded them as inorganic imitations produced in the rocks. In 1683 he communicated to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans., 1684), An ingenious proposal for a new sort of maps of countries; together with tables of sands and clays, such as are chiefly found in the north parts of England. In this essay he suggested the preparation of a soil or mineral map of the country, and thereby is justly credited with being the first to realize the importance of a geological survey. He died at Epsom on the 2nd of February 1712.

LISTON, JOHN (c. 1776-1846), English comedian, was born in London. He made his public début on the stage at Weymouth as Lord Duberley in The Heir-at-law. After several dismal failures in tragic parts, some of them in support of Mrs Siddons, he discovered accidentally that his forte was comedy, especially in the personation of old men and country boys, in which he displayed a fund of drollery and broad humour. An introduction to Charles Kemble led to his appearance at the Haymarket on the 10th of June 1805 as Sheepface in the Village Lawyer, and his association with this theatre continued with few interruptions until 1830. Paul Pry, the most famous of all his impersonations, was first presented on the 13th of September 1825, and soon became, thanks to his creative genius, a real personage. Liston remained on the stage till 1837; during his last years his mind failed, and he died on the 22nd of March 1846. He had married in 1807 Miss Tyrer (d. 1854), a singer and actress.

Several pictures of Liston in character are in the Garrick Club, London, and one as Paul Pry in the South Kensington Museum.

LISTON, ROBERT (1794-1847), Scottish surgeon, was born on the 28th of October 1794 at Ecclesmachan, Linlithgow, where his father was parish minister. He began the study of anatomy under Dr John Barclay (1758-1826) at Edinburgh in 1810, and soon became a skilful anatomist. After eight years’ study, he became a lecturer on anatomy and surgery in the Edinburgh School or Medicine; and in 1827 he was elected one of the surgeons to the Royal Infirmary. In 1835 he was chosen professor of clinical surgery in University College, London, and this appointment he held until his death, which occurred in London on the 7th of December 1847. Liston was a teacher more by what he did than by what he said. He taught simplicity in all operative procedures; fertile in expedients, of great nerve and of powerful frame, he is remembered as an extraordinarily bold, skilful and rapid operator. He was the author of The Elements of Surgery (1831-1832) and Practical Surgery (1837), and made several improvements in methods of amputation, and in the dressing of wounds.

LISZT, FRANZ (1811-1886), Hungarian pianist and composer, was born on the 22nd of October 1811, at Raiding, in Hungary. His appeal to musicians was made in a threefold capacity, and we have, therefore, to deal with Liszt the unrivalled pianoforte virtuoso (1830-1848); Liszt the conductor of the “music of the future” at Weimar, the teacher of Tausig, Bülow and a host of lesser pianists, the eloquent writer on music and musicians, the champion of Berlioz and Wagner (1848-1861); and Liszt the prolific composer, who for some five-and-thirty years continued to put forth pianoforte pieces, songs, symphonic orchestral pieces, cantatas, masses, psalms and oratorios (1847-1882). As virtuoso he held his own for the entire period during which he chose to appear in public; but the militant conductor and prophet of Wagner had a hard time of it, and the composer’s place is still in dispute. Liszt’s father, a clerk to the agent of the Esterhazy estates and an amateur musician of some attainment, was Hungarian by birth and ancestry, his mother an Austrian-German. The boy’s gifts attracted the attention of certain Hungarian magnates, who furnished 600 gulden annually for some years to enable him to study music at Vienna and Paris. At Vienna he had lessons in pianoforte playing from Carl Czerny of “Velocity” fame, and from Salieri in harmony and analysis of scores. In his eleventh year he began to play in public there, and Beethoven came to his second concert in April 1823. During the three years following he played in Paris, the French provinces and Switzerland, and paid three visits to England. In Paris he had composition lessons from Paër, and a six months’ course of lessons in counterpoint from Reicha. In the autumn of 1825 the handsome and fascinating enfant gâté of the salons and ateliers—“La Neuvième Merveille du monde”—had the luck to get an operetta (Don Sancho) performed three times at the Académie Royale. The score was accidentally destroyed by fire, but a set of studies à la Czerny and Cramer, belonging to 1826 and published at Marseilles as 12 Études, op. i., is extant, and shows remarkable precocity. After the death of his father in 1828 young Liszt led the life of a teacher of the pianoforte in Paris, got through a good deal of miscellaneous reading, and felt the influence of the religious, literary and political aspirations of the time. He attended the meetings of the Saint-Simonists, lent an ear to the romantic mysticism of Père Enfantin and later to the teaching of Abbé Lamennais. He also played Beethoven and Weber in public—a very courageous thing in those days. The appearance of the violinist Paganini in Paris, 1831, marks the starting-point of the supreme eminence Liszt ultimately attained as a virtuoso. Paganini’s marvellous technique inspired him to practise as no pianist had ever practised before. He tried to find equivalents for Paganini’s effects, transcribed his violin caprices for the piano, and perfected his own technique to an extraordinary degree. After Paganini he received a fresh impulse from the playing and the compositions of Chopin, who arrived in 1831, and yet another impulse of equal force from a performance of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique, épisode de la vie d’un artiste,” in 1832. Liszt transcribed this work, and its influence ultimately led him to the composition of his “Poèmes symphoniques” and other examples of orchestral programme-music.

From 1833 to 1848—when he gave up playing in public—he was greeted with frantic applause as the prince of pianists. Five years (1835-1840) were spent in Switzerland and Italy, in semi-retirement in the company of Madame la comtesse d’Agoult (George Sand’s friend and would-be rival, known in literary circles as “Daniel Stern,” by whom Liszt had three children, one of them afterwards Frau Cosima Wagner): these years were devoted to further study in playing and composition, and were interrupted only by occasional appearances at Geneva, Milan, Florence and Rome, and by annual visits to Paris, when a famous contest with Thalberg took place in 1837. The enthusiasm aroused by Liszt’s playing and his personality—the two are inseparable—reached a climax at Vienna and Budapest in 1839-1840, when he received a patent of nobility from the emperor of Austria, and a sword of honour from the magnates of Hungary in the name of the nation. During the eight years following he was heard at all the principalcentres—including London, Leipzig, Berlin, Copenhagen, St Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Constantinople, Lisbon and Madrid. He gained much money, and gave large sums in charity. His munificence with regard to the Beethoven statue at Bonn made a great stir. The subscriptions having come in but sparsely, Liszt took the matter in hand, and the monument was completed at his expense, and unveiled at a musical festival conducted by Spohr and himself in 1845. In 1848 he settled at Weimar with Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein (d. 1887), and remained there till 1861. During this period he acted as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theatre, gave lessons to a number of pianists, wrote articles of permanent value on certain works of Berlioz and the early operas of Wagner, and produced those orchestral and choral pieces upon which his reputation as a composer mainly depends. His ambition to found a school of composers as well as a school of pianists met with complete success on the one hand and partial failure on the other. His efforts on behalf of Wagner, who was then an exile in Switzerland, culminated in the first performance of Lohengrin on the 28th of August 1850, before a special audience assembled from far and near. Among the works produced for the first time or rehearsed with a view to the furtherance of musical art were Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Der fliegende Holländer, Das Liebesmahl der Apostel, and Eine Faust Overtüre, Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, the Symphonie Fantastique, Harold en Italie, Roméo et Juliette, La Damnation de Faust, and L’Enfance du Christ—the last two conducted by the composer—Schumann’s Genoveva, Paradise and the Peri, the music to Manfred and to Faust, Weber’s Euryanthe, Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella, Raff’s König Alfred, Cornelius’s Der Barbier von Baghdad and many more. It was Liszt’s habit to recommend novelties to the public by explanatory articles or essays, which were written in French (some for the Journal des débats and the Gazette musicale of Paris) and translated for the journals of Weimar and Leipzig—thus his two masterpieces of sympathetic criticism, the essays Lohengrin et Tannhäuser à Weimar and Harold en Italie, found many readers and proved very effective. They are now included, together with articles on Schumann and Schubert, and the elaborate and rather high-flown essays on Chopin and Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (the latter certainly, and the former probably, written in collaboration with Madame de Wittgenstein), in his Gesammelte Schriften (6 vols., Leipzig). The compositions belonging to the period of his residence at Weimar comprise two pianoforte concertos, in E flat and in A, the “Todtentanz,” the “Concerto pathétique” for two pianos, the solo sonata “An Robert Schumann,” sundry “Études,” fifteen “Rhapsodies Hongroises,” twelve orchestral “Poèmes symphoniques,” “Eine Faust Symphonie,” and “Eine Symphonie zu Dante’s ‘Divina Commedia,’” the “13th Psalm” for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra, the choruses to Herder’s dramatic scenes “Prometheus,” and the “Missa solennis” known as the “Graner Fest Messe.” Liszt retired to Rome in 1861, and joined the Franciscan order in 1865.1 From 1869 onwards Abbé Liszt divided his time between Rome and Weimar, where during the summer months he received pupils—gratis as formerly—and, from 1876 up to his death at Bayreuth on the 31st of July 1886, he also taught for several months every year at the Hungarian Conservatoire of Budapest.

