Thus the highest beauty of form must be taken from nature; but it

is an art of long deduction and great experience to know how to

find it.

We must not content ourselves with merely admiring and relishing;

we must enter into the principles on which the work is wrought;

these do not swim on the superficies, and consequently are not open

to superficial observers.

Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid, and works

its effect itself unseen. It is the proper study and labour of an

artist to uncover and find out the latent cause of conspicuous

beauties, and from thence form principles for his own conduct; such

an examination is a continual exertion of the mind, as great,

perhaps, as that of the artist whose works he is thus studying.

The sagacious imitator not only remarks 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 he examines by what artifice one colour is a

foil to its neighbour. He looks close into the tints, of what

colours they are composed, till he has formed clear and distinct

ideas, and has learnt to see in what harmony and good co louring

consists. What is learnt in this manner from the works of others

becomes really our own, sinks deep, and is never forgotten; nay, it

is by seizing on this clue that we proceed forward, and get further

and further in enlarging the principle and improving the practice.

There can be no doubt but the art is better learnt from the works