copyist
of himself the most so, for he has the worst original.

Sec. 23. What should be their general aim.

Let then every picture be painted with earnest intention of impressing
on the spectator some elevated emotion, and exhibiting to him some one
particular, but exalted, beauty. Let a real subject be carefully
selected, in itself suggestive of, and replete with, this feeling and
beauty; let an effect of light and color be taken which may harmonize
with both; and a sky, not invented, but recollected, (in fact, all
so-called invention is in landscape nothing more than appropriate
recollection--good in proportion as it is distinct.) Then let the
details of the foreground be separately studied, especially those plants
which appear peculiar to the place: if any one, however unimportant,
occurs there, which occurs not elsewhere, it should occupy a prominent
position; for the other details, the highest examples of the ideal
forms[80] or characters which he requires are to be selected by the
artist from his former studies, or fresh studies made expressly for the
purpose, leaving as little as possible--nothing, in fact, beyond their
connection and arrangement--to mere imagination. Finally, when his
picture is thus perfectly realized in all its parts, let him dash as
much of it out as he likes; throw, if he will, mist around
it--darkness--or dazzling and confused light--whatever, in fact,
impetuous feeling or vigorous imagination may dictate or desire; the
forms, once so laboriously realized, will come out whenever they _do_
occur with a startling and impressive truth, which the uncertainty in
which they are veiled will enhance rather than diminish; and the
imagination, strengthened by discipline and fed with truth, will achieve
the utmost of creation that is possible to finite mind.

The artist who thus works will soon find that he cannot repeat himself
if he would; that new fields of exertion, new subjects of contemplation
open to him in nature day by day, and that, while others lament the
weakness of their invention, _he_ has nothing to lament but the
shortness of life.

Sec. 24. Duty of the press with respect to the works of Turner.

And now but one word more, respecting the great artist whose works have
formed the chief subject of this treatise. All the _greatest_ qualities
of those works--all that is mental in them, has not yet been so much as
touched upon. None but their lightest and least essential excellence