that speaks to you. I only direct you to higher models and better advisers. We can teach you here but very little e; you are henceforth to be your own teachers. Do this justice, however, to the English Academy; to bear in mind, that in this place you contracted no narrow habits, no false ideas, nothing that could lead you to the imitation of any living master, who may be the fashionable darling of the day. As you have not been taught to flatter us, do not learn to flatter yourselves. We have endeavoured to lead you to the admiration of nothing but what is truly admirable. If you choose inferior patterns, or if you make your own former works your patterns for you latter, it is your own fault.

The purport of this discourse, and, indeed, of most of my other discourses, is, to caution you against that false opinion, but too prevalent among artists, of the imaginary powers of native genius, and its sufficiency in great works. This opinion, according to the temper of mind it meets with, almost always produces, either a vain confidence, or a sluggish despair-both equally fatal to all proficiency.

Study, therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever. Study, as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, and on the principles, on which they studied. Study nature attentively, but always with those masters in your company; consider them as models which you are to imitate, and at the same time as rivals with whom you are to contend.

DISCOURSE VII.

Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 10, 1776.

THE REALITY OF A STANDARD OF TASTE, AS WELL AS OF CORPORAL BEAUTY. BESIDE THIS IMMEDIATE TRUTH, THERE ARE SECONDARY TRUTHS, WHICH ARE VARIABLE; BOTH REQUIRING THE ATTENTION OF THE ARTIST, IN PROPORTION TO THEIR STABILITY OR THEIR INFLUENCE.

IT has been my uniform endeavour, since I first addressed you from this place, to impress you strongly with one ruling idea. I wished you to be persuaded that success in your art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry which I principally recommended is not the industry of the hands, but of the mind.

As our art is not a divine gift, so neither is it a mechanical trade. Its foundations are laid in solid science; and practice, though essential to perfection, can never attain that to which it aims, unless it works under the direction of principle.

Some writers upon art carry this point too far, and suppose that such a body of universal and profound learning is requisite, that the very enumeration of its kinds is enough to frighten a beginner. Vitruvius, after going through the many accomplishments of nature, and the many acquirements of learning, necessary to an architect, proceeds with great gravity to assert that he ought to be well skilled in the civil law, that he may not be chcated in

the title of the ground he builds on. But without such
exaggeration, we may go so far as to assert, that a painter
stands in need of more knowledge than is to be picked off
his pallet, or collected by looking on his model, whether it
be in life or in picture. He can never be a great artist
who is grossly illiterate.

Every man whose business is description ought to be 2
tolerably conversant with the poets in some language or
other; that he may imbibe a poetical spirit, and enlarge
his stock of ideas. He ought to acquire an habit of com-
paring and digesting his notions. He ought not to be
wholly unacquainted with that part of philosophy which
gives an insight into human nature, and relates to the
manners, characters, passions, and affections. He ought
to know something concerning the mind, as well as a great
deal concerning the body of man. For this purpose it is
not necessary that he should go into such a compass of
reading as must, by distracting his attention, disqualify
him for the practical part of his profession, and make him
sink the performer in the critic. Reading, if it can be
made the favourite recreation of his leisure hours, will
improve and enlarge his mind, without retarding his
actual industry. What such partial and desultory reading
cannot afford, may be supplied by the conversation of
learned and ingenious men, which is the best of all substi-
tutes for those who have not the means or opportunities of
deep study. There are many such men in this age; and
they will be pleased with communicating their ideas to
artists, when they see them curious and docile, if they are
treated with that respect and deference which is so justly
their due. Into such society, young artists, if they make
it the point of their ambition, will, by degrees, be admitted.
There, without formal teaching, they will insensibly come

to feel and reason like those they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste imperceptibly formed in their minds, which they will know how to reduce to a standard by applying general truth to their own purposes, better, perhaps, than those to whom they owned the original sentiment.

Of these studies, and this conversation, the desire and legitimate offspring, is a power of distinguishing right from wrong; which power, applied to works of art, is denominated TASTE. Let me, then, without further introduction, enter upon an examination, whether taste be so far beyond our reach as to be unattainable by care; or be so very vague and capricious, that no care ought to be employed about it.

It has been the fate of arts to be enveloped in mysterious and incomprehensible language, as if it was thought necessary that even the terms should correspond to the idea entertained of the instability and uncertainty of the rules which they expressed.

To speak of genius and taste, as in any way connected with reason or common-sense, would be, in the opinion of some towering talkers, to speak like a man who possessed neither; who had never felt that enthusiasm, or, to use their own inflated language, was never warmed by that Promethean fire, which animates the canvas and vivifies the marble.

If, in order to be intelligible, I appear to degrade art by bringing her down from the visionary situation in the clouds, it is only to give her a more solid mansion upon the earth. It is necessary that at some time or other we should see things as they really are, and not impose on ourselves. by that false magnitude with which objects appear when viewed indistinctly as through a mist.

We will allow a poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as it is one sort of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the Muse in shady bowers; waiting the call and inspiration of Genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the vernal equinox; sagaciously observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is cramped by attention to established rules; and how this same imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and deadened by too much judgment; when we talk such language, or entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious.

art a

If all this means, what it is very possible was originally intended only to be meant, that in order to cultivate an man secludes himself from the commerce of the world, and retires into the country at particular seasons: or that at one time of the year his body is in better health, and, consequently, his mind fitter for the business of hard thinking than at another time; or that the mind may be fatigued and grow confused by long and unremitted application; this I can understand. I can likewise believe that a man, eminent when young for possessing poetical imagination, may, from having taken another road, so neglect its cultivation as to show less of its powers in his latter life. But I am persuaded that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his profession to the very last, whose latter works are not as replete with