Every successful work is rapidly performed; quickness is only execrable
when it is empty--small. No one condemns the swiftness of an eagle.

To him who knows not the burden of process--the attributes that are to
claim attention with every epocha of the performance--all attempt at
swiftness will be mere pretence.

_Edward Calvert._


LXXXI

I am planning a large picture, and I regard all you say, but I do not
enter into that notion of varying one's plans to keep the public in good
humour. Change of weather and effect will always afford variety. What if
Van der Velde had quitted his sea-pieces, or Ruysdael his waterfalls, or
Hobbema his native woods? The world would have lost so many features in
art. I know that you wish for no material alteration, but I have 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._