I believe, if we look around us, we shall find, that in the sister art of Poetry, what has been soon done has been as soon forgotten. The judgment and practice of a great Poet on this occasion is worthy attention. Metastasio, who has so much and justly distinguished himself throughout Europe, at his outset was an _Improvvisatore_, or extempore Poet, a description of men not uncommon in Italy: it is not long since he was asked by a friend, if he did not think the custom of inventing and reciting _extempore_, which he practised when a boy in his character of an _Improvvisatore_, might not be considered as a happy beginning of his education; he thought it, on the contrary, a disadvantage to him: he said that he had acquired by that habit a carelessness and incorrectness, which it cost him much trouble to overcome, and to substitute in the place of it a totally different habit, that of thinking with selection, and of expressing himself with correctness and precision. However extraordinary it may appear, it is certainly true, that the inventions of the _Pittori improvvisatori_, as they may be called, have--notwithstanding the common boast of their authors, that all is spun from their own brain--very rarely anything that has in the least the air of originality:--their compositions are generally commonplace, uninteresting, without character or expression; like those flowery speeches that we sometimes hear, which impress no new ideas on the mind. I would not be thought, however, by what has been said, to oppose the use, the advantage, the necessity there is, of a Painter's being readily able to express his ideas by sketching. The further he can carry such designs the better. The evil to be apprehended is, his resting there, and not correcting them afterwards from nature, or taking the trouble to look about him for whatever assistance the works of others will afford him.