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Give pensions to the learned pig, Or the hare playing on a tabor; Anglus can never see perfection But in the journeyman’s labour.

All pictures that ’s painted with sense and with thought Are painted by madmen, as sure as a groat; For the greater the fool is the pencil more blest, As when they are drunk they always paint best. They never…

As the ignorant savage will sell his own wife For a button, a bauble, a bead, or a knife, — So the taught savage Englishman spends his whole fortune On a smear or a squall to destroy picture or tune :…

The Cripple every step drudges and labours, And says: ‘Come, learn to walk of me, good neighbours.’ Sir Joshua in astonishment cries out: ‘See, what great labour! pain in modest doubt! 5‘He walks and stumbles as if he crep, And…

If I e’er grow to man’s estate, O! give to me a woman’s fate. May I govern all, both great and small, Have the last word, and take the wall.

Raphael, sublime, majestic, graceful, wise— His executive power must I despise? Rubens, low, vulgar, stupid, ignorant— His power of execution I must grant, 5Learn the laborious stumble of a fool! And from an idiot’s action form my rule?— Go, send…

These are the idiots’ chiefest arts: To blend and not define the parts The swallow sings, in courts of kings, That fools have their high finishings. 5And this the princes’ golden rule, The laborious stumble of a fool. To make out…

Nature and Art in this together suit: What is most grand is always most minute. Rubens thinks tables, chairs and stools are grand, But Raphael thinks a head, a foot, a hand.

[On the school of Rubens] Swelled limbs, with no outline that you can descry, That stink in the nose of a stander-by; But all the pulp-wash’d, painted, finish’d with labour, Of an hundred journeymen’s—how-d’ye do neighbour?

You must agree that Rubens was a fool, And yet you make him master of your School, And give more money for his slobberings Than you will give for Raphael’s finest things. 5I understood Christ was a carpenter And not…