DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61012#0039
THE FIRST DISCOURSE. 5
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 dis-
countenance 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 is an
ornament and a defence, upon the weak and misshapen
becomes 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 a subsequent consideration, when the pupils
become masters themselves. It is then, when their genius
has received its utmost improvement, that rules may pos-
sibly 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 manage-
ment 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 of the chalk or pencil, are, it must be
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 dis-
countenance 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 is an
ornament and a defence, upon the weak and misshapen
becomes 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 a subsequent consideration, when the pupils
become masters themselves. It is then, when their genius
has received its utmost improvement, that rules may pos-
sibly 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 manage-
ment 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 of the chalk or pencil, are, it must be