from his; but if you
merely scrawl because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will
not only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman, and every
judge whose opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and
despise you accordingly.

Again, observe respecting the use of outline:

All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, that an
artist of any power can always do more, and tell more, by quitting his
outlines occasionally, and scratching in a few lines for shade, than he
can by restricting himself to outline only. Hence the fact of his so
restricting himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad
draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power economically. This
hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain in the state
in which you see them; not on those which were meant to be proceeded
with, or for some mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure
outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled up
afterwards with colour, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or
tracings; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the drawing
wholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves
it, an artist restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and
his work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good artist
habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case make his
drawing more expressive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade
than by contours; so that all good work whatever is more or less touched
with shade, and more or less interrupted as outline.

[Illustration: FIG. 12.]

Hence, the published works of Retsch, and all the English imitations of
them, and all outline engravings from pictures, are bad work, and only
serve to corrupt the public taste, and of such outlines, the worst are
those which are darkened in some part of their course by way of
expressing the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such others;
because an outline can only be true so long as it accurately represents
the form of the given object with _one_ of its edges. Thus, the outline
_a_ and the outline _b_, Fig. 12., are both _true_ outlines of a ball;
because, however thick the line may be, whether we take the interior or
exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a true circle. But _c_
is a false outline of a ball, because either the inner or outer edge of
the black line must b