eral effect, it would
be proper to make slight sketches of the machinery and general
management of the work. Those sketches should be kept always by you for
the regulation of your style. Instead of copying the touches of those
great masters, copy only their conceptions. Instead of treading in their
footsteps, endeavour only to keep the same road. Labour to invent on
their general principles and way of thinking. Possess yourself with
their spirit: and work yourself into a belief that your picture is to be
seen and criticised by them, when completed. Even an attempt of this
kind will rouse your powers.' Again--'But as mere enthusiasm will carry
you but a little way, what I propose is, that you should enter into a
kind of competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a
companion to any picture that you consider as a model; place them
together and compare them carefully, and you will detect the
deficiencies in your own more sensibly than by any other means of
instruction. The true principles of painting will mingle with your
thoughts, which will be certain and definitive, and sink deep into the
mind. This method of comparing your own efforts with those of some great
master, is indeed a severe and mortifying task; to go voluntarily to a
tribunal where he knows his vanity must be humbled, and all
self-approbation must vanish, requires not only great resolution, but
great humility! but it is attended with this alleviating circumstance,
which abundantly compensates for the mortification of present
disappointment, every discovery he makes, every acquisition to knowledge
he attains, seems to proceed from his _own_ sagacity, and thus he
acquires confidence in himself, sufficient to keep up the resolution of
perseverance. And we prefer those instructions which we have given to
ourselves, from our affection to the instructor.'

The perception of errors shortens the road to truth. 'Cease to follow
any master when he ceases to excel.' Avoid that narrowness and poverty
of conception which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master! We
will suppose 'those perfections which lie scattered among various
masters, are now united in one general idea, which is henceforth to
regulate his taste and enlarge his imagination, extending his capacity
to more general instructions, he must now consider the _art_ itself as
his master. At all times, and in all places, he should be employed in
laying up materials for the exercise of his art,