The collection which Raffaelle made of the thoughts of the ancients with
so much trouble, is a proof of his opinion on this subject. Such
collections may be made with much more ease, by means of an art scarce
known in his time; I mean that of engraving, by which, at an easy rate,
every man may now avail himself of the inventions of antiquity.

It must be acknowledged that the works of the moderns are more the
property of their authors; he who borrows an idea from an artist, or
perhaps from a modern, not his contemporary, and so accommodates it to
his own work that it makes a part of it, with no seam or joining
appearing, can hardly be charged with plagiarism; poets practise this
kind of borrowing without reserve. But an artist should not be contented
with this only; he should enter into a competition with his original, and
endeavour to improve what he is appropriating to his own work. Such
imitation is so far from having anything in it of the servility of
plagiarism, that it is a perpetual exercise of the mind, a continual
invention.

Borrowing or stealing with such art and caution will have a right to the
same lenity as was used by the Lacedemonians; who did not punish theft,
but the want of artifice to conceal it.

In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let me add,
that very finished artists in the inferior branches of the art will
contribute to furnish the mind and give hints of which a skilful painter,
who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no danger of being infected
by the contact of vicious models, will know how to avail himself. He
will pick up from dunghills what by a nice chemistry, passing through his
own mind, shall be converted into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of