depiction of objects, there can be no pictorial art. Nobility of
sentiment and such-like only come after a successful delineation of the
external form of an object. The beginner in art should direct his
efforts more to the latter than to the former. He should learn to paint
according to his own ideas, not to slavishly copy the models of old
artists. Plagiarism is a crime to be avoided not only by men of letters
but also by painters.

_Okio_ (Japanese, eighteenth century).


LXXI

I remember Dürer the painter, who used to say that, as a young man, he
loved extraordinary and unusual designs in painting, but that in his old
age he took to examining Nature, and strove to imitate her as closely as
he possibly could; but he found by experience how hard it is not to
deviate from her.

_Dürer_ (quoted by Melancthon).


LXXII

I have heard painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no
degradation of themselves was intended, that they could do better
without Nature than with her; or, as they expressed it themselves, _that
it only put them out_. A painter with such ideas and such habits, is
indeed in a most hopeless state. _The art of seeing Nature_, or, in
other words, the art of using models, is in reality the great object,