The engraved line is therefore to be conclusive; not experimental. "I have determined this," says the engraver. Much excellent pen drawing is excellent in being tentative,—in being experimental. Indeterminate, not through want of meaning, but through fullness of it—halting wisely between two opinions—feeling cautiously after clearer opinions. But your engraver has made up his opinion. This is so, and must forever be so, he tells you. A very proper thing for a thoughtful man to say; a very improper and impertinent thing for a foolish one to say. Foolish engraving is consummately foolish work. Look,—all the world,—look for evermore, says the foolish engraver; see what a fool I have been! How many lines I have laid for nothing! How many lines upon lines, with no precept, much less superprecept!
38. Here, then, are two definite ethical characters in all engraved work. It is Athletic; and it is Resolute. Add one more; that it is Obedient;—in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, of the higher arts; servile, both in the mechanism and labor of it, and in its function of interpreting the schools of painting as superior to itself.
And this relation to the higher arts we will study at the source of chief power in all the normal skill of Christendom, Florence; and chiefly, as I said, in the work of one Florentine master, Sandro Botticelli.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] "Inaugural Series," "Aratra Pentelici," and "Eagle's Nest."
[B] My inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniform in size with this edition. 1890).
[C] Compare Inaugural Lectures, § 144.