The Long-Desired and Promised Chemical-Philosophical Touchstone

—not like a portrait is to its original. A portrait is better the more exactly it resembles the model. A son, on the other hand, can be dissimilar to the father in almost all individual parts, and yet have a certain air by which everyone immediately recognizes the father *). Just as the bees extract the juice of the flowers without keeping their color, and prepare a honey from various juices that is better than any individual juice from which it was made; so must poets and writers indeed appropriate the thoughts of others, and also their colors, but never speak with their words. When I repeated these warnings recently, he answered me: I confess that you are right; but many examples, and even your own, induce me to use happy turns and phrases from great writers now and then. Upon this I replied full of wonder: If you ever encounter the like in my writings, then know that this happened not intentionally, but through an oversight. Regardless of the fact that such examples frequently occur in good writers, I still labor with all my strength, and herein consists for me one of the greatest difficulties in writing, to step neither in the footsteps of others nor in my own. Meanwhile, I would still like to know what kind of example you have found in my writings? In your sixth eclogue, he said, a verse ends with the words: Atque intonat ore original Latin: "and thunders with his mouth". As soon as I heard the words, I also noticed that they were the ending of a Virgilian verse. I report this to you so that you may reproach yourself for not having shown me my oversight—

*) original Latin footnote: "Umbra quadam, et quem pictores nostri aerem vocant etc. l. c." Translation: By a certain shadow, and what our painters call "air" the general character or appearance of a person, etc.