le to make with safety any so wide generalization, you
will not find in them a childish or feeble drawing, by these, or by any
other great master.

And farther:--by the greatest men--by Titian, Velasquez, or
Veronese--you will hardly find an authentic drawing, at all. For the
fact is, that while we moderns have always learned, or tried to learn,
to paint by drawing, the ancients learned to draw by painting--or by
engraving, more difficult still. The brush was put into their hands when
they were children, and they were forced to draw with that, until, if
they used the pen or crayon, they used it either with the lightness of a
brush or the decision of a graver. Michael Angelo uses his pen like a
chisel; but all of them seem to use it only when they are in the height
of their power, and then for rapid notation of thought or for study of
models; but never as a practice helping them to paint. Probably
exercises of the severest kind were gone through in minute drawing by
the apprentices of the goldsmiths, of which we hear and know little, and
which were entirely matters of course. To these, and to the
exquisiteness of care and touch developed in working precious metals,
may probably be attributed the final triumph of Italian sculpture.
Michael Angelo, when a boy, is said to have copied engravings by
Schoengauer and others, with his pen, in facsimile so true that he could
pass his drawings as the originals. But I should only discourage you
from all farther attempts in art, if I asked you to imitate any of these
accomplished drawings of the gem-artificers. You have, fortunately, a
most interesting collection of them already in your galleries, and may
try your hands on them if you will. But I desire rather that you should
attempt nothing except what can by determination be absolutely
accomplished, and be known and felt by you to be accomplished when it is
so. Now, therefore, I am going at once to comply with that popular
instinct which, I hope, so far as you care for drawing at all, you are
still boys enough to feel, the desire to paint. Paint you shall; but
remember, I understand by painting what you will not find easy. Paint
you shall; but daub or blot you shall not: and there will be even more
care required, though care of a pleasanter kind, to follow the lines
traced for you with the point of the brush than if they had been drawn
with that of a crayon. But from the very beginning (though carrying on
at the same time an incid