the scene as he must have known it in the kitchen, with
all its variety of movement and composition (as an early Greek vase
painter conceived the interior of a vase factory), but all he does and
is required to do is to give the sufficient number of figures and ducks.
The more uniform the figures the greater will be the effect of number.
Drawing has been employed here to tell a story, and it succeeds in so
far as it tells the spectator plainly what could be told, perhaps less
conveniently, in words. It matters not whether the figures and objects
be feelingly rendered and harmoniously composed. So, to-day, a child, or
any one who has a simple trick of symbolizing figures and objects in
nature, can describe any event or moral by this process, provided the
plot be not too elaborate to be expressed by a scene, or series of
scenes, enacted by dumb symbolic figures. It is plain that the amusing
pictures in _Punch_ or _Fliegende Blatter_ would be none the more
amusing if they were done by the hand of Michelangelo, nor would the
mystic designs of Blake be more full of meaning if drawn by Rembrandt,
for in neither case do these works depend upon any subtle rendering of
the forms of nature for their success, but upon the dramatic or
intellectual imagination of the man who conceived them. When the witty
or ethical man is at the same time a master draughtsman his work has two
values, the "literary" content and the beauty of his drawing of natural
objects. But it must be borne in mind that these values are
fundamentally distinct; so much so that the spectator who has no
appreciation of the forms of nature enjoys the story told and remains
blind to the qualities of draughtsmanship, whilst the lover of nature's
forms may or may not trouble to unravel the literary plot but finds
perfect satisfaction in the drawing. By far the greater part of
illustration, and of artistic production generally, must be classed as
symbolic art. Magazine stories to-day are sometimes illustrated even by
photography, for the hand of the artist is not required. Symbolic art
describes indirectly and in a necessarily limited scope what literature
can do directly and with unlimited powers. The only content of symbolic
drawing is its literary meaning; as drawing it may be quite worthless.

Pure drawing, however, whether it represent a dramatic event or a
knee-joint, has a content that cannot be expressed by words, and is not
necessarily directed towards literary ex