st of the treasures of art, should be contented with their own style.
They proceed in their common-place inventions, and never think it worth
while to visit the works of those great artists with which they are
surrounded.

I remember several years ago to have conversed at Rome with an artist of
great fame throughout Europe; he was not without a considerable degree of
abilities, but those abilities were by no means equal to his own opinion
of them. From the reputation he had acquired he too fondly concluded
that he stood in the same rank, when compared to his predecessors, as he
held with regard to his miserable contemporary rivals.

In conversation about some particulars of the works of Raffaelle, he
seemed to have, or to affect to have, a very obscure memory of them. He
told me that he had not set his foot in the Vatican for fifteen years
together; that indeed he had been in treaty to copy a capital picture of
Raffaelle, but that the business had gone off; however, if the agreement
had held, his copy would have greatly exceeded the original. The merit
of this artist, however great we may suppose it, I am sure would have
been far greater, and his presumption would have been far less if he had
visited the Vatican, as in reason he ought to have done, once at least
every month of his life.

I address myself, gentlemen, to you who have made some progress in the
art, and are to be for the future under the guidance of your own judgment
and discretion.

I consider you as arrived to that period when you have a right to think
for yourselves, and to presume that every man is fallible; to study the
masters with a suspicion that great men are not always exempt from great
faults; to criticise, compare, and rank their works in your own
estimation, as they approach to or recede from that standard of
perfection which you have formed in your own mind, but which those
masters themselves, it must be remembered, have taught you to make, and
which you will cease to make with correctness when you cease to study
them. It is their excellences which have taught you their defects.

I would wish you to forget where you are, and who it is that speaks to
you. I only direct you to higher models and better advisers. We can
teach you here but very little; you are henceforth to be your own
teachers. Do this justice, however, to the English Academy, to bear in
mind, that in this place you contracted no narrow habits, no false ideas,
nothing