It is for the intense energy of his line, combined with its unique assurance, that Dürer is most remarkable. The same amount of detail, the same correctness in the articulation and relation between stem and leaf, arm and hand, or what not, might be attained by an insipid workmanship with lifeless lines, in patient drudgery. It is this fact that those who praise art merely as an imitation constantly forget. There is often as much invention in the way details are expressed by the strokes of pen or brush, as there could be in the grouping of a crowd; the deftness, the economy of the touches, counts for more in the inspiriting effect than the truth of the imitation. A photograph from nature never conveys this, the chief and most fundamental merit of art. Reynolds says: Rembrandt, in older to take advantage of an accident, appears often to have used the pallet-knife to lay his colours on the canvas instead of the pencil. Whether it is the knife or any other instrument, _it suffices, if it is something that does not follow exactly the will. Accident, in the hands of_ an artist _who knows horn to take the advantage of its hints, will often produce bold and capricious beauties of handling_, and facility such as he would not have thought of or ventured with his pencil, under the regular restraint of his hand.[76] In such a sketch as the _Memento Mei_, 1505, (_Death_ riding on horseback,) all those who have sense for such things will perceive how the rough paper, combined with the broken charcoal line, lends itself to qualities of a precisely similar nature to those described by Reynolds as obtained by Rembrandt's use of the pallet-knife. Yet, just as, in the use of charcoal, the "something that does not follow exactly the will" is infinitely more subtle than in the use of the palette-knife to represent rocks or stumps of trees, so in the pen or silver-point line this element, though reduced and refined till it is hardly perceptible, still exists, and Dürer takes "the advantage of its hints." And not only does he do' this, but he foresees their occurrence, and relies on them to render such things as crumpled skin, as in the sketches for Adam's hand holding the apple. (Lipp. 234). The operation is so rapid, so instantaneous, that it must be called an instinct, or at least a habit become second nature, while in the instance chosen by Reynolds, it is obvious and can be imagined step by step; but in every case it is this capacity to take advantage of the accident, and foresee and calculate upon its probable occurrences, that makes the handling of any material inventive, bold, and inimitable. It is in these qualities that an artist is the scholar of the materials he employs, and goes to school to the capacities of his own hand, being taught both by their failure to obey his will here, and by their facility in rendering his subtlest intentions there. And when he has mastered all they have to teach him,