only pursued by our best painters. This method is that of
really making it our own, by judicious efforts, without the risk of the
imputation of plagiarism, which I shall endeavour to make appear.

By the contemplation of what is good in others, 'a sense of the higher
excellencies of art will by degrees dawn on the imagination; at every
review that sense will become more and more assured, and the artist will
then find no difficulty in fixing in his own mind the principles by
which the impression is produced; which he will feel and practice,
though they are perhaps too delicate and refined to be conveyed to the
mind by any other means.'

Sir Joshua, speaking of the great examples of Art, says, 'These are the
materials on which Genius is to work, and without which the strongest
intellect may be fruitlessly or deviously employed. By studying these
authentic models, that idea of excellence which is the result of the
accumulated experience of past ages, may be at once acquired; and the
tardy and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us a shorter
and easier way. The student perceives at one glance the principles which
many artists have spent their whole lives in ascertaining; and,
satisfied with their effect, is spared the painful investigation by
which they came to be known and fixed.'

The greatest painters are continually making such memoranda as may be
called copying, either from the works of antiquity, or those of their
cotemporaries.

Beginning with nothing, we _must_ borrow until we can pay the debt.

'The sagacious imitator does not content himself with merely remarking
what distinguishes the different manner or genius of each master; he
enters into the contrivance in the composition, how the masses of lights
are disposed, the means by which the effect is produced, how artfully
some parts are lost in the ground, others boldly relieved, and how all
these are mutually altered and interchanged, according to the reason and
scheme of the work. He admires not the harmony of colouring alone, but
examines by what artifice one colour is a foil to its neighbour; he
looks close into the tints, examines of what colours they are composed,
till he has formed clear and distinct ideas, and has learnt to see in
what harmony and good colouring consists. What is learned in this manner
from the works of others becomes really our own, sinks deep, and is
never forgotten.

'If the excellence of a picture consists in its gen