John Constable Quote

The attempt to revive styles that have existed in former ages, may for a time appear to be successful, but experience may now surely teach us its impossibility. I might put on a suit of Claude Lorraine's clothes and walk into the street, and the many who knew Claude but slightly would pull off their hats to me, but I should at last meet with some one, more intimately acquainted with him, who would expose me to the contempt I merited. It is thus in all the fine arts. A new Gothic building, or a new missal, is in reality little less absurd than a new ruin.

Lecture, Literary and Scientific Institution, Hampstead, (25 July 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie - History of Landscape Lectures