In my opinion, a snail is the perfect type of what an artist upon his travels ought to be. The snail goes alone and slowly, at quite a rational pace; stops wherever he feels inclined, and carries his house with him. Only I fear that the snail does not give that active attention to the aspects of nature which ought to be the constant habit of the artist.
“I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.” — Hazlitt
31 March 2015
Portrait of the Artist as a Snail
Philip Gilbert Hamerton, A Painter's Camp (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1882), p. 244: