to
combat from high quarters--even from Lawrence--the plausible argument
that _subject_ makes the picture. Perhaps you think an evening effect
might do; perhaps it might start me some new admirers, but I should lose
many old ones. I imagine myself driving a nail; I have driven it some
way, and by persevering I may drive it home; by quitting it to attack
others, though I may amuse myself, I do not advance beyond the first,
while that particular nail stands still. No man who can do any one thing
well will be able to do any other different thing equally well; and this
is true of Shakespeare, the greatest master of variety.

_Constable._

LXXXII

To work on the _Ladye_. Found part of the drapery bad, rubbed it out,
heightened the seat she sits on, mended the heads again; did a great
deal, but not finished yet. Any one might be surprised to read how I
work whole days on an old drawing done many years since, and which I
have twice worked over since it was rejected from the Royal Academy in
'47, and now under promise of sale to White for L20. But I cannot help
it. When I see a work going out of my hands, it is but natural, if I see
some little defect, that I should try to mend it, and what follows is
out of my power to direct: if I give one touch to a head, I give myself
three days' work, and spoil it half-a-dozen times over.

_Ford Madox Brown._

LXXXIII

In literature as in art the rough sketches of the masters are made for
connoisseurs, not for the vulgar crowd.

_A. Preault._

LXXXIV

It is true sketches, or such drawings as painters generally make for
their works, give this pleasure of imagination to a high degree. From a
slight, undetermined drawing, where the ideas of the composition and
character are, as I may say, only just touched upon, the imagination
supplies more than the painter himself, probably, could produce; and we
accordingly often find that the finished work disappoints the
expectation that was raised from the sketch; and this power of the
imagination is one of the causes of the great pleasure we have in
viewing a collection of drawings by great painters.

_Reynolds._

LXXXV

I have just been examining all the sketches I have used in making this
work. How many there are which fully satisfied me at the beginning, and
which seem feeble, inadequate, or ill-composed, now that the paintings
are advanced. I cannot tell myself often enough that it means an immense
deal of labour to bring