Seven Discourses on Art | Page 6

no other nation can boast. We shall have nothing to unlearn. To
this praise the present race of artists have a just claim. As far as they
have yet proceeded they are right. With us the exertions of genius will
henceforward be directed to their proper objects. It will not be as it has
been in other schools, where he that travelled fastest only wandered
farthest from the right way.
Impressed as I am, therefore, with such a favourable opinion of my
associates in this undertaking, it would ill become me to dictate to any
of them. But as these institutions have so often failed in other nations,
and as it is natural to think with regret how much might have been done,
and how little has been done, I must take leave to offer a few hints, by
which those errors may be rectified, and those defects supplied. These
the professors and visitors may reject or adopt as they shall think
proper.
I would chiefly recommend that an implicit obedience to the rules of art,
as established by the great masters, should be exacted from the
YOUNG students. That those models, which have passed through the
approbation of ages, should be considered by them as perfect and
infallible guides as subjects for their imitation, not their criticism.
I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a

progress in the arts; and that he who sets out with doubting will find
life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments. For it may be
laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on his own
sense has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them. Every
opportunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that false and
vulgar opinion that rules are the fetters of genius. They are fetters only
to men of no genius; as that armour, which upon the strong becomes an
ornament and a defence, upon the weak and misshapen turns into a load,
and cripples the body which it was made to protect.
How much liberty may be taken to break through those rules, and, as
the poet expresses it,
"To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,"
may be an after consideration, when the pupils become masters
themselves. It is then, when their genius has received its utmost
improvement, that rules may possibly be dispensed with. But let us not
destroy the scaffold until we have raised the building.
The directors ought more particularly to watch over the genius of those
students who, being more advanced, are arrived at that critical period of
study, on the nice management of which their future turn of taste
depends. At that age it is natural for them to be more captivated with
what is brilliant than with what is solid, and to prefer splendid
negligence to painful and humiliating exactness.
A facility in composing, a lively, and what is called a masterly handling
the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed, captivating qualities to
young minds, and become of course the objects of their ambition. They
endeavour to imitate those dazzling excellences, which they will find
no great labour in attaining. After much time spent in these frivolous
pursuits, the difficulty will be to retreat; but it will be then too late; and
there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour after the mind
has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious mastery.
By this useless industry they are excluded from all power of advancing
in real excellence. Whilst boys, they are arrived at their utmost

perfection; they have taken the shadow for the substance; and make that
mechanical facility the chief excellence of the art, which is only an
ornament, and of the merit of which few but painters themselves are
judges.
This seems to me to be one of the most dangerous sources of corruption;
and I speak of it from experience, not as an error which may possibly
happen, but which has actually infected all foreign academies. The
directors were probably pleased with this premature dexterity in their
pupils, and praised their despatch at the expense of their correctness.
But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought
masterly inciting them on one hand, but also their natural sloth
tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before
them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth
is distrusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from
mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm. They wish to
find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of
eminence by other means than those which the indispensable rules of
art have prescribed. They must, therefore, be told again