About Liszt’s pianoforte technique in general it may be said that it derives its efficiency from the teaching of Czerny, who brought up his pupil on Mozart, a little Bach and Beethoven, a good deal of Clementi and Hummel, and a good deal of his (Czerny’s) own work. Classicism in the shape of solid, respectable Hummel on the one hand, and Carl Czerny, a trifle flippant, perhaps, and inclined to appeal to the gallery, on the other, these gave the musical parentage of young Liszt. Then appears the Parisian Incroyable and grand seigneur—“Monsieur Lits,” as the Parisians called him. Later, we find him imitating Paganini and Chopin, and at the same time making a really passionate and deep study of Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Berlioz. Thus gradually was formed the master of style—whose command of the instrument was supreme, and who played like an inspired poet. Liszt’s strange musical nature was long in maturing its fruits. At the pianoforte his achievements culminate in the two books of studies, twice rewritten, and finally published in 1852 as Études d’exécution transcendante, the Études de concert and the Paganini Studies; the two concertos and the Todtentanz, the Sonata in B minor, the Hungarian Rhapsodies and the fine transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies (the 9th for two pianofortes as well as solo), and of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, and the symphony, Harold en Italie. In his orchestral pieces of Liszt appears—next to Berlioz—as the most conspicuous and most thorough-going representative of programme music, i.e. instrumental music expressly contrived to illustrate in detail some poem or some succession of ideas or pictures. It was Liszt’s aim to bring about a direct alliance or amalgamation of instrumental music with poetry. To effect this he made use of the means of musical expression for purposes of illustration, and relied on points of support outside the pale of music proper. There is always danger of failure when an attempt is thus made to connect instrumental music with conceptions not in themselves musical, for the order of the ideas that serve as a programme is apt to interfere with the order which the musical exposition naturally assumes—and the result in most cases is but an amalgam of irreconcilable materials. In pieces such as Liszt’s “Poèmes symphoniques,” Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne (1848-1856), after a poem by Victor Hugo, and Die Ideale (1853-1857), after a poem by Schiller, the hearer is bewildered by a series of startling orchestral effects which succeed one another apparently without rhyme or reason. The music does not conform to any sufficiently definite musical plan—it is hardly intelligible as music without reference to the programme. Liszt’s masterpiece in orchestral music is the Dante Symphony (1847-1855), the subject of which was particularly well suited to his temperament, and offered good chances for the display of his peculiar powers as a master of instrumental effect. By the side of it ranks the Faust Symphony (1854-1857), in which the moods of Goethe’s characters—Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles—are depicted in three instrumental movements, with a chorus of male voices, supplying a kind of comment, by way of close. The method of presentation in both symphonies is by means of representative themes (Leitmotif), and their combination and interaction. Incidents of the poem or the play are illustrated or alluded to as may be convenient, and the exigencies of musical form are not unfrequently disregarded for the sake of special effects. Of the twelve Poèmes symphoniques, Orphée is the most consistent from a musical point of view, and is exquisitely scored. Melodious, effective, readily intelligible, with a dash of the commonplace, Les Préludes, Tasso, Mazeppa and Fest-Klänge bid for popularity. In these pieces, as in almost every production of his, in lieu of melody Liszt offers fragments of melody—touching and beautiful, it may be, or passionate, or tinged with triviality; in lieu of a rational distribution of centres of harmony in accordance with some definite plan, he presents clever combinations of chords and ingenious modulations from point to point; in lieu of musical logic and consistency of design, he is content with rhapsodical improvisation. The power of persistence seems wanting. The musical growth is spoilt, the development of the themes is stopped, or prevented, by some reference to extraneous ideas. Everywhere the programme stands in the way. In much of Liszt’s vocal music, particularly in the songs and choral pieces written to German words, an annoying discrepancy is felt to exist between the true sound of the words and the musical accents. The music is generally emotional, the expression direct and passionate; there is no lack of melodic charm and originality, yet the total effect is frequently disappointing. In the choral numbers of the five masses, and in the oratorios Die Heilige Elisabeth and Christus, the rarity of fugal polyphony acts as a drawback. Its almost complete absence in some of these works makes for monotony and produces a sense of dullness, which may not be inherent in all the details of the music, but is none the less distinctly present.

Omitting trifles and all publications that have been cancelled, the following list of compositions may be taken as fairly comprehensive:—

Pianoforte Pieces.—Études d’exécution transcendante; Études de concert; Zwei Etuden, Waldesrauschen, Gnomentanz; Ab Irato; Paganini Studies; Années de Pélerinage, 3 sets; Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, 1-10; Consolations, 1-6; Ave Maria in E; Sonata in B minor; Konzert-Solo in E minor; Scherzo und Marsch; Ballades, I. II.; Polonaises, I. II.; Apparitions, 1-3; Berceuse; Valse impromptu; Mazurka brillant; 3 Caprices Valses; Galop chromatique; Mephisto-Walzer, I., II., III. and Polka; Zwei Legenden, “Die Vogelpredigt,” “Der heilige Franciscus auf den Wogen schreitend”; “Der Weihnachtsbaum,” 1-12; Sarabande und Chaconne (“Almira”); Elegies, I., II. and III.; La lugubre Gondola; Dem Andenken Petöfi’s; Mosonyi’s Grabgeleit; Romance oubliée; Valses oubliées, 1-3; Liebesträume, 1-3 (originally songs); Hexameron; Rhapsodies Hongroises, 1-18.

Pieces for Two Pianos.—Concerto pathétique (identical with the Konzert-Solo in E minor); Dante symphony; Faust symphony; Poèmes symphoniques, 1-12; Beethoven’s 9th symphony.

Pianoforte with Orchestra.—Concertos I. in E flat, II. in A; Todtentanz; Fantasie ueber Motif aus Beethoven’s “Ruinen von Athen”; Fantasie ueber Ungarische National Melodien; Schubert’s Fantasia in C; Weber’s Polacca in E.

Fantaisies de Concert for Piano Solo.—Don Juan; Norma; Sonnambula; I Puritani; Lucia, I., II.; Lucrezia, I., II.; La Juive; Robert le Diable; Les Huguenots; Le Prophète, 1-4. Paraphrases, Auber, Tarantella di bravura (Masaniello); Verdi, Rigoletto, Ernani, Il Trovatore; Mendelssohn, “Hochzeitsmarsch und Elfenreigen”; Gounod, Valse de Faust, Les Adieux de Roméo et Juliette; Tschaikowsky, Polonaise; Dargomiyski, Tarantelle; Cui, Tarantella; Saint-Saëns, Danse macabre; Schubert, Soirées de Vienne, Valses caprices, 1-9.

Transcriptions.—Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies; Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique,” “Harold en Italie”; Bénédiction et Serment (Benvenuto Cellini); Danse des Sylphes (Damnation de Faust); Weber’s overtures, Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, Oberon, Jubilee; Beethoven’s and Hummel’s Septets; Schubert’s Divertissement à la Hongroise; Beethoven’s Concertos in C minor, G and E flat (orchestra for a second piano); Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture, march, romance, chorus of pilgrims; Lohengrin, Festzug und Brautlied, Elsa’s Brautgang, Elsa’s Traum, Lohengrin’s Verweiss an Elsa; Fliegender Holländer, Spinnlied; Rienzi, Gebet; Rheingold, Walhall; Meistersinger, “Am stillen Herd”; Tristan, Isolde’s Liebestod; Chopin’s six Chants Polonais; Meyerbeer’s Schillermarsch; Bach’s six organ Preludes and Fugues; Prelude and Fugue in G minor; Beethoven, Adelaide; 6 miscellaneous and 6 Geistliche Lieder; Liederkreis; Rossini’s Les Soirées musicales; Schubert, 59 songs; Schumann, 13 songs; Mendelssohn, 8 songs; Robert Franz, 13 songs.

Organ Pieces.—Missa pro organo; Fantasia and Fugue, “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam”; B-A-C-H Fugue; Variations on Bach’s Basso continuo, “Weinen, Klagen”; Bach’s Introduction and Fugue, “Ich hatte viel Bekümmerniss”; Bach’s Choral Fugue, “Lob und Ehre”; Nicolai’s Kirchliche Festouvertüre, “Ein feste Burg”; Allegri’s Miserere; Mozart’s Ave Verum; Arcadelt’s Ave Maria; Lasso’s Regina Coeli.

