So the
whole inscription is thrown into a sweeping curve of gradually
diminishing size, continuing from the lion's paws, round the neck, up to
the forehead, and answering a decorative purpose as completely as the
curls of the mane opposite. Of these, again, you cannot change or
displace one without mischief; they are almost as even in reticulation as
a piece of basket-work; but each has a different form and a due relation
to the rest, and if you set to work to draw that mane rightly, you will
find that, whatever time you give to it, you can't get the tresses quite
into their places, and that every tress out of its place does an injury.
If you want to test your powers of accurate drawing, you may make that
lion's mane your pons asinorum, I have never yet met with a student who
didn't make an ass in a lion's skin of himself when he tried it.
171. Granted, however, that these tresses may be finely placed, still
they are not like a lion's mane. So we come back to the question,--if
the face is to be like a man's face, why is not the lion's mane to be
like a lion's mane? Well, because it can't be like a lion's mane without
too much trouble,--and inconvenience after that, and poor success, after
all.
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