of eyes, and torturing of fingers, and general spinning out of one's
soul into fiddle-strings, which constitute the ideal life of a modern
artist.

* Compare above, sec. 101.

Also observe, there is an entire masterhood of its business up to the
required point. A Greek does not reach after other people's strength,
nor outreach his own. He never tries to paint before he can draw; he
never tries to lay on flesh where there are no bones; and he never
expects to find the bones of anything in his inner consciousness. Those
are his first merits--sincere and innocent purpose, strong common-sense
and principle, and all the strength that follows on that strength.

170. But, secondly, Greek art is always exemplary in disposition of
masses, which is a thing that in modern days students rarely look for,
artists not enough, and the public never. But, whatever else Greek work
may fail of, you may always be sure its masses are well placed, and their
placing has been the object of the most subtle care. Look, for instance,
at the inscription in front of this Hercules of the name of the town--
Camarina. You can't read it, even though you may know Greek, without
some pains; for the sculptor knew well enough that it mattered very
little whether you read it or not, for the Camarina Hercules could tell
his own story; but what did above all things matter was, that no K or A
or M should come in a wrong place with respect to the outline of the
head, and divert the eye from it, or spoil any of its lines. So the
whole inscription is thrown into a sweeping curve of gradually
diminishing size, continuing from the lion's paws, round the neck, up to
the forehead, and answering a decorative purpose as completely as the
curls of the mane opposite. Of these, again, you cannot change or
displace one without mischief; they are almost as even in reticulation as
a piece of basket-work; but each has a different form and a due relation
to the rest, and if you set to work to draw that mane rightly, you will
find that, whatever time you give to it, you can't get the tresses quite
into their places, and that every tress out of its place does an injury.
If you want to test your powers of accurate drawing, you may make that
lion's mane your pons asinorum, I have never yet met with a student who
didn't make an ass in a lion's skin of himself when he tried it.

171. Granted, however, that these tresses may be finely placed, still
they are not like