The TWELFTH DISCOURSE recurs likewise to much that had been before laid down. It treats of methods of study, upon which he had been consulted by artists about to visit Italy. Particular methods of study he considers of little consequence; study must not be shackled by too much method. If the painter loves his art, he will not require prescribed tasks;--to go about which sluggishly, which he will do if he have another impulse, can be of little advantage. Hence would follow, as he admirably expresses it, "a reluctant understanding," and a "servile hand." He supposes, however, the student to be somewhat advanced. The boy, like other school-boys, must be under restraint, and learn the "Grammar and Rudiments" laboriously. It is not such who travel for knowledge. The student, he thinks, may be pretty much left to himself; if he undertake things above his strength, it is better he should run the risk of discouragement thereby, than acquire "a slow proficiency" by "too easy tasks." He has little confidence in the efficacy of method, "in acquiring excellence in any art whatever." Methodical studies, with all their apparatus, enquiry, and mechanical labour, tend too often but "to evade and shuffle off real labour--the real labour of thinking." He has ever avoided giving particular directions. He has found students who have imagined they could make "prodigious progress under some particular eminent master." Such would lean on any but themselves. "After the Rudiments are past, very little of our art can be taught by others." A student ought to have a just and manly confidence in himself, "or rather in the persevering industry which he is resolved to possess." Raffaelle had done nothing, and was quite young, when fixed upon to adorn the Vatican with his works; he had even to direct the best artists of his age. He had a meek and gentle disposition, but it was not inconsistent with that manly confidence that insured him success--a confidence in himself arising from a consciousness of power, and a determination to exert it. The result is "in perpetuum."--There are, however, artists who have too much self-confidence, that is ill-founded confidence, founded rather upon a certain dexterity than upon a habit of thought; they are like the improvisatori in poetry; and most commonly, as Metastasio acknowledged of himself, had much to unlearn, to acquire a habit of thinking with selection. To be able to draw and to design with rapidity, is, indeed, to be master of the grammar of art; but in the completion, and in the final settlement of the design, the portfolio must again and again have been turned over, and the nicest judgment exercised. This judgment is the result of deep study and intenseness of thought--thought not only upon the artist's own inventions, but those of others. Luca Giordano and La Fage are brought as examples of great dexterity and readiness of invention--but of little selection; for they borrowed very