By aiming at better things, if from particular inclination, or from the
taste of the time and place he lives in, or from necessity, or from
failure in the highest attempts, he is obliged to descend lower; he will
bring into the lower sphere of art a grandeur of composition and
character that will raise and ennoble his works far above their natural
rank.

A man is not weak, though he may not be able to wield the club of
Hercules; nor does a man always practise that which he esteems the beat;
but does that which he can best do. In moderate attempts, there are many
walks open to the artist. But as the idea of beauty is of necessity but
one, so there can be but one great mode of painting; the leading
principle of which I have endeavoured to explain.

I should be sorry if what is here recommended should be at all understood
to countenance a careless or indetermined manner of painting. For though
the painter is to overlook the accidental discriminations of nature, he
is to pronounce distinctly, and with precision, the general forms of
things. A firm and determined outline is one of the characteristics of
the great style in painting; and, let me add, that he who possesses the
knowledge of the exact form, that every part of nature ought to have,
will be fond of expressing that knowledge with correctness and precision
in all his works.

To conclude: I have endeavoured to reduce the idea of beauty to general
principles. And I had the pleasure to observe that the professor of
painting proceeded in the same method, when he showed you that the
artifice of contrast was founded but on one principle. And I am
convinced that this is the only means of advancing science, of clearing
the mind from a confused heap of contradictory observations, that do but