her to Duerer; it is better, for
amateurs, to err on the side of precision than on that of vagueness:
and though, as I have just said, you cannot copy a Duerer, yet try every
now and then a quarter of an inch square or so, and see how much nearer
you can come; you cannot possibly try to draw the leafy crown of the
"Melancholia" too often.

91. If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Duerer, you may still learn
much by carefully studying any of George Cruikshank's etchings, or
Leech's wood-cuts in Punch, on the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and
Richter's[20] on the severe side. But in so doing you will need to
notice the following points:

92. When either the material (as the copper or wood) or the time of an
artist does not permit him to make a perfect drawing,--that is to say,
one in which no lines shall be prominently visible,--and he is reduced
to show the black lines, either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is
better to make these lines help, as far as may be, the expression of
texture and form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or grass
or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech with
zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and you will see that
Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly express the direction and rounding
of surfaces by the direction of the lines which shade them. All these
various means of expression will be useful to you, as far as you can
learn them, provided you remember that they are merely a kind of
shorthand; telling certain facts not in quite the right way, but in the
only possible way under the conditions: and provided in any after use of
such means, you never try to show your own dexterity; but only to get as
much record of the object as you can in a given time; and that you
continually make efforts to go beyond such shorthand, and draw portions
of the objects rightly.

93. And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating that
of surface, observe these few points:

[Illustration: FIG. 10.]

If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as they
_can_ indicate anything by their direction, they should explain rather
than oppose the general character of the object. Thus, in the piece of
wood-cut from Titian, Fig. 10, the lines are serviceable by expressing,
not only the shade of the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the
flow of its grain. And Albert Duerer, whose work was chiefly engraving,
sets himself always