Orchestral Pieces.—Eine Symphonie zu Dante’s “Divina Commedia”; Eine Faust Symphonie; Poèmes symphoniques: 1. “Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne”; 2. Tasso; 3. Les Préludes; 4. Orphée; 5. Prométhée; 6. Mazeppa; 7. Fest-Klänge; 8. Héroïde funèbre; 9. Hungaria; 10. Hamlet; 11. Hunnenschlacht; 12. Die Ideale; Zwei Episoden aus Lenau’s Faust: I. Der nächtliche Zug, II. Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke; Marches, Rakoczy, Goethe, Huldigung, “Vom Fels zum Meer” (for a military band); Ungarischer, Heroischer and Sturmmarsch; Le Triomphe funèbre du Tasse; “Von der Wiege bis zum Grab”; six Hungarian rhapsodies; four marches; four songs, and Die Allmacht, by Schubert.

Vocal Music.—Oratorios: “Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth,” “Christus,” “Stanislaus” (unfinished). Masses: Missa solennis for the inauguration of the cathedral at Gran; Ungarische Krönungs-messe; Missa choralis (with organ); Missa and Requiem for male voices (with organ); Psalms, 13, 137, 23 and 18; 12 Kirchen-Chor-Gesänge (with organ). Cantatas: Prometheus-chöre; “Beethoven Cantata”; “An die Künstler”; Die Glocken des Strassburger Münsters; 12 Chöre für Männergesang; Songs, 8 books; Scena, Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher.

Melodramatic Pieces for Declamation, with Pianoforte Accompaniment.—Leonore (Bürger); Der traurige Mönch (Lenau); Des todten Dichter’s Liebe (Jokai); Der blinde Sänger (Tolstoy).

Editions, Text and Variants.—Beethoven’s Sonatas; Weber’s Concertstück and Sonatas; Schubert Fantasia, 4 Sonatas, Impromptus, Valses and Moments musicaux.

See also L. Ramaun, Fr. Liszt als Künstler und Mensch (1880-1894); E. Dannreuther, Oxford Hist. of Music, vol. vi.(1905).

(E. Da.)

1 It is understood that, in point of fact, the Princess Wittgenstein was determined to marry Liszt; and as neither he nor her family wished their connexion to take this form, Cardinal Hohenlohe quietly had him ordained.—[Ed. E.B.].

LITANY. This word (λιτανεία), like λιτή (both from λίτομαι), is used by Eusebius and Chrysostom, commonly in the plural, in a general sense, to denote a prayer or prayers of any sort, whether public or private; it is similarly employed in the law of Arcadius (Cod. Theod. xvi. tit. 5, leg. 30), which forbids heretics to hold assemblies in the city “ad litaniam faciendam.” But some trace of a more technical meaning is found in the epistle (Ep. 63) of Basil to the church of Neocaesarea, in which he argues, against those who were objecting to certain innovations, that neither were “litanies” used in the time of Gregory Thaumaturgus. The nature of the recently introduced litanies, which must be assumed to have been practised at Neocaesarea in Basil’s day, can only be conjectured; probably they had many points in common with the “rogationes,” which, according to Sidonius Apollinaris, had been coming into occasional use in France about the beginning of the 5th century, especially when rain or fine weather was desired, and, so far as the three fast days before Ascension were concerned, were first fixed, for one particular district at least, by Mamertus or Mamercus of Vienne (A.D. c. 450). We gather that they were penitential and intercessory prayers offered by the community while going about in procession, fasting and clothed in sackcloth. In the following century the manner of making litanies was to some extent regulated for the entire Eastern empire by one of the Novels of Justinian, which forbade their celebration without the presence of the bishops and clergy, and ordered that the crosses which were carried in procession should not be deposited elsewhere than in churches, nor be carried by any but duly appointed persons. The first synod of Orleans (A.D. 511) enjoins for all Gaul that the “litanies” before Ascension be celebrated for three days; on these days all menials are to be exempt from work, so that every one may be free to attend divine service. The diet is to be the same as in Quadragesima; clerks not observing these rogations are to be punished by the bishop. In A.D. 517 the synod of Gerunda provided for two sets of “litanies”; the first were to be observed for three days (from Thursday to Saturday) in the week after Pentecost with fasting, the second for three days from November 1. The second council of Vaison (529), consisting of twelve bishops, ordered the Kyrie eleison—now first introduced from the Eastern Church—to be sung at matins, mass and vespers.

A synod of Paris (573) ordered litanies to be held for three days at the beginning of Lent, and the fifth synod of Toledo (636) appointed litanies to be observed throughout the kingdom for three days from December 14. The first mention of the word litany in connexion with the Roman Church goes back to the pontificate of Pelagius I. (555), but implies that the thing was at that time already old. In 590 Gregory I., moved by the pestilence which had followed an inundation, ordered a “litania septiformis,” sometimes called litania major, that is to say, a sevenfold procession of clergy, laity, monks, virgins, matrons, widows, poor and children. It must not be confused with the litania septena used in church on Easter Even. He is said also to have appointed the processions or litanies of April 25 (St Mark’s day), which seem to have come in the place of the ceremonies of the old Robigalia. In 747 the synod of Cloveshoe ordered the litanies or rogations to be gone about on April 25 “after the manner of the Roman Church,” and on the three days before Ascension “after the manner of our ancestors.” The latter are still known in the English Church as Rogation Days. Games, horse racing, junkettings were forbidden; and in the litanies the name of Augustine was to be inserted after that of Gregory. The reforming synod of Mainz in 813 ordered the major litany to be observed by all for three days in sackcloth and ashes, and barefoot. The sick only were exempted.

As regards the form of words prescribed for use in these “litanies” or “supplications,” documentary evidence is defective. Sometimes it would appear that the “procession” or “litany” did nothing else but chant Kyrie eleison without variation. There is no reason to doubt that from an early period the special written litanies of the various churches all showed the common features which are now regarded as essential to a litany, in as far as they consisted of (1) invocations, (2) deprecations, (3) intercessions, (4) supplications. But in details they must have varied immensely. The offices of the Roman Catholic Church at present recognize two litanies, the “Litaniae majores” and the “Litaniae breves,” which differ from one another chiefly in respect of the fulness with which details are entered upon under the heads mentioned above. It is said that in the time of Charlemagne the angels Orihel, Raguhel, Tobihel were invoked, but the names were removed by Pope Zacharias as really belonging to demons. In some medieval litanies there were special invocations of S. Fides, S. Spes, S. Charitas. The litanies, as given in the Breviary, are at present appointed to be recited on bended knee, along with the penitential psalms, in all the six week-days of Lent when ordinary service is held. Without the psalms they are said on the feast of Saint Mark and on the three rogation days. A litany is chanted in procession before mass on Holy Saturday. The “litany” or “general supplication” of the Church of England, which is appointed “to be sung or said after morning prayer upon Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and at other times when it shall be commanded by the ordinary,” closely follows the “Litaniae majores” of the Breviary, the invocations of saints being of course omitted. A similar German litany will be found in the works of Luther. In the Roman Church there are a number of special litanies peculiar to particular localities or orders, such as the “Litanies of Mary” or the “Litanies of the Sacred Name of Jesus.”

There was originally a close connexion between the litany and the liturgy (q.v.). The ninefold Kyrie eleison at the beginning of the Roman Mass is a relic of a longer litany of which a specimen may still be seen in the Stowe missal. In the Ambrosian liturgy, the threefold Kyrie eleison or Lesser Litany occurs thrice, after the Gloria in excelsis, after the gospel and at the end of Mass; and on the first five Sundays in Lent a missal litany is placed before the Oratio super populum, and on the same five Sundays in the Mozarabic rite before the epistle. In Eastern liturgies litanies are a prominent feature, as in the case of the deacon’s litany at the beginning of the Missa fidelium in the Clementine liturgy, immediately before the Anaphora in the Greek liturgy of St James, &c.

(F. E. W.)

LITCHFIELD, a township and the county-seat of Litchfield county, Connecticut, U.S.A., about 28 m. W. of Hartford, and including the borough of the same name. Pop. of the township (1890) 3304; (1900) 3214; (1910) 3005; of the borough (1890) 1058; (1900) 1120; (1910) 903. Area of the township, 48.6 sq. m. The borough is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. It is situated on elevated land, and is one of the most attractive of southern New England summer resorts. The principal elevation in the township is Mt. Prospect, at the base of which there is a vein of pyrrhotite, with small quantities of nickel and copper. On the southern border of the borough is Lake Bantam (about 900 acres, the largest lake in the state) whose falls, at its outlet, provide water power for factories of carriages and electrical appliances. Dairying is the most important industry, and in 1899 the county ranked first among the counties of the state in the value of its dairy products—$1,373,957, from 3465 farms, the value of the product for the entire state being $7,090,188.

