The best of Holbein’s portrait drawings give one the impression of having been seen in one of these flashes and rivet the attention in consequence.  Drawings done under this mental stimulus present subtle differences from drawings done with cold accuracy.  The drawing of the Lady Audley, here reproduced, bears evidence of some of this subtle variation on what are called the facts, in the left eye of the sitter.  It will be noticed that the pupil of this eye is larger than the other.  Now I do not suppose that as a matter of mechanical accuracy this was so, but the impression of the eyes seen as part of a vivid impression of the head is seldom that they are the same size.  Holbein had in the first instance in this very carefully wrought drawing made them so, but when at the last he was vitalising the impression, “pulling it together” as artists say, he has deliberately put a line outside the original one, making this pupil larger.  This is not at all clearly seen in the reproduction, but #is distinctly visible in the original#.  And to my thinking it was done at the dictates of the vivid mental impression he wished his drawing to convey.  Few can fail to be struck in turning over this wonderful series of drawings by the vividness of their portraiture, and the vividness is due to their being severely accurate to the vital impression on the mind of Holbein, not merely to the facts coldly observed.

[Illustration:  Plate LIII.

THE LADY AUDLEY.  HOLBEIN (WINDSOR)

Note the different sizes of pupils in the eyes, and see letterpress on the opposite page.

Copyright photo Braun & Co.]

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Another point of view is that of seeking in the face a symbol of the person within, and selecting those things about a head that express this.  As has already been said, the habitual attitude of mind has in the course of time a marked influence on the form of the face, and in fact of the whole body, so that—­to those who can see—­the man or woman is a visible symbol of themselves.  But this is by no means apparent to all.

The striking example of this class is the splendid series of portraits by the late G.F.  Watts.  Looking at these heads one is made conscious of the people in a fuller, deeper sense than if they were before one in the flesh.  For Watts sought to discover the person in their appearance and to paint a picture that should be a living symbol of them.  He took pains to find out all he could about the mind of his sitters before he painted them, and sought in the appearance the expression of this inner man.  So that whereas with Holbein it was the vivid presentation of the impression as one might see a head that struck one in a crowd, with Watts it is the spirit one is first conscious of.  The thunders of war appear in the powerful head of Lord Lawrence, the music of poetry in the head of Swinburne, and the dry atmosphere of the higher regions of thought in the John Stuart Mill, &c.