can reason, and may be enabled to practise.

It is not easy to define in what this great style consists; nor to
describe, by words, the proper means of acquiring it, if the mind of the
student should be at all capable of such an acquisition. Could we teach
taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius. But
though there neither are, nor can be, any precise invariable rules for
the exercise or the acquisition of those great qualities, yet we may as
truly say that they always operate in proportion to our attention in
observing the works of nature, to our skill in selecting, and to our care
in digesting, methodising, and comparing our observations. There are
many beauties in our art, that seem, at first, to lie without the reach
of precept, and yet may easily be reduced to practical principles.
Experience is all in all; but it is not every one who profits by
experience; and most people err, not so much from want of capacity to
find their object, as from not knowing what object to pursue. This great
ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought in the heavens, but upon
the earth. They are about us, and upon every side of us. But the power
of discovering what is deformed in nature, or in other words, what is
particular and uncommon, can be acquired only by experience; and the
whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists, in my opinion, in being
able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and
details of every kind.

All the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, upon close
examination will be found to have their blemishes and defects. The most
beautiful forms have something about them like weakness, minuteness, or
imperfection. But it is not every eye that perceives these blemishes. It
must be an eye long used to the contemplation and comparison of these
forms; and which, by a long habit of observing what any set of objects of
the same kind have in common, that alone can acquire the power of
discerning what each wants in particular. This long laborious comparison
should be the first study of the painter who aims at the greatest style.
By this means, he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects
nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye
being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences,
and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an
abstract idea of their forms more perfect th