The lands included in the township of Litchfield (originally called Bantam) were bought from the Indians in 1715-1716 for £15. the Indians reserving a certain part for hunting. The township was incorporated in 1719, was named Litchfield, after Lichfield in England, and was settled by immigrants from Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield, Farmington and Lebanon (all within the state) in 1720-1721. In 1751 it became the county-seat of Litchfield county, and at the same time the borough of Litchfield (incorporated in 1879) was laid out. From 1776 to 1780 two depôts for military stores and a workshop for the Continental army were maintained, and the leaden statue of George III., erected in Bowling Green, New York City, in 1770, and torn down by citizens on the 9th of July 1776, was cut up and taken to Litchfield, where, in the house (still standing) of Oliver Wolcott it was melted into bullets for the American army by Wolcott’s daughter and sister. Aaron Burr, whose only sister married Tapping Reeve (1744-1823), lived in Litchfield with Reeve in 1774-1775. In 1784 Reeve established here the Litchfield Law School, the first institution of its kind in America. In 1798 he associated with himself James Gould (1770-1838), who, after Reeve’s retirement in 1820, continued the work, with the assistance of Jabez W. Huntington (1788-1847), until 1833. The school was never incorporated, it had no buildings, and the lectures were delivered in the law offices of its instructors, but among its 1000 or more students were many who afterwards became famous, including John C. Calhoun; Levi Woodbury (1789-1851), United States senator from New Hampshire in 1825-1831 and in 1841-1845, secretary of the navy in 1831-1834 and of the treasury in 1834-1841, and a justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1845; John Y. Mason; John M. Clayton; and Henry Baldwin (1780-1844), a justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1830. In 1792 Mrs Sarah Pierce made one of the first efforts toward the higher education of women in the United States by opening in Litchfield her Female Seminary, which had an influential career of about forty years, and numbered among its alumnae Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs Marshall O. Roberts, Mrs Cyrus W. Field and Mrs Hugh McCulloch. Litchfield was the birthplace of Ethan Allen; of Henry Ward Beecher; of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel, Poganuc People, presents a picture of social conditions in Litchfield during her girlhood; of Oliver Wolcott, Jr. (1760-1833); of John Pierpont (1785-1866), the poet, preacher and lecturer; and of Charles Loring Brace, the philanthropist. It was also the home, during his last years, of Oliver Wolcott (1726-1797); of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge (1774-1835), an officer on the American side in the War of Independence and later (from 1801 to 1817) a Federalist member of Congress; and of Lyman Beecher, who was pastor of the First Congregational church of Litchfield from 1810 to 1826.

See Payne K. Kilbourne, Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of Litchfield, Connecticut (Hartford, Conn., 1859); George C. Boswell, The Litchfield Book of Days (Litchfield, 1900); and for an account of the Litchfield Female Seminary, Emily N. Vanderpoel, Chronicles of a Pioneer School (Cambridge, Mass., 1903).

LITCHFIELD, a city of Montgomery county, Illinois, U.S.A., about 50 m. N. E. of St Louis, Missouri. Pop. (1900) 5918; (1910) 5971. Its principal importance is as a railway and manufacturing centre; it is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago & Alton, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Illinois Central, the Wabash, and the Litchfield & Madison railways, and by electric lines connecting with St Louis and the neighbouring towns. In the vicinity are deposits of bituminous coal, fire-clay and moulding sand. There are various manufactures in the city. Litchfield was incorporated as a town in 1856, and was first chartered as a city in 1859.

LITCHI, or Lee-Chee, the fruit of Nephelium Litchi, a small tree, native of southern China and one of the most important indigenous fruits. It is also cultivated in India. The tree bears large compound leaves with two to four pairs of leathery lanceolate pointed leaflets about 3 in. long, and panicles of small flowers without petals. The fruits are commonly roundish, about 1½ in. in diameter, with a thin, brittle, red shell which bears rough protuberances. In the fresh state they are filled with a sweet white pulp which envelops a large brown seed, but in the dried condition the pulp forms a blackish fleshy substance. The pulp is of the nature of an aril, that is, an additional seed-coat.

Nephelium Longana, the longan tree, also a native of southern China, is cultivated in that country, in the Malay Peninsula, India and Ceylon for its fruit, which is smaller than that of the litchi, being half an inch to an inch in diameter with a nearly smooth yellowish-brown brittle skin, and containing a pulpy aril resembling that of the litchi in flavour. Another species, N. lappaceum, a tall tree native of the Malay Peninsula, where it is known under the names Rambutan or Rambosteen, is also cultivated for its pleasantly acid pulpy aril. The fruit is oval, bright red in colour, about 2 in. long and covered with long fleshy hairs.

Nephelium belongs to the natural order Sapindaceae, and contains about twenty-two species.

LITERATURE, a general term which, in default of precise definition, may stand for the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing. Its various forms are the result of race peculiarities, or of diverse individual temperaments, or of political circumstances securing the predominance of one social class which is thus enabled to propagate its ideas and sentiments. In early stages of society, the classes which first attain a distinct literary utterance are priests who compile the chronicles of tribal religious development, or rhapsodes who celebrate the prowess of tribal chiefs. As man feels before he reasons, so poetry generally precedes prose. It embodies more poignantly the sentiment of unsophisticated man. Hence sacred books and war-songs are everywhere the earliest literary monuments, and both are essentially poetic compositions which have received a religious or quasi-religious sanction. The recitation of the Homeric poems at the Panathenaea corresponds to the recitation elsewhere of the sacred texts in the temple; the statement of Phemios (Odyssey, xxii. 347) that a god inspired his soul with all the varied ways of song expresses the ordinary belief of early historical times. Versicles of the sacred chronicles, or fragments of epic poems, were learned by heart and supplied a standard of popular literary taste. The public declamation of long chosen passages by priests, and still more by contending rhapsodes, served to evoke the latent sense of literary criticism; and, at a later stage, the critical spirit was still further stimulated by the performance of dramatic pieces written by competing poets. The epical record of the past was supplemented by the lyrical record of contemporary events, and as the Homeric poets had immortalized the siege of Troy, so Pindar commemorated Salamis. Prose of any permanent value would first show itself in the form of oratory, and the insertion of speeches by early historians indicates a connexion with rhetoric. The development of abstract reasoning would tend to deprive prose of its superfluous ornament and to provide a simpler and more accurate instrument.

No new genre has been invented since the days of Plato. The evolution of literature is completed in Greece, and there its subdivisions may best be studied. Epic poetry is represented by the Homeric cycle, lyrical poetry by Tyrtaeus, dramatic poetry by Aeschylus, history by Herodotus, oratory by Pericles, philosophy by Plato, and criticism by Zoilus, the earliest of slashing reviewers; and in each department there is a long succession of illustrious names. Roughly speaking, all subsequent literature is imitative. Ennius transplanted Greek methods to Rome; his contemporary L. Fabius Pictor, the earliest Roman historian, wrote in Greek; and the later Roman poets from Lucretius to Horace abound in imitations of Greek originals. The official adoption of Christianity as the state religion changed the spirit of literature, which became more and more provincial after the downfall of the empire. Literature did not perish during the “dark ages” which extend from the sixth century to the beginning of the 11th, but it was subordinate to scholarship. The dissolution of Latin was not complete till about the middle of the 9th century, and the new varieties of Romance did not become ripe for literary purposes till a hundred years later. Meanwhile, not a single literary masterpiece was produced in western Europe for five centuries; by comparison only do Boëthius and Venantius Fortunatus seem to be luminous points in the prolonged night; the promise of a literary renaissance at the court of Charlemagne was unfulfilled, and the task of creating a new literature devolved upon the descendants of the barbarians who had destroyed the old. The Celtic and Teutonic races elaborated literary methods of their own; but the fact that the most popular form of Irish verse is adopted from Latin prosody is conclusive evidence that the influence of Roman—and therefore of Greek—models persisted in the literature of the outlying provinces which had attained political independence. The real service rendered to literature by the provincials lay in the introduction and diffusion of legends freighted with a burden of mystery which had disappeared with Pan, and these new valuable materials went to form the substance of the new poetry.

