best
employment is in giving determination to the forms in drawings washed
with neutral tint; and that, in this use of it, Holbein is quite without
a rival. I have therefore placed many examples of his work among your
copies. It is employed for rapid study by Raphael and other masters of
delineation, who, in such cases, give with it also partial indications
of shadow; but it is not a proper instrument for shading, when drawings
are intended to be deliberate and complete, nor do the great masters so
employ it. Its virtue is the power of producing a perfectly delicate,
equal, and decisive line with great rapidity; and the temptation allied
with that virtue is the licentious haste, and chance-swept, instead of
strictly-commanded, curvature. In the hands of very great painters it
obtains, like the etching needle, qualities of exquisite charm in this
free use; but all attempts at imitation of these confused and suggestive
sketches must be absolutely denied to yourselves while students. You may
fancy you have produced something like them with little trouble; but, be
assured, it is in reality as unlike them as nonsense is unlike sense;
and that, if you persist in such work, you will not only prevent your
own executive progress, but you will never understand in all your lives
what good painting means. Whenever you take a pen in your hand, if you
cannot count every line you lay with it, and say why you make it so long
and no longer, and why you drew it in that direction and no other, your
work is bad. The only man who can put his pen to full speed, and yet
retain command over every separate line of it, is Duerer. He has done
this in the illustrations of a missal preserved at Munich, which have
been fairly facsimiled; and of these I have placed several in your
copying series, with some of Turner's landscape etchings, and other
examples of deliberate pen work, such as will advantage you in early
study. The proper use of them you will find explained in the catalogue.

145. And, now, but one word more to-day. Do not impute to me the
impertinence of setting before you what is new in this system of
practice as being certainly the best method. No English artists are yet
agreed entirely on early methods; and even Reynolds expresses with some
hesitation his conviction of the expediency of learning to draw with the
brush. But this method that I show you rests in all essential points on
his authority, on Lionardo's, or on the evident as w