Who shall gainsay these men? Above all, who shall gainsay them when they and Nature say precisely the same thing? For where does Nature pause in her finishing—that finishing which consists not in the smoothing of surface, but the filling of space, and the multiplication of life and thought?
Who shall gainsay them? I, for one, dare not; but accept their teaching, with Nature's, in all humbleness.
"But is there, then, no good in any work which does not pretend to perfectness? Is there no saving clause from this terrible requirement of completion? And if there be none, what is the meaning of all you have said elsewhere about rudeness as the glory of Gothic work, and, even a few pages back, about the danger of finishing, for our modern workmen?"
Indeed there are many saving clauses, and there is much good in imperfect work. But we had better cast the consideration of these drawbacks and exceptions into another chapter, and close this one, without obscuring, in any wise, our broad conclusion that "finishing" means in art simply "telling more truth;" and that whatever we have in any sort begun wisely, it is good to finish thoroughly.
"With his Yemen sword for aid;
Ornament it carried none,
But the notches on the blade."
[39] See the base of the new Army and Navy Clubhouse.
[40] I take this example from Miller, because, on the whole, he is the best engraver of Turner whom we have.
[41] Fig. 5. is not, however, so lustrous as Constable's; I cannot help this, having given the original plate to my good friend Mr. Cousen, with strict charge to facsimile it faithfully: but the figure is all the fairer, as a representation of Constable's art, for those mezzotints in Leslie's life of him have many qualities of drawing which are quite wanting in Constable's blots of color. The comparison shall be made elaborately, between picture and picture, in the section on Vegetation.