joining appearing, can hardly be charged with plagiarism; poets

practise this kind of borrowing without reserve. But an artist

should not be contented with this only; he should enter into a

competition with his original, and endeavour to improve what he is

appropriating to his own work. Such imitation is so far from

having anything in it of the servility of plagiarism, that it is a

perpetual exercise of the mind, a continual invention.

Borrowing or stealing with such art and caution will have a right

to the same lenity as was used by the Lacedemonians; who did not

punish theft, but the want of artifice to conceal it.

In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let

me add, that very finished artists in the inferior branches of the

art will contribute to furnish the mind and give hints of which a

skilful painter, who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no

danger of being infected by the contact of vicious models, will

know how to avail himself. He will pick up from dunghills what by

a nice chemistry, passing through his own mind, shall be converted

into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of Gothic essays, he will

find original, rational, and even sublime inventions.

In the luxuriant style of Paul Veronese, in the capricious

compositions of Tintoret, he will find something that will assist

his invention, and give points, from which his own imagination

shall rise and take flight, when the subject which he treats will,

with propriety, admit of splendid effects.

In every school, whether Venetian, French, or Dutch, he will find

either ingenious compositions, extraordinary effects, some peculiar

expressions, or some mechanical excellence, well worthy his

attention and, in some measure, of his imitation; even in the lower

class of the French painters, great beauties are often found united

with great defects.