Begin wrong, and you are no sooner under sail, than under water!
When a difficulty presents itself, attack it as though you meant to overcome it, and the chances are you succeed.
Do not fancy that you have, or that you want, that illusion, inspiration; but remember Art is to be acquired by human means; that the mind is to be expanded by study; and that examples of industry abound to show the way to eminence and distinction. 'He must of necessity,' says Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'be an imitator of the works of other painters. This appears humiliating, but is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, on any other terms. For, if we did not make use of the advantages our predecessors afford us, the art would be always to begin, and consequently remain always in an infant state.' And we shall no longer require to use the thoughts of others when we have become able to think for ourselves: 'Genius is the child of Imitation.'
There are no excellencies out of the reach of the rules of art—nothing that close observation of the leading merits of others, nothing that indefatigable industry cannot acquire. Refinement in the practice of rules brings all under its dominion; and, 'as the art advances, its powers will be still more and more fixed by rules;' and, 'unsubstantial as these rules may seem, and difficult as it may be to convey them in writing, they are still seen and felt in the mind of the artist, and he works from them with as much certainty as if they were embodied upon paper. And that it is by being conversant with the inventions of others that we learn to invent. The mind becomes as powerfully affected as if it had itself produced what it admires.' An habitual intercourse, to the end of our lives, with good and great examples, will invest our own inventions with their splendid qualities; and if we do not imitate others, we shall soon be found imitating ourselves, 'and repeating what we have before often repeated; while he who has treasured the most materials, has the greatest means of invention.'
It by no means appears to me impossible to overtake what we admire and imitate—or even to pass it. He 'has only had the advantage of starting before you,' while pointing the way has shortened our own labour. Life must henceforth become longer; because we now, more than ever, gain time by the experience of others: we pass on from that to our own, until every thing in nature, judiciously directed, becomes subservient to the principles and purposes of Art.
Again, 'I very much doubt,' says Sir Joshua, 'whether a habit of drawing correctly what we see will not give a proportionable power of drawing correctly what we imagine.' But practice must always be founded on good Theory; for mere correctness of drawing is, perhaps, nearly allied to mechanical; blending it with the imaginative alone, in composition, constitutes its pretensions to genius; but confidence in the one produces boldness in the other.
'All rules arise from the passions and affections of the mind, and to which they are all referrible. Art effects its purposes by their means.'
'Years,' says a modern author, 'are often spent in acquiring wealth, which eventually cannot be enjoyed for want of those stores of the mind, that should have been laid up in youth, as the best solace of declining age. The most moderate power of making a sketch from nature would have been a valuable attainment, when leisure and opportunity threw them among scenes they could but half enjoy in consequence.' Besides, true Taste does every thing in the best way at the least expense, while the want of it often appears in unmeaning decoration at a vast outlay.
'A man of polite imagination,' says Addison, 'feels greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows than another does in the possession of them: it gives him a kind of property in every thing he sees; so that he looks on the world, as it were, in another light.'
When a Painter walks out, he receives at every glance impressions that would entirely escape others, upon sensibilities refined by habits of observation The art of seeing things as they appear is the art of acquiring a knowledge of drawing them. Indefinite observation and defective memory are improved in the utmost degree by this faculty of seeing things well defined. Besides, most Sciences are capable of receiving great assistance from drawing.