3io MORE POT-POURRI 



and ignorance cannot, perform. Men of superior talents 

 alone are capable of thus using and adapting other men's 

 minds to their own purposes, or are able to make out 

 and finish what was only in the original a hint or 

 imperfect conception. A readiness in taking such hints, 

 which escape the dull and ignorant, makes in my opinion 

 no inconsiderable part of that faculty of the mind which 

 is called genius.' 



Before I begin my list of books I think I will say 

 that there are few more useful things for young people to 

 take with them to Italy than a biographical dictionary 

 of the painters. I have two ; but they are old ones. I 

 have had them all my life. Doubtless there are better 

 and more modern ones now, which I have not taken the 

 trouble to look up. One is Pilkington's ' Dictionary of 

 Painters ' by Allan Cunningham, and the other a 

 ' Dictionary of Italian Painters ' by Maria Farquhar, 

 edited by E. M. Wornham. This is a dear little book 

 published in 1855, and light and portable, but probably 

 long out of print. In studying art, nothing is more 

 necessary than to know not only the chronology of the 

 pictures themselves, but also to a certain degree the 

 evolution of the minds of the men who painted them. 

 This we can partly arrive at by the dates of their births 

 and deaths. The galleries as a rule are not arranged to 

 help one much, though many pictures now have dates on 

 their frames. Still, it requires a peculiar head certainly, 

 I think, one not possessed by most women to arrange 

 these dates of the painters' lives, overlapping each other 

 as they do, on the spur of the moment, in a way that is 

 of the smallest use for judging the merits of the pictures, 

 and above all the mind of the man that shines through 

 his work. 



One should know the date of a picture, as in biography 

 everything depends upon the age at which incidents occur. 



