surrounded.

I remember several years ago to have conversed at Rome with an

artist of great fame throughout Europe; he was not without a

considerable degree of abilities, but those abilities were by no

means equal to his own opinion of them. From the reputation he had

acquired he too fondly concluded that he stood in the same rank,

when compared to his predecessors, as he held with regard to his

miserable contemporary rivals.

In conversation about some particulars of the works of Raffaelle,

he seemed to have, or to affect to have, a very obscure memory of

them. He told me that he had not set his foot in the Vatican for

fifteen years together; that indeed he had been in treaty to copy a

capital picture of Raffaelle, but that the business had gone off;

however, if the agreement had held, his copy would have greatly

exceeded the original. The merit of this artist, however great we

may suppose it, I am sure would have been far greater, and his

presumption would have been far less if he had visited the Vatican,

as in reason he ought to have done, once at least every month of

his life.

I address myself, gentlemen, to you who have made some progress in

the art, and are to be for the future under the guidance of your

own judgment and discretion

I consider you as arrived to that period when you have a right to

think for yourselves, and to presume that every man is fallible; to

study the masters with a suspicion that great men are not always

exempt from great faults; to criticise, compare, and rank their

works in your own estimation, as they approach to or recede from

that standard of perfection which you have formed in your own mind,

but which those masters themselves, it must be remembered, have

taught you to make, and which you will cease to make with