Some Account xiii
to have had it in contemplation to compose
and deliver to the Academy, and which he
seems to have intended as a history of his
mind, so far as concerned his art, and of
his progress, studies, and practice ; toge-
ther with a view of the advantages which
he had enjoyed, and the disadvantages he
had laboured under, in the course that he
had run : a scheme from which, however
liable it might be to the ridicule of Wits
and Scoffers, (a circumstance of which, he
says, he was perfectly aware,) he con-
ceived the Students might derive some
useful documents for the regulation of their
own conduct and practice. It is much to
be regretted that he did not live to com-
pose such a Discourse ; for, from the hand
of so great and candid an Artist, it could
not but have been highly curious and in-
structive. One of these fragments relating
to his feelings when he first went to Italy,
every reader will, I am confident, be pleased
with its insertion.