Elegant calligraphy has a preface by Shen Sixiao. Mu's father collects calligraphy and painting. Yin Mu inherited his family studies, learned from others, learned a lot, and was a calligraphy agent, so he wrote this book from his own experience. There are seventeen articles in this book. One is "book unification", which advocates that the rulers' right army is orthodox; Second, "ancient and modern" is the disadvantage of calligraphers, and advocates "learning from the ancient without sticking to the ancient law"; Third, "Distinguishing Style", on the influence of temperament on calligraphy and painting, puts forward that "teachers attach importance to their abilities, while self-learners restrain themselves"; Four, "the delicate shape, the book that is fat and thin, is called" thin and full, then clear and wonderful ",while" fat and beautiful, then rich and colorful "; Fifth, "Character", on the merits and demerits of books, is divided into five categories: Sect, everyone, famous scholars, and parallel flow; Sixth, "Learning while Learning", on the relationship between qualifications and calligraphy, points out that "learning is the first and learning is indispensable"; Seven, the "rules", the book when the right army is the law, put forward "the book does not enter Jin, solid on the outline; The law does not belong to the king, which is one of the products "; Eight, "constant change" theory "although the font changes, the physique cannot be surpassed"; Nine, "Zhengqi", on the relationship between Zhengqi and Shuqi, and on the three changes of authentic works and cursive style in Tang Dynasty; Ten, "neutralization", on the standard of neutralization in books, and describe the length of calligraphy in Tang Dynasty; Eleven, "young and old", on calligraphy young and old, should be confused; 12. Deification of the book Deification, and points out that deification cannot go beyond the rules; Thirteen, "heart phase", drama; The argument that "people are regular and books are positive"; Fourteen, "trade-offs", advocating that learning books is long and short, respecting the right army and rejecting Su Mi; Fifteen, "Work Order", that learning books must be accumulated for forty years, followed by three commandments in books; Sixteen, "use", advocating that pens, ink, paper and inkstones must be excellent; Seventeen, "Knowledge", on appreciation, advocates that "books are like prose, books are like people" and "different personalities have different knowledge".
The main idea of this book is to advocate Jin people and exclude books such as Su and Mi. Although the theory is a bit high, his life's art and research are extremely incisive. The style of writing is generally similar to Sun's book spectrum, but there are no disadvantages such as plagiarism, similarity and muddling along, and the breath is quite pure.