other talents:—“And in truth,” says he, “if this so excellent, so exact, and so universal a man, had been born in Tuscany, as he was in Germany, and had formed his studies according to those beautiful pieces which are seen at Rome, as the rest of us have done, he had proved the best painter of all Italy, as he was the greatest genius, and the most accomplished which Germany ever bore.” [*†45.] “We love what we understand,” &c. This period informs us, that though our inventions are never so good, though we are furnished by nature with a noble genius, and though we follow the impulse of it, yet this is not enough, if we learn not to understand what is perfect and beautiful in nature; to the end, that, having found it, we may be able to imitate it, and by this instruction we may be capacitated to observe those errors which she herself has made, and to avoid them, so as not to copy her in all sorts of subjects, such as she appears to us, without choice or distinction. [*†50.] “As being the sovereign judge of his own art,” &c. This word, sovereign judge, or arbiter of his own art, presupposes a painter to be fully instructed in all the parts of painting; so that being set as it were above his art, he may be the master and sovereign of it, which is no easy matter. Those of that profession are so seldom endowed with that supreme capacity, that few of them arrive to be good judges of painting; and I should many times make more account of their judgment, who are men of sense, and yet have never touched a pencil, than of the opinion which is given by the greatest part of painters. All painters, therefore, may be called arbiters of their own art; but to be sovereign arbiters, belongs only to knowing painters. [*†52.] “And permit no transient beauties to escape his observation,” &c. Those fugitive or transient beauties, are no other than such as we observe in nature, with a short and transient view, and which remain not long in their subjects. Such are the passions of the soul. There are of this sort of beauties which last but for a moment; as the different airs of an assembly upon the sight of an unexpected and uncommon object, some particularity of a violent passion, some graceful action, a smile, a glance of an eye, a disdainful look, a look of gravity, and a thousand other such-like things; we may also place in the catalogue of these flying beauties, fine clouds, such as ordinarily follow thunder, or a shower of rain. [*†54.]