"
People should live on this principle more than they do, but they do
live on it a good deal; from the age of, say, fifty we eat our days
downwards.
In New Zealand for a long time I had to do the washing-up after each
meal. I used to do the knives first, for it might please God to take
me before I came to the forks, and then what a sell it would have
been to have done the forks rather than the knives!
Terseness
Talking with Gogin last night, I said that in writing it took more
time and trouble to get a thing short than long. He said it was the
same in painting. It was harder not to paint a detail than to paint
it, easier to put in all that one can see than to judge what may go
without saying, omit it and range the irreducible minima in due order
of precedence. Hence we all lean towards prolixity.
The difficulty lies in the nice appreciation of relative importances
and in the giving each detail neither more nor less than its due.
This is the difference between Gerard Dow and Metsu. Gerard Dow
gives all he can, but unreflectingly; hence it does not reflect the
subject effectively into the spectator. We see it, but it does not
come home to us. Metsu on the other hand omits all he can, but omits
intelligently, and his reflection excites responsive enthusiasm in
ourselves. We are continually trying to see as much as we can, and
to put it down.
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