"You must regard it as an undoubted fact that, in order to distinctly recognise the value of a perfect or nearly perfect work, deserving of immortality, it is not enough merely to be accustomed to write. You yourself must be able to accomplish the work in question almost as perfectly as the writer himself. And as experience gradually teaches you what qualities constitute a perfect writer, and what an infinity of difficulties must be surmounted before these can be obtained, you will learn how to overcome the latter, and acquire the former; so that in time knowledge and power will prove to be one and the same thing. Hence a man cannot discern nor fully appreciate the excellence of perfect writers until he is able to give expression to it in his own writings; because such perfection can only be appreciated by what may be termed a transference of it into oneself. Until this be done, a man cannot really understand what constitutes perfection in writing, and will therefore be unable to duly admire the best writers. "Now most literary men, because they write easily, think they write well; they therefore regard good writing as a facile accomplishment, even though they assert the contrary. Think, then, how the number will be reduced of those who might appreciate and laud you when, after inconceivable exertions and care, you succeed in producing a noble and perfect work. In the present day there are scarcely two or three men in Italy who have acquired the art of perfect writing; and although this number may appear to you excessively small, at no time nor place has it ever been much greater. "I often wonder to myself how Virgil, as a supreme example of literary perfection, ever acquired the high reputation in which he is now held. For I am certain that most of his readers and eulogisers do not discover in his poems more than one beauty for every ten or twenty revealed to me by continuous study and meditation. Not that I imagine I have succeeded in estimating him at his proper value, nor have derived every possible enjoyment from his writings. In truth, the esteem and admiration professed for the greatest writers is ordinarily the result of a blind predisposition in their favour, rather than the outcome of an impartial judgment, or the consequence of a due appreciation of their merits.