Students of the Royal Academy.  He has (as you might expect) enough to say of Tintoretto, of Titian, of Caracci, and of the duty of studying their work with patience, with humility.  But why does he exhort his hearers to con them?—­Why, because he is all the time driving at practice.  Hear how he opens his second Discourse (his first to the Students).  After congratulating the prize-winners of 1769, he desires ’to lead them into such a course of study as may render their future progress answerable to their past improvement’; and the great man goes on:—­

I flatter myself that from the long experience I have had, and the necessary assiduity with which I have pursued these studies in which like you I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in offering some hints to your consideration.  They are indeed in a great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit....

Mark the noble modesty of that!  To resume—­

     In speaking to you of the Theory of the Art, I shall only consider
     it as it has relation to the method of your studies.

And then he proceeds to preach the Old Masters.—­But how?—­why?—­to what end?  Does he recite lists of names, dates, with formulae concerning styles?  He does nothing of the sort.  Does he recommend his old masters for copying, then?—­for mere imitation?  Not a bit of it!—­he comes down like a hammer on copying.  Then for what, in fine, will he have them studied?  Listen:—­

     The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who
     have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention.

Yes, of invention, your power to make something new: 

     —­and what may appear still more like a paradox, the more original
     will be your conceptions.

There spake Sir Joshua Reynolds:  and I call that the voice of a true Elder Brother.  He, standing face to face with the young, thought of the old masters mainly as spiritual begetters of practice.  And will anyone in this room tell me that what Reynolds said of painting is not to-day, for us, applicable to writing?

We accept it of Greek and Latin.  An old Sixth Form master once said to me, ’You may give up Latin Verse for this term, if you will:  but I warn you, no one can be a real scholar who does not constantly practise verse.’  He was mistaken, belike.  I hold, for my part, that in our Public Schools, we give up a quite disproportionate amount of time to ‘composition’ (of Latin Prose especially) and starve the boys’ reading thereby.  But at any rate we do give up a large share of the time to it.  Then if we insist on this way with the tongues of Homer and Virgil, why do we avoid it with the tongue of Shakespeare, our own living tongue?  I answer by quoting one of the simplest wisest sayings of Don Quixote (Gentlemen, you will easily, as time goes on, and we better our acquaintance, discover my favourite authors):—­