correctness when you cease to study them. It is their excellences

which have taught you their defects.

I would wish you to forget where you are, and who it is that speaks

to you. I only direct you to higher models and better advisers.

We can teach you here but very little; 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 your LATTER, it is your own fault.

The purpose of this discourse, and, indeed, of most of my others,

is to caution you against that false opinion, but too prevalent

amongst artists, of the imaginary power 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, 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 which you

are to combat.