304 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



throat. In the pig you don't even know which way the light 

 falls. But you know at once that the pig is white, and the 

 frog brown or green. 



108. There are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro implied 

 in the treatment of the pig. It is assumed that his curly tail 

 would be light against the background dark against his own 

 rump. This little piece of heraldic quartering is absolutely 

 necessary to solidify him. He would have been a white ghost 

 of a pig, flat on the background, but for that alternative tail, 

 and the bits of dark behind the ears. Secondly : Where the 

 shade is necessary to suggest the position of his ribs, it is 

 given with graphic and chosen points of dark, as few as pos- 

 sible ; not for the sake of the shade at all, but of the skin and 

 bone. 



109. That, then, being the law of refused chiaroscuro, ob- 

 serve further the method of outline. We said that we were 

 to have thick lines in wood, if possible. Look what thickness 

 of black outline Bewick has left under our pig's chin, and 

 above his nose. 



But that is not a line at all, you think ? 



No ; a modern engraver would have made it one, and 

 prided himself on getting it fine. Bewick leaves it actually 

 thicker than the snout, but puts all his ingenuity of touch to 

 vary the forms, and break the extremities of his white cuts, so 

 that the eye may be refreshed and relieved by new forms at 

 every turn. The group of white touches filling the space be- 

 tween snout and ears might be a wreath of fine-weather 

 clouds, so studiously are they grouped and broken. 



And nowhere, you see, does a single black line cross an- 

 other. 



Look back to Figure 4, page 55, and you will know, hence- 

 forward, the difference between good and bad woodcutting. 



110. We have also, in the lower woodcut, a notable instance 

 of Bewick's power of abstraction. You will observe that one 

 of the chief characters of this frog, which makes him humor- 

 ous next to his vain endeavour to get some firmness into his 

 forefeet is his obstinately angular hump-back. And you 

 must feel, when you see it so marked, how important a gen- 



