The artists repository and drawing magazine: exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branches (4.1790)

COP 73

fhall refemble a former, merely by memory, and without
defign ; or by accident, as nature may repeat fuch or fuch
an effect. Heads, for inftance, may refemble certain of
Raphaelle, fimply becaufe the lame character being
treated, requires correfponding traits. Moreover I do
not fee wherefore a remarkably fine and applicable cha-
racter, fhould not be as readily permitted in painting, as
an applicable quotation in writing. If indeed an author
borrows throughout, fet him down for a plagiary ; but
if he modeftly infert the words of another, inftead of his
own which he fuppofes inferior, let him be called
laudable, rather than blameable. For if either painter,
or writer, is to be carped at for every line not ftrictly
original, they may well exclaim,

Pereant qui ante nos nojira dixerunt !
Nor perhaps are the very principles of their arts indepen-
dent of repetition. When a painter is to reprefent an
object he cannot have before him in nature (fuppofe a
Lion), he muft procure the belt poffible authority for
the article ; and if he fucceeds from fuch infor-
mation, let him have his praife, though a picture from
nature may be fuperior, or more correct; in fuch a cafe
an artift muft ufe the labours of thofe who have pre-
ceded him : and wherefore an artift fhould not ltudy
his fubject, by perufing the conceptions of his pre-
deceffors, as well as an author by perufing the writings
of others on his fubject, does not appear. It is the con-
ftant repetition of the works of others under the pro-
feffion of originality, which contracts guilt.

A painter copies himfelf, when he repeats in his com-
pofitions what he had already produced : this is the firft

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