bed without having tasted food
since the morning, not because I had no means of paying at a
hostel--although _that_ also has befallen me at times--but because,
after having my soul filled with the glorious beauty of ancient art, I
could not endure to mingle in the low, sordid scenes of a cheap
eating-house. Indeed, it was scarcely a sacrifice to do so, for my
heart was too full to allow me to feel hunger.'

Poussin studied nature with a minuteness that often exposed him to
raillery. Whenever he made a country excursion, he brought back a bag
filled with pebbles and mosses, whose various tints and forms he
afterwards studied with the most scrupulous care. Vigneul de Marville
asked him one day how he had reached so high a rank among the great
painters. 'I tried to neglect nothing,' replied Poussin.

True, indeed, he had neglected nothing. He gave his days and nights to
the acquirement of various sciences. He understood anatomy better than
any surgeon of his time; he knew history like a Benedictine, and the
antiquities of Rome as a botanist does his favourite flora. But
architecture was the art which he esteemed most essential to a
painter; and accordingly his landscapes abound in exquisite
delineations of buildings.

His veneration for the works of his predecessors was very great. We
find him, in a letter addressed to M. de Chantilon, requesting that a
painting which he sent might not be placed in the same room with one
of Raphael's--'lest the contrast might ruin mine, and cause whatever
little beauty it has to vanish.'

He was an ardent admirer of Domenichino, and copied many of his works.
It happened one day, that as he was in a chapel busily employed in
copying a painting by that master, he saw a feeble old man tottering
slowly towards him, leaning on a crutch. The visitor, without
ceremony, seated himself on the painter's stool, and began
deliberately to examine his work. Poussin greatly disliked inquisitive
critics, and now feeling annoyed, he began to put up his pallet, and
to prepare for leaving.

'You don't like visitors, young man?' said the old man smiling.
'Neither did I. But when I was your age, and, like you, copying the
works of the old masters, if one of them had come to look over my
shoulder, and see how I succeeded in reproducing the form which he had
created, I would not for that have put away my pallet, but I would
gladly have sought his counsel.' And while he spoke, the handle of his
crutch was