The home of modern European literature must be sought in France, which assimilated the best elements in Celtic and Teutonic literature. From the 11th to the 14th century, France was the centre of intellectual life in Europe, as Greece and Rome had been before, and as Italy was to be afterwards. The chansons de geste, inspired by the sense of patriotism and the yearning for religious unity, inculcate feudal and Catholic doctrine, and as society in the western world was universally committed to feudalism and Catholicism, these literary expressions of both theories were widely accepted and copied. The Germanic origin of the French epic is lost sight of, and imitators are attracted by the French execution, and by the creative power of the chansons de geste. Again, France takes the stories of the Arthurian court from Welsh texts or from the lips of Welsh settlers, rehandles the romantic element, and, through Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes, imparts to the whole a touch of personal artistry which is absent from the chansons de geste. The matière de Bretagne goes forth to Italy, Germany and England—later to Portugal and Spain—bearing the imprint of the French genius. Thus France internationalizes local subjects, and first assumes a literary function which, with few interruptions, she has since discharged. She further gives to Europe models of allegory in the Roman de la rose, founds the school of modern history through Villehardouin, inaugurates the religious drama and the secular theatre. She never again dominated the literatures of Europe so absolutely.

The literary sceptre passed from France to Italy during the 14th century. Brunetto Latini, who wrote in French as well as in Italian, is the connecting link between the literatures of the two countries; but Italy owes its eminence not so much to a general diffusion of literary accomplishment as to the emergence of three great personalities. Dante, Boccacio and Petrarch created a new art of poetry and of prose. England yielded to the fascination in the person of Chaucer, Spain in the person of her chancellor López de Ayala, and France in the person of Charles d’Orléans, the son of an Italian mother. Petrarch, once ambassador in France, alleged that there were no poets out of Italy, and indeed there were no living poets to compare with him elsewhere. But in all countries he raised up rivals—Chaucer, Marot, Garcilaso de la Vega—as Sannazaro did a century and a half later. Sannazaro’s Arcadia captured the Portuguese Montemôr, whose pastoral novel the Diana, written in Spanish, inspired d’Urfé no less than Sidney, and, as d’Urfé’s Astrée is considered the starting-point of the modern French novel, the historical importance of the Italian original cannot be exaggerated. Spain never obtained any intellectual predominance corresponding to that exercised by France and Italy, or to her political authority during the 16th and 17th centuries. This may be attributed partly to her geographical position which lies off the main roads of Europe, and partly to the fact that her literature is essentially local. Cervantes, indeed, may be said to have influenced all subsequent writers of fiction, and the influence of Spanish literature is visible in the body of European picaresque tales; but, apart from Corneille and a few other dramatists who preceded Molière in France, and apart from the Restoration drama in England, the influence of the Spanish drama was relatively small. In some respects it was too original to be imitated with success. Much the same may be said of England as of Spain. Like Spain, she lies outside the sphere of continental influence; like Spain, she has innumerable great names in every province of literature, and, in both cases, to Europe at large these long remained names and nothing more; like Spain, she is prone to reproduce borrowed materials in shapes so transformed and rigid as to be unrecognizable and unadaptable. Moreover, the Reformation isolated England from literary commerce with the Latin races, and till the 18th century Germany was little more than a geographical expression. Even when Germany recovered her literary independence, Lessing first heard of Shakespeare through Voltaire. Neither Shakespeare nor Milton was read in France before the 18th century—the first translated by Ducis, the second by Dupré de Saint-Maur—and they were read with curiosity rather than with rapture. On the other hand, Boileau, Rapin and Le Bossu were regarded as oracles in England, and through them French literature produced the “correctness” of Queen Anne’s reign. Horace Walpole is half a Frenchman, Hume imitates Montesquieu’s cold lucidity, Gibbon adapts Bossuet’s majestic periods to other purposes. On the other hand Voltaire takes ideas from Locke, but his form is always intensely personal and inimitably French. After the 16th century English literature, as a whole, is refractory to external influence. Waves of enthusiasm pass over England—for Rousseau, for Goethe—but leave no abiding trace on English literature. During the latter half of the 18th century France resumed something of her old literary supremacy; the literatures of Italy and Spain at this period are purely derivative, and French influence was extended still further on the continent as the result of the Romantic movement. Since that impulse was exhausted, literature everywhere has been in a state of flux: it is less national, and yet fails to be cosmopolitan. All writers of importance, and many of no importance, are translated into other European languages; the quick succession of diverse and violent impressions has confused the scheme of literature. Literature suffers likewise from the competition of the newspaper press, and as the press has multiplied it has grown less literary. The diversities of modern interests, the want of leisure for concentrated thought, suggest that literature may become once more the pleasure of a small caste. But the desire for the one just form which always inspires the literary artist visits most men sometimes, and it cannot be doubted that literature will continue to accommodate itself to new conditions.

(J. F.-K.)

LITERNUM, an ancient town of Campania, Italy, on the low sandy coast between Cumae and the mouth of the Volturnus. It was probably once dependent on Cumae. In 194 B.C. it became a Roman colony. It is mainly famous as the residence of the elder Scipio, who withdrew from Rome and died here. His tomb and villa are described by Seneca. Augustus is said to have conducted here a colony of veterans,1 but the place never had any great importance, and the lagoons behind it made it unhealthy, though the construction of the Via Domitiana through it must have made it a posting station. It ceased to exist in the 8th century. No remains are visible.

See J. Beloch, Campanien, ed. ii. (Breslau, 1890), 377.

1 Mommsen in C.I.L. x. 343 does not accept this statement, but an inscription found in 1885 confirms it.

LITHGOW, WILLIAM (1582-? 1650), Scottish traveller and writer, was born and educated in Lanark. He was caught in a love-adventure, mutilated of his ears by the brothers of the lady (hence the sobriquet “Cut-lugged Willie”), and forced to leave Scotland. For nineteen years he travelled, mostly on foot, through Europe, the Levant, Egypt and northern Africa, covering, according to his estimate, over 36,000 m. The story of his adventures may be drawn from The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and painfull Peregrinations of long nineteene Yeares (London, 1614; fuller edition, 1632, &c.); A True and Experimentall Discourse upon the last siege of Breda (London, 1637); and a similar book giving an account of the siege of Newcastle and the battle of Marston Moor (Edinburgh, 1645). He is the author of a Present Surveigh of London (London, 1643). He left six poems, written between 1618 and 1640 (reprinted by Maidment, Edinburgh, 1863). Of these “Scotland’s Welcome to King Charles, 1633” has considerable antiquarian interest. His writing has no literary merit; but its excessively aureate style deserves notice.

The best account of Lithgow and his works is by F. Hindes Groome in the Dict. Nat. Biog. The piece entitled Scotland’s Paraenesis to King Charles II. (1660), ascribed to him in the catalogue of the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, cannot, from internal evidence, be his.

LITHGOW, a town of Cook county, New South Wales, Australia, 96 m. W.N.W. of Sydney by rail. Pop. (1901) 5268. The town is situated at an altitude of 3000 ft., in a valley of the Blue Mountains. It has pottery and terra-cotta works, breweries, a tweed factory, iron-works, saw-mills, soap-works and brickfields. Coal, kerosene shale, iron ore and building stone are found in the district.

LITHIUM [symbol Li, atomic weight 7.00 (O = 16)], an alkali metal, discovered in 1817 by J. A. Arfvedson (Ann. chim. phys. 10, p. 82). It is only found in combination, and is a constituent of the minerals petalite, triphyline, spodumene and lepidolite or lithia mica. It occurs in small quantities in sea, river and spring water, and is also widely but very sparingly distributed throughout the vegetable kingdom. It may be obtained (in the form of its chloride) by fusing lepidolite with a mixture of barium carbonate and sulphate, and potassium sulphate (L. Troost, Comptes rendus, 1856, 43, p. 921). The fused mass separates into two layers, the upper of which contains a mixture of potassium and lithium sulphates; this is lixiviated with water and converted into the mixed chlorides by adding barium chloride, the solution evaporated and the lithium chloride extracted by a mixture of dry alcohol and ether. The metal may be obtained by heating dry lithium hydroxide with magnesium (H. N. Warren, Chem. News, 1896, 74, p. 6). L. Kahlenberg (Jour. phys. Chem., 3, p. 601) obtained it by electrolysing the chloride in pyridine solution, a carbon anode and an iron or platinum cathode being used. O. Ruff and O. Johannsen (Zeit. elektrochem., 1906, 55, p. 537) electrolyse a mixture of bromide and chloride which melts at 520°. It is a soft, silvery-white metal, which readily tarnishes on exposure. Its specific gravity is 0.59, and it melts at 180° C. It burns on ignition in air, and when strongly heated in an atmosphere of nitrogen it forms lithium nitride, Li3N. It decomposes water at ordinary temperature, liberating hydrogen and forming lithium hydroxide.

