The young
plants keep growing up abundantly every day--look at Bastianini, dead not
ten years since--but they are browsed down by the academies. I remember
there came out a book many years ago with the title, "What becomes of all
the clever little children?" I never saw the book, but the title is
pertinent.
Any man who can write, can draw to a not inconsiderable extent. Look at
the Bayeux tapestry; yet Matilda probably never had a drawing lesson in
her life. See how well prisoner after prisoner in the Tower of London
has cut out this or that in the stone of his prison wall, without, in all
probability, having ever tried his hand at drawing before. Look at my
friend Jones, who has several illustrations in this book. {294} The
first year he went abroad with me he could hardly draw at all. He was no
year away from England more than three weeks. How did he learn? On the
old principle, if I am not mistaken. The old principle was for a man to
be doing something which he was pretty strongly bent on doing, and to get
a much younger one to help him. The younger paid nothing for
instruction, but the elder took the work, as long as the relation of
master and pupil existed between them. I, then, was mailing
illustrations for this book, and got Jones to help me. I let him see
what I was doing, and derive an idea of the sort of thing I wanted, and
then left him alone--beyond giving him the same kind of small criticism
that I expected from himself--but I appropriated his work.
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