he is aware, as I conceive, of their true littleness, bring back to him,
by the power of association, all the old magical exhilaration of his
dream--his dream of a better world than the real one. There, is the
formula, as I apprehend, of his success--of his extraordinary hold on
things so alien from himself. And I think there is more real hilarity in
my brother's fetes champetres--more truth to life, and therefore less
distinction. Yes! The world profits by such reflection of its poor,
coarse self, in one who renders all its caprices from the height of a
Corneille. That is my way of making up to myself for the fact that I
think his days, too, would have been really happier, had he remained
obscure at Valenciennes.


September 1717.

My own poor likeness, begun so long ago, still remains unfinished on the
easel, at his departure from Valenciennes--perhaps for ever; since the
old people departed this life in the hard winter of last year, at no
distant time from each other. It is pleasanter to him to sketch and plan
than to paint and finish; and he is often out of humour with himself
because he cannot project into a picture the life and spirit of his first
thought with the crayon. He would fain begin where that famous master
Gerard Dow left off, and snatch, as it were with a single stroke, what in
him was the result of infinite patience. It is the sign of this sort of
promptitude that he values solely in the work of another. To my thinking
there is a kind of greed or grasping in that humour; as if things were
not to last very long, and one must snatch opportunity. And often he
succeeds. The old Dutch painter cherished with a kind of piety his colours
and pencils. Antony Watteau, on the contrary, will hardly make any
preparations for his work at all, or even clean his palette, in the