some hints to your consideration. They are indeed in a great degree
founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit. But the history of
errors properly managed often shortens the road to truth. And although
no method of study that I can offer will of itself conduct to excellence,
yet it may preserve industry from being misapplied.

In speaking to you of the theory of the art, I shall only consider it as
it has a relation to the method of your studies.

Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall
address you as having passed through the first of them, which is confined
to the rudiments, including a facility of drawing any object that
presents itself, a tolerable readiness in the management of colours, and
an acquaintance with the most simple and obvious rules of composition.

This first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in
literature, a general preparation to whatever species of the art the
student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The
power of drawing, modelling, and using colours is very properly called
the language of the art; and in this language, the honours you have just
received prove you to have made no inconsiderable progress.

When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree of
correctness, he must then endeavour to collect subjects for expression;
to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and varied as occasion may
require. He is now in the second period of study, in which his business
is to learn all that has hitherto been known and done. Having hitherto
received instructions from a particular master, he is now to consider the
art itself as his master. He must extend his capacity to more sublime
and general instructions. Those perfections which lie scattered among