Shakespeare, who without predecessors or followers, without concerning himself about models, went to meet immortality in his own way.  This work was executed on the great floor over the new theatre.  “We often assembled round him there, and in that place I read aloud to him the proof-sheets of “Musarion.”  As to myself, I by no means advanced in the practice of the art.  His instructions worked upon our mind and our taste; but his own drawing was too undefined to guide me, who had only glimmered along by the objects of art and of nature, to a severe and decided practice.  Of the faces and bodies he gave us rather the aspect than the forms, rather the postures than the proportions.  He gave us the conceptions of the figures, and desired that we should impress them vividly upon our minds.  That might have been beautifully and properly done, if he had not had mere beginners before him.  If, on this account, a pre-eminent talent for instruction may be well denied him, it must, on the other hand, be acknowledged that he was very discreet and politic, and that a happy adroitness of mind qualified him very peculiarly for a teacher in a higher sense.  The deficiencies under which each one labored he clearly saw; but he disdained to reprove them directly, and rather hinted his praise and censure indirectly and very laconically.  One was now compelled to think over the matter, and soon came to a far deeper insight.  Tims, for instance, I had very carefully executed, after a pattern, a nosegay on blue paper, with white and black crayon, and partly with the stump, partly by hatching it up, had tried to give effect to the little picture.  After I had been long laboring in this way, he once came behind me, and said, “More paper!” upon which he immediately withdrew.  My neighbor and I puzzled our heads as to what this could mean; for my bouquet, on a large half-sheet, had plenty of space around it.  After we had reflected a long while, we thought, at last, that we had hit his meaning, when we remarked, that, by working together the black and the white, I had quite covered up the blue ground, had destroyed the middle tint, and, in fact, with great industry, had produced a disagreeable drawing.  As to the rest, he did not fail to instruct us in perspective, and in light and shade, sufficiently indeed, but always so that we had to exert and torment ourselves to find the application of the principles communicated.  Probably his view with regard to us who did not intend to become artists, was only to form the judgment and taste, and to make us acquainted with the requisites of a work of art, without precisely requiring that we should produce one.  Since, moreover, patient industry was not my talent, for nothing gave me pleasure except what came to me at once, so by degrees I became discouraged, if not lazy; and, as knowledge is more comfortable than doing, I was quite content to follow wherever he chose, after his own fashion, to lead us.