It may therefore always be maintained that native talent is indeed indispensable to production, but equally indispensable is a commensurate development in the provinces of nature and art. Art cannot dispense with its prerogatives, and cannot achieve perfection without favorable outward circumstances. Consider the school of the Caracci. Here was a ground-work of talent, earnestness, industry, and consistent development; here was an element for the natural and artistic development of admirable powers. We see a whole dozen of excellent artists produced by it, each practising and cultivating his peculiar talent according to the same general idea, so that it hardly seems possible that after times should produce anything similar. Let us consider the immense stride made by the highly gifted Rubens into the world of art! He too was no son of earth; look at the rich inheritance he was heir to, from the old masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, through all the admirable artists of the sixteenth, at the close of which he was born. Again, think of the crowd of Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, whose great abilities found development now at home, now south, now north, until we can no longer deny the incredible sagacity with which their eye pierced into nature, and the facility with which they have succeeded in expressing her legitimate charm, so as to enchant us everywhere. Nay, in proportion as we possess their productions, we are willing to limit ourselves for long stretches of time to their study and admiration, and are far from blaming those amateurs who are contented with the possession and enjoyment of this class of pictures exclusively. In the same way, we could bring a hundred examples in support of our assertion. To see distinctly, to apprehend clearly, to impart with facility,--these are the qualities that enchant us; and when we maintain that all these are to be found in the genuine Greek works, united with the noblest subjects, the most unerring and perfect execution, it will be seen why it is we always begin and end with them. Let each one be a Greek in his own way, but let him be a _Greek_! The same is true of literary merit. What is comprehensible is always the first to attract us and give us complete satisfaction. If we even take the works of one and the same poet, we shall find some that seem to indicate a degree of laborious effort, and others again affect us like natural products, because the talent was commensurate with the form and import. And once more, it is our firm belief that although any age may give birth to the fairest talent, it is not given to all to be able to develop it in its perfect proportions. NOTES ON DILETTANTISM (1799)