The greater number of artists have sprung from humble life.  If they had been born rich, they would probably never have been artists.  They have had to work their way from one position to another; and to strengthen their nature by conquering difficulty.  Hogarth began his career by engraving shop-bills.  William Sharp began by engraving door-plates.  Tassie the sculptor and medallist, began life as a stone-cutter.  Having accidentally seen a collection of pictures, he aspired to become an artist and entered an academy to learn the elements of drawing.  He continued to work at his old trade until he was able to maintain himself by his new one.  He used his labour as the means of cultivating his skill in his more refined and elevated profession.

Chantry of Sheffield, was an economist both of time and money.  He saved fifty pounds out of his earnings as a carver and gilder; paid the money to his master, and cancelled his indentures.  Then he came up to London, and found employment as a journeyman carver; he proceeded to paint portraits and model busts, and at length worked his way to the first position as a sculptor.

Canova was a stone-cutter, like his father and his grandfather; and through stone-cutting he worked his way to sculpture.  After leaving the quarry, he went to Venice, and gave his services to an artist, from whom he received but little recompense for his work.  “I laboured,” said he, “for a mere pittance, but it was sufficient.  It was the fruit of my own resolution; and, as I then flattered myself, the foretaste of more honourable rewards,—­for I never thought of wealth.”  He pursued his studies,—­in drawing and modelling; in languages, poetry, history, antiquity, and the Greek and Roman classics.  A long time elapsed before his talents were recognised, and then he suddenly became famous.

Lough, the English sculptor, is another instance of self-denial and hard work.  When a boy, he was fond of drawing.  At school, he made drawings of horses, dogs, cows, and men, for pins:  that was his first pay; and he used to go home with his jacket sleeve stuck full of them.  He and his brothers next made figures in clay.  Pope’s Homer lay on his father’s window.  The boys were so delighted with it, that they made thousands of models—­one taking the Greeks, and the other the Trojans.  An odd volume of Gibbon gave an account of the Coliseum.  After the family were in bed, the brothers made a model of the Coliseum, and filled it with fighting gladiators.  As the boys grew up, they were sent to their usual outdoor work, following the plough and doing the usual agricultural labour; but still adhering to their modelling at leisure hours.  At Christmas-time, Lough was very much in demand.  Everybody wanted him to make models in pastry for Christmas pies,—­the neighbouring farmers especially, “It was capital practice,” he afterwards said.