THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING. 291 



are to be used only in case of necessity ; and thick lines, on 

 metal, only in case of necessity. 



80. Though, however, thin dark lines cannot easily be pro- 

 duced in wood, thin light ones may be struck in an instant. 

 Nevertheless, even thin light ones must not be used, except 

 with extreme caution. For observe, they are equally useless 

 as outline, and for expression of mass. You know how far 

 from exemplary or delightful your boy's first quite voluntary 

 exercises in white line drawing on your slate were? You 

 could, indeed, draw a goblin satisfactorily in such method ; 

 a round O, with arms arid legs to it, and a scratch under two 

 dots in the middle, would answer the purpose ; but if you 

 wanted to draw a pretty face, you took pencil or pen, and 

 paper not your slate. Now, that instinctive feeling that a 

 white outline is w T rong, is deeply founded. For Nature her- 

 self draws with diffused light, and concentrated dark ; never, 

 except in storm or twilight, with diffused dark, and con- 

 centrated light ; and the thing we all like best to see drawn 

 the human face cannot be drawn with white touches, but by 

 extreme labour. For the pupil and iris of the eye, the eye- 

 brow, the nostril, and the lip are all set in dark on pale 

 ground. You can't draw a white eyebrow, a white pupil of 

 the eye, a white nostril, and a white mouth, on a dark ground. 

 Try it, and see what a spectre you get. But the same number 

 of dark touches, skilfully applied, will give the idea of a beau- 

 tiful face. And what is true of the subtlest subject you have 

 to represent, is equally true of inferior ones. Nothing lovely 

 can be quickly represented by white touches. You must hew 

 out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labour ; 

 and that both cunning and dextrous. The Florentine mas- 

 ters, and Durer, often practise the achievement, and there are 

 many drawings by the Lippis, Mantegna, and other leading 

 Italian draughtsmen, completed to great perfection with the 

 white line ; but only for the sake of severest study, nor is 

 their work imitable by inferior men. And such studies, how- 

 ever accomplished, always mark a disposition to regard 

 chiaroscuro too much, and local colour too little. 



We conclude, then, that we must never trust, in wood, to 



