st therefore be cautious not to lose sight of the real use of what
has been left us by antiquity, nor to take that for a model of
perfection which is, in many cases, only a guide to it. The picture
which is looked to for an interpretation of nature is invaluable, but
the picture which is taken as a substitute for nature, had better be
burned; and the young artist, while he should shrink with horror from
the iconoclast who would tear from him every landmark and light which
has been bequeathed him by the ancients, and leave him in a liberated
childhood, may be equally certain of being betrayed by those who would
give him the power and the knowledge of past time, and then fetter his
strength from all advance, and bend his eyes backward on a beaten
path--who would thrust canvas between him and the sky, and tradition
between him and God.

And such conventional teaching is the more to be dreaded, because all
that is highest in art, all that is creative and imaginative, is formed
and created by every great master for himself, and cannot be repeated or
imitated by others. We judge of the excellence of a rising writer, not
so much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done before, as
by their difference from it; and while we advise him, in his first
trials of strength, to set certain models before him with respect to
inferior points,--one for versification, another for arrangement,
another for treatment,--we yet admit not his greatness until he has
broken away from all his models, and struck forth versification,
arrangement, and treatment of his own.

Three points, therefore, I would especially insist upon as necessary to
be kept in mind in all criticism of modern art. First, that there are
few, very few of even the best productions of antiquity, which are not
visibly and palpably imperfect in some kind or way, and conceivably
improvable by farther study; that every nation, perhaps every generation,
has in all probability some peculiar gift, some particular character of
mind, enabling it to do something different from, or something in some
sort better than what has been before done; and that therefore, unless
art be a trick, or a manufacture, of which the secrets are lost, the
greatest minds of existing nations, if exerted with the same industry,
passion, and honest aim as those of past time, have a chance in their
particular walk of doing something as great, or, taking the advantage of
former example into account, e