ook at, though
he had never noticed the painter's name. When the public are so eager
to be amused, and care so little who it is that amuses them, it is not
amiss to remind them of it now and then; or even to have a starling
taught to repeat the name, to which they owe such misprised obligations,
in their drowsy ears. On any other principle I cannot conceive how
painters (not without genius or industry) can fling themselves at
the head of the public in the manner they do, having lives written of
themselves, busts made of themselves, prints stuck in the shop-windows
of themselves, and their names placed in 'the first row of the
rubric,' with those of Rubens, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, swearing by
themselves or their proxies that these glorified spirits would do well
to leave the abodes of the blest in order to stand in mute wonder and
with uplifted hands before some production of theirs which is yet hardly
dry! Oh! whatever you do, leave that string untouched. It will jar the
rash and unhallowed hand that meddles with it. Profane not the mighty
dead by mixing them up with the uncanonised living. Leave yourself a
reversion in immortality, beyond the noisy clamour of the day. Do not
quite lose your respect for public opinion by making it in all cases a
palpable cheat, the echo of your own lungs that are hoarse with calling
on the world to admire. Do not think to bully posterity, or to cozen
your contemporaries. Be not always anticipating the effect of your
picture on the town--think more about deserving success than commanding
it. In issuing so many promissory notes upon the bank of fame, do not
forget you have to pay in sterling gold. Believe that there is something
in the pursuit of high art, beyond the manufacture of a paragraph or
the collection of receipts at the door of an exhibition. Venerate art as
art. Study the works of others, and inquire into those of nature.
Gaze at beauty. Become great by great efforts, and not by pompous
pretensions. Do not think the world was blind to merit before your time,
nor make the reputation of great geniuses the stalking-horse to your
vanity. You have done enough to insure yourself attention: you have now
only to do something to deserve it, and to make good all that you have
aspired to do.

There is a silent and systematic assumption of superiority which is as
barefaced and unprincipled an imposture as the most impudent puffing.
You may, by a tacit or avowed censure on all other ar