schoolboy, grown into a gownsman, shall contribute his share to a set
of "Arundines Cami" or "Prolusiones Etonienses?" Will any one who
really knows what art or education means complain of them for having
imitated their models, however servilely? Will he not rather hail
such an imitation as a fair proof, first of the student's reverence
for authority--a more important element of "genius" than most young
folks fancy--and next, of his possessing any artistic power
whatsoever? For, surely, if the greater contains the less, the power
of creating must contain that of imitating. A young author's power
of accurate imitation is, after all, the primary and indispensable
test of his having even the capability of becoming a poet. He who
cannot write in a style which he does know, will certainly not be
able to invent a new style for himself. The first and simplest form
in which any metrical ear, or fancy, or imagination, can show itself,
must needs be in imitating existing models. Innate good taste--that
is, true poetic genius--will of course choose the best models in the
long run. But not necessarily at first. What shall be the student's
earliest ideal must needs be determined for him by circumstance, by
the books to which he has access, by the public opinion which he
hears expressed. Enough if he chooses, as Raphael did, the best
models which he knows, and tries to exhaust them, and learn all he
can from them, ready to quit them hereafter when he comes across
better ones, yet without throwing away what he has learnt. "Be
faithful in a few things, and thou shalt become ruler over many
things," is one of those eternal moral laws which, like many others,
holds as true of art as it does of virtue.

And on the whole, judging Mr. Alexander Smith by this rule, he has
been faithful over a few things, and therefore we have fair hope of
him for the future. For Mr. Smith does succeed, not in copying one