What a picture! When reproved for wasting his health and time by the prosaic farmer, the poor fellow said: "Me and this quarry are lang acquant, and I've mair pleasure in pipin' to thae daft cowts, than if the best leddies in the land were figurin' away afore me."
HORAE SUBECIVAE.
"With BRAINS, Sir."
"Multi multa sciunt, pauci multum."
"It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another thing to wish to be on the side of truth."—Whately.
[Greek]—Thucydides.
"The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind, only staves off our ignorance a little longer; as, perhaps, the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind, serves only to discover larger portions of it."—David Hume.
Pray, Mr. Opie, may I ask what you mix your colours with?" said a brisk dilettante student to the great painter. "With Brains, Sir," was the gruff reply—and the right one. It did not give much of what we call information; it did not expound the principles and rules of the art; but, if the inquirer had the commodity referred to, it would awaken him; it would set him a-going, a-thinking, and a-painting to good purpose. If he had not the wherewithal, as was likely enough, the less he had to do with colours and their mixture the better. Many other artists, when asked such a question, would have either set about detailing the mechanical composition of such and such colours, in such and such proportions, rubbed up so and so; or perhaps they would (and so much the better, but not the best) have shown him how they laid them on; but even this would leave him at the critical point. Opie preferred going to the quick and the heart of the matter: "With Brains, Sir."