Lithium hydride, LiH, obtained by heating the metal in a current of hydrogen at a red heat, or by heating the metal with ethylene to 700° C. (M. Guntz, Comptes rendus, 1896, 122, p. 244; 123, p. 1273), is a white solid which inflames when heated in chlorine. With alcohol it forms lithium ethylate, LiOC2H5, with liberation of hydrogen. Lithium oxide, Li2O, is obtained by burning the metal in oxygen, or by ignition of the nitrate. It is a white powder which readily dissolves in water to form the hydroxide, LiOH, which is also obtained by boiling the carbonate with milk of lime. It forms a white caustic mass, resembling sodium hydroxide in appearance. It absorbs carbon dioxide, but is not deliquescent. Lithium chloride LiCl, prepared by heating the metal in chlorine, or by dissolving the oxide or carbonate in hydrochloric acid, is exceedingly deliquescent, melts below a red heat, and is very soluble in alcohol. Lithium carbonate, Li2CO3, obtained as a white amorphous precipitate by adding sodium carbonate to a solution of lithium chloride, is sparingly soluble in water. Lithium phosphate, Li3PO4, obtained by the addition of sodium phosphate to a soluble lithium salt in the presence of sodium hydroxide, is almost insoluble in water. Lithium ammonium, LiNH3, is obtained by passing ammonia gas over lithium, the product being heated to 70° C. in order to expel any excess of ammonia. It turns brown-red on exposure to air, and is inflammable. It is decomposed by water evolving hydrogen, and when heated in vacuo at 50°-60° C. it gives lithium and ammonia. With ammonia solution it gives hydrogen and lithiamide, LiNH2 (H. Moissan, ibid., 1898, 127, p. 685). Lithium carbide, Li2C2, obtained by heating lithium carbonate and carbon in the electric furnace, forms a transparent crystalline mass of specific gravity 1.65, and is readily decomposed by cold water giving acetylene (H. Moissan, ibid., 1896, 122, p. 362).

Lithium is detected by the faint yellow line of wave-length 6104, and the bright red line of wave-length 6708, shown in its flame spectrum. It may be distinguished from sodium and potassium by the sparing solubility of its carbonate and phosphate. The atomic weight of lithium was determined by J. S. Stas from the analysis of the chloride, and also by conversion of the chloride into the nitrate, the value obtained being 7.03 (O = 16).

The preparations of lithium used in medicine are: Lithii Carbonis, dose 2 to 5 grs.; Lithii Citras, dose 5 to 10 grs.; and Lithii Citras effervescens, a mixture of citric acid, lithium citrate, tartaric acid and sodium bicarbonate, dose 60 to 120 grs. Lithium salts render the urine alkaline and are in virtue of their action diuretic. They are much prescribed for acute or chronic gout, and as a solvent to uric acid calculi or gravel, but their action as a solvent of uric acid has been certainly overrated, as it has been shown that the addition of medicinal doses of lithium to the blood serum does not increase the solubility of uric acid in it. In concentrated or large doses lithium salts cause vomiting and diarrhoea, due to a gastro-enteritis set up by their action. In medicinal use they should therefore be always freely diluted.

LITHOGRAPHY (Gr. λίθος, a stone, and γράφειν, to write), the process of drawing or laying down a design or transfer, on a specially prepared stone or other suitable surface, in such a way that impressions may be taken therefrom. The principle on which lithography is based is the antagonism of grease and water. A chemically pure surface having been secured on some substance that has an equal affinity for both grease and water, in a method hereafter to be described, the parts intended to print are covered with an unctuous composition and the rest of the surface is moistened, so that when a greasy roller is applied, the portion that is wet resists the grease and that in which an affinity for grease has been set up readily accepts it; and from the surface thus treated it will be seen that it is an easy thing to secure an impression on paper or other material by applying suitable pressure.

The inventor of lithography was Alois Senefelder (1771-1834); and it is remarkable what a grip he at once seemed to get of his invention, for whereas the invention of printing seems almost a matter of evolution, lithography seems to come upon the scene fully equipped for the battle of life, so that it would be a bold craftsman at the present day who would affirm that he knew more of the principles underlying his trade than Senefelder (q.v.) did within thirty years of its invention. Of course practice has led to dexterity, and the great volume of trade has induced many mechanical improvements and facilities, but the principles have not been taken any further, while some valuable methods have been allowed to fall into desuetude and would well repay some experimentally disposed person to revive.

Lithography may be divided into two main branches—that which is drawn with a greasy crayon (rather illogically called “chalk”) on a grained stone, and that which is drawn in “ink” on a polished stone. Whatever may be thought in regard to the original work of the artists of various countries who have used lithography as a means of expression, there can be little doubt that in the former method the English professed lithographer has always held the pre-eminence, while French, German and American artists have surpassed them in the latter.

Chalk lithography subdivides itself into work in which the black predominates, although it may be supported by 5 or 6 shades of modified colour—this branch is known as “black and tint” work—and that in which the black is only used locally like any other colour. Frequently this latter class of work will require a dozen or more colours, while some of the finest examples have had some twenty to thirty stones employed in them. Work of this description is known as chromo-lithography. Each colour requires a separate stone, and work of the highest quality may want two or three blues with yellows, reds, greys and browns in proportion, if it is desired to secure a result that is an approximate rendering of the original painting or drawing. The question may perhaps be asked: “If the well-known three-colour process” (see Process) “can give the full result of the artist’s palette, why should it take so many more colours in lithography to secure the same result?” The answer is that the stone practically gives but three gradations—the solid, the half tint and the quarter tint, so that the combination of three very carefully prepared stones will give a very limited number of combinations, while a moderate estimate of the shades on a toned block would be six; so that a very simple mathematical problem will show the far greater number of combinations that the three blocks will give. Beyond this, the chromo-lithographer has to exercise very great powers of colour analysis; but the human mind is quite unable to settle offhand the exact proportion of red, blue and yellow necessary to produce some particular class say of grey, and this the camera with the aid of colour filters does with almost perfect precision.

Notwithstanding these disadvantages, lithography has these strong points: (1) its utility for small editions on account of its, at present, smaller prime cost; (2) its suitability for subjects of large size; (3) its superiority for subjects with outlines, for in such cases the outline can be done in one colour, whereas to secure this effect by the admixture of the three colours requires marvellously good registration, the absence of which would produce a very large proportion of “waste” or faulty copies; (4) capacity for printing on almost any paper, whereas, at the time of writing, the tri-colour process is almost entirely limited to printing on coated papers that are very heavy and not very enduring.

With regard to the two branches of chalk lithography, the firms that maintained the English supremacy for black and tint work in the early days were Hulemandel, Day and Haghe and Maclure, while the best chromo-lithographic work in the same period was done by Vincent Brooks, the brothers Hanhart, Thomas Kell and F. Kell. In reference to the personal work of professed lithographers during the same period, the names of Louis Haghe, J. D. Harding, J. Needham, C. Baugniet, L. Ghemar, William Simpson, R. J. Lane, J. H. Lynch, A. Maclure and Rimanozcy stand for black and tint work; while in chromo-lithography J. M. Carrick, C. Risdon, William Bunney, W. Long, Samuel Hodson, Edwin Buckman and J. Lewis have been conspicuous among those who have maintained the standard of their craft. In the foregoing list will be recognized the names of several who have had admirable works on the walls of the Royal Academy and other exhibitions; Mr Lane, who exhibited lithographs from 1824 to 1872, was for many years the doyen of lithographers, and the only one of their number to attain academic rank, but Lynch and John Cardwell Bacon were his pupils, and Bacon’s son, the painter John H. F. Bacon, was elected to the Royal Academy in 1903. In the first decade of the 20th century the number of firms doing high-class work, and the artists who aided them in doing it, were more numerous than ever, and scarcely less able, but it would be outside the present purpose to differentiate between them.

The raison d’être of “stipple” work is its capacity for retransferring without serious loss of quality, for it can scarcely be contended that it is as artistic as the methods just described. Retransferring is the process of pulling impressions from the original stones with a view to making up a large sheet of one or more small subjects, or where it is desired to print a very large number without deterioration of the original or matrix stone. The higher class work in this direction has been done in France, Germany and the United States, where for many years superiority has been shown in regard to the excellence and rapidity of retransferring. To this cause may be attributed the fact that the box tops and Christmas cards on the English market were so largely done abroad until quite recent times. The work of producing even a small face in the finest hand stipple is a lengthy and tedious affair, and the English craftsman has seldom shown the patience necessary for this work; but since the American invention known as Ben Day’s shading medium was introduced into England the trade has largely taken it up, and thereby much of the tedium has been avoided, so that it has been found possible by its means to introduce a freedom into stipple work that had not before been found possible, and a very much better class of work has since been produced in this department.

