3i6 MORE POT-POURRI 



that assistance which every human being wants, and 

 which it appears, from the examples that have been 

 given, the greatest painters have not disdained to 

 accept. 



' Let me add, the diligence required in the search, and 

 the exertion subsequent in accommodating those ideas 

 to your own purpose, is a business which idleness will 

 not, 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 dic- 

 tionary 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 R. 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 



