on is to determine who ought to be proposed as
models of excellence, and who ought to be considered as the properest
guides.

To a young man just arrived in Italy, many of the present painters of
that country are ready enough to obtrude their precepts, and to offer
their own performances as examples of that perfection which they affect
to recommend. The modern, however, who recommends _himself_ as a
standard, may justly be suspected as ignorant of the true end, and
unacquainted with the proper object of the art which he professes. To
follow such a guide will not only retard the student, but mislead him.

On whom, then, can he rely, or who shall show him the path that leads to
excellence? The answer is obvious: Those great masters who have
travelled the same road with success are the most likely to conduct
others. The works of those who have stood the test of ages have a claim
to that respect and veneration to which no modern can pretend. The
duration and stability of their fame is sufficient to evince that it has
not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but
bound to the human heart by every tie of sympathetic approbation.

There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great men, but
how they may be studied to advantage is an inquiry of great importance.

Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the real
dignity of the art, and who rate the works of an artist in proportion as
they excel, or are defective in the mechanical parts, look on theory as
something that may enable them to talk but not to paint better, and
confining themselves entirely to mechanical practice, very assiduously
toil on in the drudgery of copying, and think they make a rapid progress
while they faithfully exhibit the minutest part of a favourite picture.
This appears to me a very tedious, and I think a very erroneous, method
of proceeding. Of every large composition, even of those which are most
admired, a great part may be truly said to be common-place. This, though
it takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improvement. I
consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the student
satisfies himself with the appearance of doing something; he falls into
the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting, and of labouring
without any determinate object; as it requires no effort of the mind, he
sleeps over his work; and those powers of invention and composition wh