good or evil by his researches into the proportions of the human body. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 80: See page 258.] [Footnote 81: See page 260.] [Footnote 82: See Frontispiece.] [Footnote 83: See page 19.] CHAPTER V DÜRER'S WOODCUTS It is now generally accepted that Dürer did not himself engrave on wood. In his earliest blocks he shows a greater respect for the limitations of this means of expression than later on. The earliest wood blocks, though no doubt they aimed at being facsimiles, were not such in fact; but the engraver took certain liberties for his own convenience, and probably did not attempt to render what Dürer calls "the hand" of the designer. "The hand" was equivalent to what modern artists call "the touch," and meant the peculiar character recognisable in the vast majority of the strokes or marks which each artist uses in drawing or painting. Dürer affected extremely curved and rapid strokes, Mantegna the deliberate straight line, Rembrandt the straight stroke used so as to seem a continual improvisation; though indeed he varies the character of his touch more continually and more vastly than any other master, yet in his drawings and etchings the majority of the strokes are straight. Already in the woodcuts provided by Michael Wolgemut, Dürer's master, to illustrate books, there is a general attempt to render cross hatching: and the eyes and hair, though still those of an engraver, are frequently modified to some extent in deference to the character given by the draughtsman. Still, no one with practical experience would consider these woodcuts as adequate facsimiles: which makes the question of their attribution to Wolgemut, or his partner and step-son, Pleydenwurff, of still less interest and importance than it is on all other grounds. So conscious an exception as the soul of the accurate Albert Dürer was, could not be expected to endure a partner in his creations, especially one whose character was revealed chiefly by the clumsy compromises convenient to lack of skill. Doubtless the demand for "his hand" was a new factor in the education of the engraver, as constant and as imperturbable as the action of a copious stream, which, having its source in lonely heights, wears a channel through the hardest rock, the most sullen soils. It may have been the pitiless tyranny of the master's will for perfection which drove Hieronymus Andreae, "the most famous of Dürer's wood engravers," into religious and even civil rebellion, joining hands with levelling fanatics and taking active part in the Peasant War. Dürer probably would have commanded too much reverence and affection for these rebellions to be directed against him; but an insupportably heavy yoke is not rendered lighter because it is imposed by a loved hand,--though every other burden and restraint may in such a case be shaken off and resented before that which is the real cause of oppression. Dürer's wood cutters had no doubt to resign any