es
it, "a reluctant understanding," and a "servile hand." He supposes,
however, the student to be somewhat advanced. The boy, like other
school-boys, must be under restraint, and learn the "Grammar and
Rudiments" laboriously. It is not such who travel for knowledge. The
student, he thinks, may be pretty much left to himself; if he undertake
things above his strength, it is better he should run the risk of
discouragement thereby, than acquire "a slow proficiency" by "too easy
tasks." He has little confidence in the efficacy of method, "in
acquiring excellence in any art whatever." Methodical studies, with all
their apparatus, enquiry, and mechanical labour, tend too often but "to
evade and shuffle off real labour--the real labour of thinking." He has
ever avoided giving particular directions. He has found students who
have imagined they could make "prodigious progress under some particular
eminent master." Such would lean on any but themselves. "After the
Rudiments are past, very little of our art can be taught by others." A
student ought to have a just and manly confidence in himself, "or rather
in the persevering industry which he is resolved to possess." Raffaelle
had done nothing, and was quite young, when fixed upon to adorn the
Vatican with his works; he had even to direct the best artists of his
age. He had a meek and gentle disposition, but it was not inconsistent
with that manly confidence that insured him success--a confidence in
himself arising from a consciousness of power, and a determination to
exert it. The result is "in perpetuum."--There are, however, artists who
have too much self-confidence, that is ill-founded confidence, founded
rather upon a certain dexterity than upon a habit of thought; they are
like the improvisatori in poetry; and most commonly, as Metastasio
acknowledged of himself, had much to unlearn, to acquire a habit of
thinking with selection. To be able to draw and to design with rapidity,
is, indeed, to be master of the grammar of art; but in the completion,
and in the final settlement of the design, the portfolio must again and
again have been turned over, and the nicest judgment exercised. This
judgment is the result of deep study and intenseness of thought--thought
not only upon the artist's own inventions, but those of others. Luca
Giordano and La Fage are brought as examples of great dexterity and
readiness of invention--but of little selection; for they borrowed very
little from ot