About the year 1868 grained paper was invented by Maclure, Macdonald & Co. This method consists in impressing on ordinary Scotch transfer or other suitable paper a grain closely allied to that of the lithographic stone. It appears to have been rather an improvement than a new invention, for drawing paper and even canvas had been coated previously with a material that adhered to a stone and left on the stone the greasy drawing that had been placed thereon; but still from this to the beautifully prepared paper that was placed on the market by the firm of which the late Andrew Maclure was the head was a great advance, and although the first use was by the ordinary craftsman it was not long before artists of eminence saw that a new and convenient mode of expression was opened up to them.

On the first introduction of lithography the artists of every nation hastened to avail themselves of it, but soon the cumbrous character of the stone, and the fact that their subjects had to be drawn backwards in order that they might appear correctly on the paper, wore down their newly-born zeal, and it was only when the grained paper system was perfected, by which they could make their drawings in the comfort of their studios without reversing, that any serious revival took place. Although excellent work on grained paper had been done by Andrew Maclure, Rimanozcy, John Cardwell Bacon, Rudofsky and other craftsmen, the credit for its furtherance among artists must be given to Thomas Way and his son T. R. Way, who did much valuable pioneer work in this direction. The adhesion of such artists of eminence as Whistler, Legros, Frank Short, Charles Shannon, Fantin Latour, William Strang, Will Rothenstein, Herbert Railton and Joseph Pennell, did not a little to aid lithography in resisting the encroachments of other methods into what may still be considered its sphere. As a means of reproducing effects which an artist would otherwise get by pencil or crayon, it remains entirely unequalled, and it is of obvious advantage to art that twenty-five or fifty copies of an original work should exist, which, without the aid of lithography, might have only been represented by a single sketch, perhaps stowed away among the possessions of one private collector.

In regard to grained paper work, undue stress has often been placed upon the rapid deterioration of the stone, some contending that only a few dozen first-class proofs can be taken; this has led to the feeling that it is unsuited to book illustration, and damage has been done to the trade of lithography thereby. It may be mentioned that quite recently about 100 auto-lithographs in black and three colours, the combined work of Mr and Mrs Herbert Railton, have been treated by the Eberle system of etching described below, and although an infinitesimal loss of quality may have arisen, such as occurs when a copper etching is steel faced, some 2000 to 3000 copies were printed without further deterioration, and an edition of vignetted sketches was secured, far in advance of anything that could have been attained from the usual screen or half-toned blocks.

Grained paper is much used in the ordinary lithographic studio for work such as the hill shading of maps that can be done without much working up, but the velvety effects that in the hands of Louis Haghe and his contemporaries were so conspicuous, cannot be secured by this method. The effects referred to were obtained by much patient work of a “tinter,” who practically laid a ground on which the more experienced and artistic craftsman did his work either by scraping or accentuation. Where fine rich blacks are needed, artists will do well to read the notes on the “aquatint” and “wash” methods described by Senefelder in his well-known treatise, and afterwards practised with great skill by Hulemandel.

Lithography is of great service in educational matters, as its use for diagrams, wall pictures and maps is very general; nor does the influence end with schooldays, for in the form of pictures at a moderate price it brings art into homes and lives that need brightening, and even in the form of posters on the much-abused hoardings does something for those who have to spend much of their time in the streets of great cities.

According to the census of 1901, 14,686 people in the United Kingdom found their occupation within the trade, while according to a Home Office return (1906), 20,367 persons other than lithographic printers were employed by the firms carrying on the business. As it may be assumed that an equal number are employed in France, Germany, the United States of America and the world at large, it is clear that a vast industrial army is employed in a trade that, like letterpress printing, has a very beneficial influence upon those engaged in it.

Technical Details.—The following description of the various methods of lithography is such as may be considered of interest to the general reader, but the serious student who will require formulas and more precise directions will do well to consult one of the numerous text-books on the subject.

Stone and Stone Substitutes.—The quality of stone first used by Alois Senefelder, and discovered by him at the village of Solenhofen in Bavaria, still remains unsurpassed. This deposit, which covers a very large area and underlies the villages of Solenhofen, Moernsheim and Langenaltheim, has often been described, sometimes for interested motives, as nearly exhausted; but a visit in 1906 revealed that the output—considerable as it had been during a period little short of a century—was very unimportant when compared to the great mass of carbonaceous limestone existing in the neighbourhood. The strong point in favour of this source of supply, in addition to its unrivalled quality, is the evenness of its stratification, and the fact that after the removal of the surface deposits, which are very thin, the stones come out of large size, in thickness of 3 to 5 in., and thus just suited for lithographic purposes and needing only to be wrought in the vertical direction. Other deposits of suitable stone have been found in France, Spain, Italy and Greece, but transit and the absence of suitable stratification have restricted them to little more than local use. Beyond this, few of the deposits other than in the neighbourhood of Solenhofen have been of the exact degree of density necessary, and the heavier varieties do not receive the grease with sufficient readiness. The desire to find other sources of supply has been stimulated by the social conditions existing in southern Bavaria, for the quarries are largely owned by peasant proprietors, who have very well-defined business habits of their own which make transactions difficult. Among other things, they will seldom supply the highest grades and the largest sizes to those who will not take their proportion of lower quality and smaller sizes; and this, in view of the very expensive transit down the Rhine to Rotterdam, with a railway journey at one end and a sea journey at the other, is a source of difficulty to the importer in other countries.

The earliest substitute for lithographic stone was zinc, which has been used from early days and is now more in demand than ever; it requires very careful printing as the grease only penetrates the material to a very slight extent, and the same must be said in regard to the water. From this cause, when not in experienced hands, trouble is likely to arise; and when this has occurred, remedial methods are much more difficult than with stones. When put away for storage, a dry place is very essential, as corrosion is easily set up. At first the plates were quite thick, and almost invariably grained by a zinc “muller” and acid; now a bath of acid is more generally used, and the operation is known as “passing,” while the plates are quite thin, which renders them suitable for bending round the cylinders of rotary machines.

So far we have been dealing with plain zinc, but variations are caused, either by the oxidization of the surface or by coating the plate with a composition closely allied to lithographic stone and applied in a form of semi-solution. This class of plate was first invented by Messrs C. & E. Layton, and a modification was invented by Messrs Wezel and Naumann of Leipzig, who brought its use to a high pitch of perfection for transferred work such as Christmas cards. A treatment of iron plates by exposing them to a high temperature has recently been patented, and has had some measure of success, while the Parker printing plate, which is practically a sheet of zinc so treated as to secure greater porosity and freedom from oxidization, is rapidly securing a good position as a stone substitute.

Preparation of the Stones.—In this department the cleanliness so necessary right through the lithographic process must be carefully observed, and a leading point is to secure a level surface and to ensure that the front and back of the stone are strictly parallel, i.e. that the stones stand the test of both the straight edge and the callipers. A good plan to ensure evenness on the surface is to mark the front with two diagonal lines of some non-greasy substance till the top stone (which should not be too small, and should be constantly revolved on the larger one) has entirely removed them. The application of the straight edge from time to time will end in securing the desired flatness, on which so much of the future printing quality depends. The usual method is to rub out with sand, and then rub with pumice and polish with water of Ayr or snake stone. For chalk work, the further work of graining has to be done by revolving a small stone muller on the surface with exceedingly fine sand or powdered glass. Many appliances (some very expensive) have been devised for doing the principal part of this work by machine—none more effective than those methods by which a disk of about 12 in. is kept revolving on a rod attached to the ceiling, guided by hand over all parts of the stone; but for large surfaces the ceiling needs to be rather high so as to allow of a long expanding rod reaching the surface at a moderate angle. When this machine is fitted with friction disk driving, very wide variations of speed are possible, and the machine can be driven so slowly and evenly as to secure a very fair (but not first class) grain, in addition to speedy rubbing out, which is the chief aim of the apparatus.

