ractise this
kind of borrowing without reserve. But an artist should not be contented
with this only; he should enter into a competition with his original, and
endeavour to improve what he is appropriating to his own work. Such
imitation is so far from having anything in it of the servility of
plagiarism, that it is a perpetual exercise of the mind, a continual
invention.

Borrowing or stealing with such art and caution will have a right to the
same lenity as was used by the Lacedemonians; who did not punish theft,
but the want of artifice to conceal it.

In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let me add,
that very finished artists in the inferior branches of the art will
contribute to furnish the mind and give hints of which a skilful painter,
who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no danger of being infected
by the contact of vicious models, will know how to avail himself. He
will pick up from dunghills what by a nice chemistry, passing through his
own mind, shall be converted into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of
Gothic essays, he will find original, rational, and even sublime
inventions.

In the luxuriant style of Paul Veronese, in the capricious compositions
of Tintoret, he will find something that will assist his invention, and
give points, from which his own imagination shall rise and take flight,
when the subject which he treats will, with propriety, admit of splendid
effects.

In every school, whether Venetian, French, or Dutch, he will find either
ingenious compositions, extraordinary effects, some peculiar expressions,
or some mechanical excellence, well worthy his attention and, in some
measure, of his imitation; even in the lower class of the French
painters, great beauties are often found united with great defects.

Though Coypel wanted a simplicity of taste, and mistook a presumptuous
and assuming air for what is grand and majestic; yet he frequently has
good sense and judgment in his manner of telling his stories, great skill
in his compositions, and is not without a considerable power of
expressing the passions, The modern affectation of grace in his works, as
well as in those of Bouche and Watteau, may be said to be separated by a
very thin partition from the more simple and pure grace of Correggio and
Parmigiano.

Amongst the Dutch painters, the correct, firm, and determined pencil,
which was employed by Bamboccio and Jan Miel on vulgar and mean subjects,
mi