hop
windows, or of any plates of which you can obtain a loan. Very possibly,
the difficulty of getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to
better use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so, possess
yourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of Rogers's Italy or
Rogers's Poems, and then of about a dozen of the plates named in the
annexed lists. The prefixed letters indicate the particular points
deserving your study in each engraving.[216] Be sure, therefore, that
your selection includes, at all events, one plate marked with each
letter--of course the plates marked with two or three letters are, for
the most part, the best. Do not get more than twelve of these plates,
nor even all the twelve at first. For the more engravings you have, the
less attention you will pay to them. It is a general truth, that the
enjoyment derivable from art cannot be increased in quantity, beyond a
certain point, by quantity of possession; it is only spread, as it were,
over a larger surface, and very often dulled by finding ideas repeated
in different works. Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his
attention should be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his
enjoyment founded on them, than that he should look at many, with
divided thoughts. He has much to discover; and his best way of
discovering it is to think long over few things, and watch them
earnestly. It is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and
to see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never in reality
know anything rightly. Beware of _hand-book_ knowledge.

These engravings are, in general, more for you to look at than to copy;
and they will be of more use to you when we come to talk of composition,
than they are at present; still, it will do you a great deal of good,
sometimes to try how far you can get their delicate texture, or
gradations of tone; as your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt to incline
too much to a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For instance, the
texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its tiled roof, in
the vignette at p. 227. of Rogers's Poems, is as exquisite as work can
possibly be; and it will be a great and profitable achievement if you
can at all approach it. In like manner, if you can at all imitate the
dark distant country at p. 7., or the sky at p. 80., of the same volume,
or the foliage at pp. 12. and 144., it will be good gain; and if you can
once draw the rolli