Genius, in its infancy, sometimes puts on a very funny face. The first
efforts of a painter are generally rude enough. So are those of a
poet, or any other artist. I have often wished I might see the first
picture that such a man as Titian, or Rubens, or Reynolds, or West,
ever drew. It would interest me much, and, I suspect, would provoke a
smile or two, at the expense of the young artists.

History does not often transmit such sketches to the world. But I wish
it would. I wish the picture of the sheep that Giotto was sketching,
when Cimabue, one of the greatest painters of his age, came across
him, could be produced. I would go miles to see it. And I wish West's
mother had carefully preserved, for some public gallery, the picture
that her son Benjamin made of the little baby in the cradle. You have
heard that story, I dare say.

Benjamin, you know, showed a taste for drawing and painting, when he
was a very little boy. His early advantages were but few. But he made
the most of these advantages; and the result was that he became one of
the first painters of his day, and before he died, he was chosen
President of the Royal Society in London. How do you think he made his
colors? You will smile when you hear that they were formed with
charcoal and chalk, with an occasional sprinkling of the juice of red
berries. His brush was rather a rude one. It was made of the hair he
pulled from the tail of Pussy, the family cat. Poor old cat! she lost
so much of her fur to supply the young artist with brushes, that the
family began to feel a good deal of anxiety for her pussyship. They
thought her hair fell off by disease, until Benjamin, who was an
honest boy, one day informed them of their mistake. What a pity that
the world could not have the benefit of one of the pictures that West
painted with his cat-tail brush.