Poetry Operates By Raising Our Curiosity, Engaging

Few Have Been Taught To Any Purpose Who Have Not Been Their Own Teachers.

Every Art, Like Our Own, Has In Its Composition Fluctuating As Well As Fixed Principles. It Is An Attentive Inquiry Into Their Difference That Will Enable Us To Determine How Far We Are Influenced By Custom And Habit, And What Is Fixed In The Nature Of Things.

I Do Not See In What Manner Practice Alone Can Be Sufficient For The Production Of Correct, Excellent, And Finished Pictures. Works Deserving This Character Never Were Produced, Nor Ever Will Arise, From Memory Alone.

Poetry Operates By Raising Our Curiosity, Engaging The Mind By Degrees To Take An Interest In The Event, Keeping That Event Suspended, And Surprising At Last With An Unexpected Catastrophe. The Painter's Art Is More Confined, And Has Nothing That Corresponds With, Or Perhaps Is Equivalent To, This Power And Advantage Of Leading The Mind On, Till Attention Is Totally Engaged. What Is Done By Painting, Must Be Done At One Blow; Curiosity Has Received At Once All The Satisfaction It Can Ever Have.

Style In Painting Is The Same As In Writing; A Power Over Materials, Whether Words Or Colors, By Which Conceptions Or Sentiments Are Conveyed.