eavour to imitate.
Without the love of fame you can never do anything excellent; but by an
excessive and undistinguishing thirst after it, you will come to have
vulgar views; you will degrade your style; and your taste will be
entirely corrupted. It is certain that the lowest style will be the most
popular, as it falls within the compass of ignorance itself; and the
vulgar will always be pleased with what is natural in the confined and
misunderstood sense of the word.

One would wish that such depravation of taste should be counteracted,
with such manly pride as Euripides expressed to the Athenians, who
criticised his works, "I do not compose," says he, "my works in order to
be corrected by you, but to instruct you." It is true, to have a right
to speak thus, a man must be a Euripides. However, thus much may be
allowed, that when an artist is sure that he is upon firm ground,
supported by the authority and practice of his predecessors of the
greatest reputation, he may then assume the boldness and intrepidity of
genius; at any rate, he must not be tempted out of the right path by any
tide of popularity that always accompanies the lower styles of painting.

I mention this, because our exhibitions, that produce such admirable
effects by nourishing emulation, and calling out genius, have also a
mischievous tendency by seducing the painter to an ambition of pleasing
indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.

A DISCOURSE
Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the
Prizes, December 10, 1774, by the President.

Gentlemen,--When I have taken the liberty of addressing you on the course
and order of your studies, I never proposed to enter into a minute detail
of the art. This I have always left to the several professors, who
pursue the end of our institution with the highest honour to themselves,
and with the greatest advantage to the students.

My purpose in the discourses I have held in the Academy is to lay down
certain general ideas, which seem to me proper for the formation of a
sound taste; principles necessary to guard the pupils against those
errors into which the sanguine temper common at their time of life, has a
tendency to lead them, and which have rendered abortive the hopes of so
many successions of promising young men in all parts of Europe.

I wish, also, to intercept and suppress those prejudices which
particularly prevail when the mechanism o