of neglect and accident. But, as Mr. Burke well obferves, "there is in mankind an un"fortunate propenfity to make themselves, "their views, and their works, the measure ❝ of excellence in every thing whatsoever." Left you should think my arguments for fuch a course of study not fufficiently convincing, I can produce an authority for it, which you cannot well dispute; I mean your own practice. I learned from your own mouth, and with much fatisfaction, that you had gone repeatedly into Epping Foreft for the purpose of studying. Of ftudying what? not the effects of art or defign-not of nature indiscriminately; but peculiar effects, peculiar difpofitions of trees, thickets, glades, lawns, openings, and skirtings of various form and character, which you might afterwards transfer with a higher degree of polish, but without injuring their loose and

varied fhapes, to more ornamented fcenes. You were therefore ftudying the effect of neglect and accident, and it is a study, which, joined to that of the selections which painters have made of those effects, every professor of your art should perpetually renew; not merely in forests, but univerfally wherever they occur, He fhould, by the study of pictures, accustom his eye to catch them, and to fix them in his memory as fources of natural, unaffected variety; or he will certainly fall into the wretched famenefs of him, whom you have dignified with the title of " that "great felf-taught mafter," and whofe works (if he was felf-taught) fully justify the Italian proverb.*

I cannot quit the short note of your's, which has occafioned fo large a comment,

Chi s'infegna ha ún pazzo per maeftro. Vide Effay on the Picturefque, page 4.

without

without obferving, that it feems to be meant as a fort of corrective both of the praises you have given and received. With regard to myself, I can freely say that I spoke of your talents as I thought of them, and I praised them, because it is always pleasant to give praise where it is due.

I did take the liberty of recommending to you the study of what the higher artists have done, both in their pictures and their drawings; for I will frankly own, that from all the converfations which have paffed between us, I had (perhaps rashly) conceived, that you were not very converfant in them: I cannot recollect, amidft all the romantic fcenes we viewed together, your having made any of those allufions to the works of various mafters, which might naturally have occurred to a person who had ftudied, or even obferved them with common attention. I did there

fore

fore take the liberty of recommending what I thought would be of the greatest ufe in your profeffion, but am extremely glad to hear that you had anticipated my advice; that you had ftudied the great mafters, and that you allow (a conceffion of no flight importance) that it is a branch of knowledge effential to the profeffion.

That there is a certain affinity between all the polite arts, has been univerfally acknowledged, from Ariftotle and Cicero down to the present time; and it seems to me that good taste, and good judgment, confift in finding out in what circumftances, and in what degree, that affinity holds good, and may be practically applied. General affertions are easily made, and as they carry no conviction, they require no anfwer; whether those who are not profeffors, are likely to fuppofe greater affinity

between

between the arts than those who are, I really cannot tell; but I am pretty certain that this oblique compliment to the latter, at the expence of us Dilettanti, will not bring over the profeffors of painting to admire clumps, belts, &c. and that they will at least be of opinion, that there is greater affinity between landscape painting, and landscape gardening, than appears in Mr. Brown's works.

I fhall always remember with pleasure the hours we spent together on the Wye, and the perfect good-humour and cheerfulness of the whole party; but I could not help obferving at the time, (and with much concern,) how lightly you treated the idea of taking any hints from any part of a natural river, towards forming an artificial one. You tell me, however, that an enthusiasm for the picturefque, had originally led you to fancy greater affinity between