Each year, Reynolds's discourses were eagerly listened to at the Academy. "A great part of every man's life," he said, "must be spent in collecting materials for the exercise of genius. Invention is little but new combination. Nothing can come of nothing. Hence the necessity for acquaintance with the works of your predecessors. But of these, who are to be models--the guides?" The answer is, "Those great masters who have travelled with success the same road.... Try to imagine how a Michael Angelo or a Raphael would have conducted themselves, and work yourself into a belief that your picture is to be seen and observed by them. Even enter into a kind of competition with these great masters; paint a subject like theirs; a companion to any work you think a model. Test your own work with the model.... Let your port-crayon be never out of your hands. Draw till you draw as mechanically as you write. But, on every opportunity, _paint_ your studies instead of _drawing_ them. Painting comprises both drawing and coloring. The Venetians knew this, and have left few sketches on paper.... Have no dependence on your own genius; if you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor--nothing is to be obtained without it.... Without the love of fame you can never do anything excellent; but by an excessive and undistinguishing thirst after it you will come to have vulgar views; you will degrade your style, and your taste will be entirely corrupted.... I mention this because our exhibitions, while they produce such admirable effects by nourishing emulation and calling out genius, have also a mischievous tendency by seducing the painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them."