as a kind of magic. They, who have never observed the gradation by which
art is acquired, who see only what is the full result of long labour and
application of an infinite number, and infinite variety of acts, are apt
to conclude from their entire inability to do the same at once, that it
is not only inaccessible to themselves, but can be done by those only who
have some gift of the nature of inspiration bestowed upon them.

The travellers into the East tell us that when the ignorant inhabitants
of these countries are asked concerning the ruins of stately edifices yet
remaining amongst them, the melancholy monuments of their former grandeur
and long-lost science, they always answer that they were built by
magicians. The untaught mind finds a vast gulf between its own powers
and these works of complicated art which it is utterly unable to fathom.
And it supposes that such a void can be passed only by supernatural
powers.

And, as for artists themselves, it is by no means their interest to
undeceive such judges, however conscious they may be of the very natural
means by which the extraordinary powers were acquired; our art being
intrinsically imitative, rejects this idea of inspiration more, perhaps,
than any other.

It is to avoid this plain confession of truth, as it should seem, that
this imitation of masters--indeed, almost all imitation which implies a
more regular and progressive method of attaining the ends of painting--has
ever been particularly inveighed against with great keenness, both by
ancient and modern writers.

To derive all from native power, to owe nothing to another, is the praise
which men, who do not much think what they are saying, bestow sometimes