f painting is come to its
perfection, and which when they do prevail are certain to prevail to the
utter destruction of the higher and more valuable parts of this literate
and liberal profession.

These two have been my principal purposes; they are still as much my
concern as ever; and if I repeat my own ideas on the subject, you who
know how fast mistake and prejudice, when neglected, gain ground upon
truth and reason, will easily excuse me. I only attempt to set the same
thing in the greatest variety of lights.

The subject of this discourse will be imitation, as far as a painter is
concerned in it. By imitation I do not mean imitation in its largest
sense, but simply the following of other masters, and the advantage to be
drawn from the study of their works.

Those who have undertaken to write on our art, and have represented it as
a kind of inspiration, as a gift bestowed upon peculiar favourites at
their birth, seem to ensure a much more favourable disposition from their
readers, and have a much more captivating and liberal air, than he who
goes about to examine, coldly, whether there are any means by which this
art may be acquired; how our mind may be strengthened and expanded, and
what guides will show the way to eminence.

It is very natural for those who are unacquainted with the cause of
anything extraordinary to be astonished at the effect, and to consider it
as a kind of magic. They, who have never observed the gradation by which
art is acquired, who see only what is the full result of long labour and
application of an infinite number, and infinite variety of acts, are apt
to conclude from their entire inability to do the same at once, that it
is not only inaccessible to themselves, but can be done by those only who
have some gift of the nature of inspiration bestowed upon them.

The travellers into the East tell us that when the ignorant inhabitants
of these countries are asked concerning the ruins of stately edifices yet
remaining amongst them, the melancholy monuments of their former grandeur
and long-lost science, they always answer that they were built by
magicians. The untaught mind finds a vast gulf between its own powers
and these works of complicated art which it is utterly unable to fathom.
And it supposes that such a void can be passed only by supernatural
powers.

And, as for artists themselves, it is by no means their interest to
undeceive such judges, however conscious they may be of