imagine. He who endeavours to copy nicely the figure before him

not only acquires a habit of exactness and precision, but is

continually advancing in his knowledge of the human figure; and

though he seems to superficial observers to make a slower progress,

he will be found at last capable of adding (without running into

capricious wildness) that grace and beauty which is necessary to be

given to his more finished works, and which cannot be got by the

moderns, as it was not acquired by the ancients, but by an

attentive and well-compared study of the human form.

What I think ought to enforce this method is, that it has been the

practice (as may be seen by their drawings) of the great masters in

the art. I will mention a drawing of Raffaelle, "The Dispute of

the Sacrament," the print of which, by Count Cailus, is in every

hand. It appears that he made his sketch from one model; and the

habit he had of drawing exactly from the form before him appears by

his making all the figures with the same cap, such as his model

then happened to wear; so servile a copyist was this great man,

even at a time when he was allowed to be at his highest pitch of

excellence.

I have seen also academy figures by Annibale Caracci, though he was

often sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all

the peculiarities of an individual model.

This scrupulous exactness is so contrary to the practice of the

academies, that it is not without great deference that I beg leave

to recommend it to the consideration of the visitors, and submit it

to them, whether the neglect of this method is not one of the

reasons why students so often disappoint expectation, and being

more than boys at sixteen, become less than men at thirty.

In short, the method I recommend can only be detrimental when there

are but few living forms to copy; for then students, by always