Preparing a Subject in Chalk or Chalk and Tints.—This branch of work is much less in demand than formerly. A grey stone having been selected and finely grained with sand or powdered glass passed through a sieve of 80 to 120 meshes to the lineal inch, and the artist having made his tracing, this tracing is reversed upon the stone with the interposition of a piece of paper coated with red chalk, and the chalk side towards the surface; the lines on the tracing are then gone over with a tracing point, so that a reproduction in red chalk is left upon the stone. It will then be desirable to secure a stock of pointed Lemercier chalks of at least two grades, hard and soft: the pointing is a matter that requires experience, and is done by the worker drawing a sharp pen-knife towards him in a slicing manner as though trying to put a point upon a piece of cheese. Care should be taken that the falling pieces are gathered into a box, or they may do irreparable mischief to the work. The work of outlining is done with No. 1 or hard chalk, and until experience is gained it will be well to depend chiefly on this grade, securing rich dark effects by tinting or going over the stone in various directions and then finishing with lithographic ink where absolute blacks are required. This ink (Vanhymbeck’s or Lemercier’s are two good makes) needs careful preparation, the method being to warm a saucer and rub the ink dry upon it, then add a little distilled water and incorporate with the finger. It is of great importance not to use any ink left over for the next day, but always to have a fresh daily supply.

When the drawing is thus completed, it will require what is termed etching, by which the parts intended to receive the printing ink, and already protected by an acid-resisting grease, will be left above the unprotected surface. The acid and gum mixture varies in accordance with the quality of the work and the character of the stone. A patiently executed specimen will, for instance, stand more etching than a hastily drawn one; while a grey stone will require more of the nitric acid than a yellow one. This is one of the most important tasks that a lithographer has to perform. A proportion of 1.5 parts of acid to 100 parts of a strong solution of gum arabic will be found to be approximately what is required, but the exact proportion must be settled by experience, a safe course being to watch the action that occurs when a small quantity is placed on the unused margin of the stone. Many put the etching mixture on with a flat camel-hair brush, which should be of good width to avoid streaks. The present writer’s own preference is to pour the mixture on to the stone when it is in a slanting position; or it is perhaps better to have an etching trough, a strong box lined with pitch, with bearers at the bottom to prevent the stone coming in contact with it, and a hole through which the diluted acid may pass away for subsequent use. The etching is then done with acid and water poured over the stone while in a sloping position, and the subsequent pouring of a solution of gum arabic completes the preparation. The late Mr William Simpson, whose Crimean lithographs are well known, once stated at the Society of Arts that in his opinion Mr Louis Haghe’s reproduction of David Robert’s great picture of “The Taking of Jerusalem” was the most important piece of chalk lithography ever executed, and that he well remembered that it took two years to execute it, and that all the combined talent of Messrs Day & Haghe’s establishment was utilized in its etching. He stated that, notwithstanding every precaution, it was under-etched, and that after half a dozen impressions the great beauty and brilliancy of the work had departed. This incident indicates sufficiently the serious nature of this part of the lithographer’s work.

If the chalk drawing has to have tints, it will be necessary to make as many dusted offsetts as there are colours to be used; in this class of work there are generally only two,—one warm or sandy shade and the other a quiet blue—and these, with the black and the neutral colour secured by the superposition of the two shades, give an excellent result, of which Haghe’s sketches in Belgium may be taken as a leading example.

In making such subjects suitable for present-day printing in the machine, the paper will require to be of a good “rag” quality, free from size and damped before printing. To secure accuracy of register the paper must be kept in a damp cloth to prevent the edges drying, and other machines should be kept available for each of the tints so that all work printed in black in the morning may be completed the same night. In this way large editions might be printed of either original or retransferred work at prices rendering the prints suitable for high-class magazines.

Preparing a Chromo Lithograph.—For this purpose the proceedings will be much the same as those suggested for the black and tint work, but the preliminary tracing will be done in lithographic ink on tracing transfer paper or scratched on gelatine, the lines being subsequently filled in with transfer ink, and will be used as a “key,” a guide stone that will not be printed; and the number of stones necessary will probably be much more numerous. The initial point will be to consider if the work is to have the edition printed from it, or whether it has to be transferred after proving and before printing; generally speaking, large subjects such as diagrams or posters will be worked direct, while Christmas cards, postcards, handbills or labels, will be repeated many times on larger stones. For the former class a much wider range of methods is possible, but many of these are difficult to transfer, and the deterioration that arises makes it desirable to limit their use when transferring is contemplated. Therefore, chalk-rubbed tints, varnish tints, stumping, wash, air brush, are the methods for original work, while work that has to be transferred is limited to ink work in line or stipple on a polished stone with the aid of “mediums” as before described, and ink “spluttered” on to the stone from a tooth brush. It should be mentioned that work done on grained paper is more suitable for retransfer than ordinary chalk work, and so is often very useful when a chalk effect is desired from a polished stone. In proving, opaque colours will be got on first, and it will often be found a good plan to put the black on early, for it gives a good idea of how the work is proceeding, and the strength of the touches (for the black should generally be used sparingly) is often pleasantly softened by the semi-opaque colours which should come on next. It is desirable to pull impressions of each colour on thoroughly white paper, and beyond this in important work there should be a progressive colour pattern that will show how the work looked when two, three or more colours were on, for this may at the finish be invaluable to show where error has crept in, and is in any event an immense aid to the machine minder.

In regard to paper, a description made of rag or rag and esparto is most desirable for all work on grained stones, but for work in ink and consequently from polished stone a good coated paper with sufficient “size” in it is frequently desirable; this paper is generally called “chromo” paper.

There is at the present time very little encouragement for the high class of chromo-lithography that was so much in evidence from 1855 to 1875, but there is little doubt that the work could be done equally well by the present-day craftsmen if the demand revived. Belonging to the period mentioned, distinguished examples of chromo-lithography are “Blue Lights,” after Turner, by Carrick; “Spanish Peasants” and the Lumley portrait of Shakespeare, by Risdon; “Queen Victoria receiving the Guards,” by W. Bunney, after John Gilbert; and the series of chromos after John Leech, produced under the general direction of Vincent Brooks. A small proportion only of the Arundel Society’s prints were executed in England, but many reproductions of water-colours after Birket Foster, Richardson, Wainwright and others were executed by Samuel Hodson, James Lewis and others. Perhaps the most consistently good work of modern times has been the reproduction of Pellegrini’s and Leslie Ward’s drawings for Vanity Fair, which from 1870 to 1906 were with very few exceptions executed by the firm of Vincent Brooks, Day & Son.

Transfers.—A very large proportion of work is got on to the stone by transfer, and there is no more important part of the business perhaps at the present time. When there is so much original lithography done on grained paper by artists of eminence, the transferring of grained paper drawings is the most important. The stone most desirable for this purpose will be neither a grey nor a light yellow, but one that stands mid-way between the two; it should be very carefully polished so as to be quite free from scratches, and brought to blood-heat by being gradually heated in an iron cupboard prepared with the necessary apparatus. The methods that sometimes prevail of pouring boiling water over the stone, heating with the flame of an ordinary plumber’s lamp, or even heating the surface in front of a fire, are ineffective substitutes, for the surface may thus become unduly hot and spread the work, and there is no increased tendency for the chalk to enter into the stone and thus give the work a long life. If there are no colours or registration troubles to be considered, it is well to place the transfer in a damping book till the composition adheres firmly to the finger, before placing it on the stone; it should then be pulled through twice, after which it should be damped on the back and pulled through several times; after this has again been well damped the paper will be found to peel easily off the stone, leaving the work and nearly all the composition attached; the latter should then be very gently washed away.

In cases where the work for some reason must not stretch, such as the hills on a map, it will be necessary to keep the transfer dry and put it on a wet stone, but a piece of the margin of the paper should be tested to see that it is of a class that will adhere to the stone the first time it is pulled through. Unless the adhesion is very complete it may not be safe to pull it through more than once. For a small number of copies a very moderate “etch” is desirable, but for a long run, where the object is to secure a good edition rather than a few good proofs, the Eberle system may be adopted. This method consists in protecting the work with finely powdered resin and then applying the flame of an ordinary plumber’s lamp; this will melt the protecting medium round the base of each grain of work and allow of a very vigorous “etch” being applied. As before stated it is not unusual to secure 2000 to 3000 good copies in the machine after this treatment; but the rollers, the ink and the superintendence must be of the best.

When the artist who is not a professed lithographer desires to make tints to his work, a reversed offset on grained paper should be made for each colour; this is done by pulling an impression in the usual way on a hard piece of paper, and while it is yet wet this should be faced with a piece of grained paper and pulled through again, when the grained paper will be found to have received the greater portion of the ink; this should be immediately dusted with offset powder of a red shade to prevent the grease passing into the paper, and the drawing of the tints should then be proceeded with in the usual way. Another method of transfer work is to pull impressions from copper or steel plates in transfer ink; it is in such way that simple etchings like those of Cruikshank, Phiz and others are produced, and nearly all commercial work such as maps, bill heads, &c., are prepared in the same manner.

Beyond this, much work is done in lithographic ink on what is called writing transfer paper, such as circulars, law writing for abstracts, specifications and plans.