, or '_free_'
work of any sort. Most deliberate laying down of solid lines and dots,
of which you cannot change one. The real difficulty of wood engraving is
to cut every one of these black lines or spaces of the exactly right
shape, and not at all to cross-hatch them cleanly.

107. Next, examine the technical treatment of the pig, above. I have
purposely chosen this as an example of a white object on dark ground,
and the frog as a dark object on light ground, to explain to you what I
mean by saying that fine engraving regards local color, but not light
and shade. You see both frog and pig are absolutely without light and
shade. The frog, indeed, casts a shadow; but his hind leg is as white as
his 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 possible; not for the
sake of the shade at all, but of the skin and bone.

109. That, then, being the law of refused chiaroscuro, observe 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 between 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 another.

Look back to Figure 4, page 54, and you will know, henceforward, the
difference between good and bad wood-cutting.

110. We have also, in the lower woodcut, a notab