'Yes, your candid opinion.'
'You will not be offended at anything I shall say?'
'No. I want an honest judgment, and I can trust yours.'
I used the common slang of criticism.
'Suppose, then, I were to say that the: composition is bad, the colour crude, the whole work amateurish, the modelling thin and in places, false, the——'
'Don't say any more, Calvotti. I've been a fool, and the governor has been right all the time.'
'If I said these things, you would believe them?'
'If you said them?' he cried, coming from-behind my chair. 'But do you say them?'
'Stand off!' I said, laughing. A man can rarely endure praise and blame with equal fortitude. My young friend, you will some day paint great pictures. In four or five hundred years' time great painters will look at this and will reverently point out in it the faults of early manner; but they will read the soul in it—as I do now. You are a creature of a hundred years—a painter, an artist. This is not paint, but a face—a face of flesh and blood, with soul behind. And this is not paint, but a faded brown silk. And this is not paint, but solid mahogany. You have done more than paint a picture. You have made concrete an inspiration. Your technique is all masterly, but it does not overpower. It gives only fitting body to a beautiful idea—its soul!'
He blushed and trembled whilst I spoke. Englishmen do not often talk poetry—off the stage. He answered—