in commerce, a very clear unbleached cloth of hemp, or flax, wove regularly in little squares. It is used for working tapestry with the needle, by passing the threads of gold, silver, silk or wool, through the intervals or squares.

Canvas is also a coarse cloth of hemp, unbleached, somewhat clear, which serves to cover women's stays, also to stiffen men's clothes, and to make some other of their wearing apparel, &c.

Canvas is also used among the French for the model or first words whereon an air or piece of music is composed, and given to a poet to regulate and finish. The canvas of a song contains certain notes of the composer, which show the poet the measure of the verses he is to make. Thus Du Lot says, he has canvas for ten fonnets against the Mules.

Canvas is also the name of a cloth made of hemp, and used for ship sails.

Canvas, among painters, is the cloth on which they usually draw their pictures; the canvas being smoothed over with a slick stone, then sized, and afterwards whitened over, makes what the painters called their primed cloth, on which they draw their first sketches with coal or chalk, and afterwards finish with colours.