best pictures which are most likely to deceive the spectator. He will
permit the lower painter, like the florist or collector of shells, to
exhibit the minute discriminations which distinguish one object of the
same species from another; while he, like the philosopher, will consider
nature in the abstract, and represent in every one of his figures the
character of its species.

If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no
doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed: but
it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius desires to
address; nor will he waste a moment upon these smaller objects, which
only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract
his great design of speaking to the heart.

This is the ambition I could wish to excite in your minds; and the object
I have had in my view, throughout this discourse, is that one great idea
which gives to painting its true dignity, that entitles it to the name of
a Liberal Art, and ranks it as a sister of poetry.

It may possibly have happened to many young students whose application
was sufficient to overcome all difficulties, and whose minds were capable
of embracing the most extensive views, that they have, by a wrong
direction originally given, spent their lives in the meaner walks of
painting, without ever knowing there was a nobler to pursue. "Albert
Durer," as Vasari has justly remarked, "would probably have been one of
the first painters of his age (and he lived in an era of great artists)
had he been initiated into those great principles of the art which were
so well understood and practised by his contemporaries in Italy. But
unluckily, having never seen or heard of any other manner, he considered
his own, without doubt, as perfect."