No man should try even to allude to the greater part of what he sees in his subject, and there is hardly a limit to what he may omit. What is required is that he shall say what he elects to say discreetly; that he shall be quick to see the gist of a matter, and give it pithily without either prolixity or stint of words. Relative Importances It is the painter’s business to help memory and imagination, not to supersede them. He cannot put the whole before the spectator, nothing can do this short of the thing itself; he should, therefore, not try to realise, and the less he looks as if he were trying to do so the more signs of judgment he will show. His business is to supply those details which will most readily bring the whole before the mind along with them. He must not give too few, but it is still more imperative on him not to give too many. Seeing, thought and expression are rendered possible only by the fact that our minds are always ready to compromise and to take the part for the whole. We associate a number of ideas with any given object, and if a few of the most characteristic of these are put before us we take the rest as read, jump to a conclusion and realise the whole. If we did not conduct our thought on this principle—simplifying by suppression of detail and breadth of treatment—it would take us a twelvemonth to say that it was a fine morning and another for the hearer to apprehend our statement. Any other principle reduces thought to an absurdity. All painting depends upon simplification. All simplification depends upon a perception of relative importances. All perception of relative importances depends upon a just appreciation of which letters in association’s bond association will most readily dispense with. This depends upon the sympathy of the painter both with his subject and with him who is to look at the picture. And this depends upon a man’s common sense. He therefore tells best in painting, as in literature, who has best estimated the relative values or importances of the more special features characterising his subject: that is to say, who appreciates most accurately how much and how fast each one of them will carry, and is at most pains to give those only that will say most in the fewest words or touches. It is here that the most difficult, the most important, and the most generally neglected part of an artist’s business will be found to lie.