see the truth of what was above asserted,—that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done easily; and let them not torment themselves with twisting of compositions this way and that, and repeating, and experimenting, and scene-shifting. If a man can compose at all, he can compose at once, or rather he must compose in spite of himself. And this is the reason of that silence which I have kept in most of my works on the subject of Composition. Many critics, especially the architects, have found fault with me for not "teaching people how to arrange masses"; for not "attributing sufficient importance to composition." Alas! I attribute far more importance to it than they do;—so much importance that I should just as soon think of sitting down to teach a man how to write a "Divina Commedia," or "King Lear," as how to "compose," in the true sense, a single building or picture. The marvellous stupidity of this age of lecturers is, that they do not see that what they call "principles of composition," are mere principles of common-sense in everything, as
