110. The epoch of rules, of theories, poetics, criticisms in a nation, will add to their stock of authors in the same proportion as it diminishes their stock of genius: their productions will bear the stamp of study, not of nature; they will adopt, not generate; sentiment will supplant images, and narrative invention; words will be no longer the dress but the limbs of composition, and feeble elegance will supply the want of nerves. 111. He "lisped not in numbers, no numbers came to him," though he count his verses by thousands, who has not learnt to distinguish the harmony of two lines from that of a period--whom dull monotony of ear condemns to the drowsy psalmody of one returning couplet. 112. Some seek renown as the Parthians sought victory--by seeming to fly from it. 113. He has more than genius--he is a hero--who can check his powers in their full career to glory, merely not to crush the feeble on his road. 114. He who could have the choice, and should prefer to be the first painter of insects, of flowers, or of drapery, to being the second in the ranks of history, though degraded to the last class of art, would undoubtedly be in the first of men by the decision of Cæsar. 115. Such is the aspiring nature of man, that nothing wounds the copyist more sorely than the suspicion of being thought what he is. 116. He who depends for all upon his model, should treat no other subject but his model. 117. The praises lavished on the sketches of vigorous conception, only sharpen the throes of labour in finishing. 118. As far as the medium of an art can be taught, so far is the artist confined to the class of mere mechanics; he only then elevates himself to talent, when he imparts to his method, or his tool, some unattainable or exclusive excellence of his own. 119. None but the first can represent the first. Genius, absorbed by the subject, hastens to the centre; and from that point disseminates, to that leads back the rays: talent, full of its own dexterities, begins to point the rays before they have a centre, and aggregates a mass of secondary beauties. 120. The ear absorbed in harmonies of its own creation, is deaf to all external ones. 121. Harmony disposes, melody determines. 122. There is not a bauble thrown by the sportive hand of fashion, which may not be caught with advantage by the hand of art. _Coroll._--Shakspeare has been excused for seeking in the Roman senate what he knew all senates could furnish--a buffoon. Paulo of Verona, with equal strength of argument, may be excused for cramming on the foreground of an assembly or a feast, what he knew a feast or assembly could furnish--a dog, an ape, a scullion, a parrot, or a dwarf. 123. He has done much in art who raises your curiosity--he has done all who has raised it and keeps it up restless and uniform; prostrate yourself before the genius of Homer.