the discipline of our youth only, we should, to the last moment of

our lives, continue a settled intercourse with all the true

examples of grandeur. Their inventions are not only the food of

our infancy, but the substance which supplies the fullest maturity

of our vigour.

The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil soon exhausted, and will

produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilised

and enriched with foreign matter.

When we have had continually before us the great works of art to

impregnate our minds with kindred ideas, we are then, and not till

then, fit to produce something, of the same species. We behold all

about us with the eyes of these penetrating observers, and our

minds, accustomed to think the thoughts of the noblest and

brightest intellects, are prepared for the discovery and selection

of all that is great and noble in nature. The greatest natural

genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to

ransack any mind but his own will be soon reduced, from mere

barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to

imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.

When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be

difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.

It is vain for painters or poets to endeavour to invent without

materials on which the mind may work, and from which invention must

originate. Nothing can come of nothing.

Homer is supposed to be possessed of all the learning of his time.

And we are certain that Michael Angelo and Raffaelle were equally

possessed of all knowledge in the art which was discoverable in the

works of their predecessors.

A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures of ancient