human
Talent is misapplied when it is spent on endeavours to rival steel-line engraving or etching, in following brush-marks, in pretending to imitate crayon-work, charcoal, or lithography, and in striving who shall scratch the greatest number of lines on a given space without thought of whether such multiplicity of lines adds anything to the expression of the picture or the beauty of the engraving. How much of talent is here thrown away! How much of force that should have helped towards growth is wasted in this slave's play for a prize not worth having--the fame of having well done the lowest thing in the engraver's art, and having for that neglected the study of the highest! For it is the lowest and the last thing about which an artist should concern himself, this excessive fineness and minuteness of work.... In engraving, as in other branches of art, _the first thing is drawing, the second drawing, the third drawing_.