bad ones, why not
the good? I might just as well have done it, and probably it would have
been the very thing out of the whole commission which would have
prevented the series from being the tame things that such sometimes are.
Anyway, remember this--for I have invariably found it true--that _the
chief difficulty of a work of art is always its chief opportunity_. A
thing can be looked at in a thousand and one ways, and something
dauntingly impossible will often be the very thing that will shake your
jogtrot cart out of its rut, make you whip up your horses, and get you
right home.

BUT

Observe this--that all these wishes of the client should be most
strictly ascertained _beforehand_; all possibility of midway criticism
and alteration prevented. Thresh the thing well out in the preliminary
stages and start clear; as long as it _is_ raw material, all in
solution, all hanging in the balance--you can do anything. It is like
"clay in the hands of the potter," and you can make the vessel as you
please: "Out of the same lump making one vessel to honour and another to
dishonour." But when the work is _half-done_, when colour is calling out
to colour, and shape to shape, and thought to thought, throughout the
length and breadth of the work; when the ideas and the clothing of them
are all fusing together into one harmony; when, in short, the thing is
becoming that indestructible, unalterable unity which we call a Work of
Art:--then, indeed, to be required to change or to reconsider is a real
agony of impossibility; tearing the glowing web of thought, and form,
and fancy into a destruction never to be reconstructed, and which no
piecing or patching will mend.

There are many minor points, but they are really so entirely matters of
experience, that it hardly seems worth while to dwell upon them. Start
with recognising the fact that you must try to add business habits and
sensible and economical ways to your genius as an artist; in short,
another whole side to your character; and keep that ever in view, and
the details will fall into their places.

_Have Everything in Order._--Every letter relating to a current job
should be findable at a moment's notice in an office "letter basket,"
rather wider than a sheet of foolscap paper, and with sides high enough
to allow of the papers standing upright in unfolded sheets, each group
of them behind a card taller than the tallest kind of ordinary document,
and bearing along the top edge