k 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 dead-set he makes at improvisation. 'Tis
the contrast perhaps between the staid Dutch genius and the petulant,
sparkling French temper of this new era, into which he has thrown
himself. Alas! it is already apparent that the result also loses
something of longevity, of durability--the colours fading or changing,
from the first, somewhat rapidly, as Jean-Baptiste notes. 'Tis true, a
mere trifle alters or produces the expression. But then, on the other
hand, in pictures the whole effect of which lies in a kind of harmony,
the treachery of a single colour must needs involve the failure of the
whole to outlast the fleeting grace of those social conjunctions it is
meant to perpetuate. This is what has happene