DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING. 259 



Nor does the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid 

 of colour. On the contrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket, 

 which comes out rather brilliantly from the mass of shade 

 round it ; and a person devoid of colour faculty, or ill taught, 

 might imagine the picture to be really a fine work of colour. 



But if you will come up close to it, you will find that the 

 herdsman has brown sleeves, though he has a scarlet jacket ; 

 and that the shadows of both are painted with precisely the 

 same brown, and in several places with continuous touches of 

 the pencil. It is only in the light that the scarlet is laid on. 



This at once marks the picture as belonging to the lower or 

 chiaroscurist school, even if you had not before recognized it 

 as such by its pretty rendering of sunset effect. 



24. You might at first think it a painting which showed 

 greater skill than that of the school of Giotto. But the skill 

 is not the primary question. The power of imagination is the 

 first thing to be asked about. This Italian work imagines, 

 and requires you to imagine also, a St. Elizabeth and St. Mary, 

 to the best of your power. But this Dutch one only wishes 

 you to imagine an effect of sunlight on cowskin, which is a far 

 lower strain of the imaginative faculty. 



Also, as you may see the effect of sunlight on cowskin, in 

 reality, any summer afternoon, but cannot so frequently see a 

 St. Elizabeth, it is a far less useful strain of the imaginative 

 faculty. 



And, generally speaking, the Dutch chiaroscurists are in- 

 deed persons without imagination at all, who, not being able 

 to get any pleasure out of their thoughts, try to get it out of 

 their sensations ; note, however, also their technical connec- 

 tion with the Greek school of shade, (see my sixth inaugural 

 lecture, p. 158,) in which colour was refused, not for the sake 

 of deception, but of solemnity. 



25. With these final motives you are not now concerned ; 

 your present business is the quite easy one of knowing, and 

 noticing, the universal distinction between the methods of 

 treatment in which the aim is light, and in which it is colour ; 

 and so to keep yourselves guarded from the danger of being 

 misled by the, often very ingenious, talk of persons who have 



