C 15* 3

eonfidcred as a happy beginning of his education ; he
thought it, on the contrary, a difadvantage to him ;
that he had acquired by that habit, a carelefsnefs and
incorrectnefs, which coff. him much trouble to over-
come, and to fubftitute in its place a totally different
habit, that of thinking with fele&ion, and of expreffing
himfelf with correcmefs and precifion.

4 However extraordinary it may appear, it is certainly
true, that the inventions of the Pittore improvijitore, as
they may be called, have, notwithstanding their boaff,
that it is all Fpun from their own brain, very rarely any
thing that has in the leaft the air of originality of in-
vention : their compofitions are generally common
place ; uninterefting, without character or expreflion of
any kind ; and appear, as we fay fometimes of flowery
fpeeches, to have no ideas annexed to the words.'

We remember an inftance of this, in a youth who
treated all forts of fubjects promptly and rapidly : the uni-
verfality of his ideas created a fufpicion (afterwards veri-
fied) in our minds, that they were only fuperficial. It is
unnatural genius, and requires nearly as much trouble
to divefl of its luxuriant branches and fuckers, as to im-
prove a naturally barren tree.

f It is not uncommon to meet with painters who
from a long neglect of cultivating this neceflary inti-
macy with nature, fo long ufed to their own reprcfenta-
tion of her, fhe appears as a ftranger, they do not even
know her when they fee her. I have heard painters
acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no degra-
dation of themfelves was intended, that they can do
better without nature than with her; or, as they ex-
p re fled it themfelves, that it only put them out.'—This
lingular paflage Hands as an opprobrium to many ; wc
are forry to be forced to admit its truth.

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