Face to face with privations, he felt himself a coward.

He would not have accepted a day without bread, for the utmost glory art could bestow.

As he had said himself, he sent art to the deuce, as soon as he recognised that it would never suffice to satisfy his numerous requirements.

His first efforts had been below mediocrity; his peasant eyes caught a clumsy, slovenly view of nature; his muddy, badly drawn, grimacing pictures, defied all criticism.
But he did not seem to have an over-dose of vanity for an artist; he was not in dire despair when he had to put aside his brushes.

All he really regretted was the vast studio of his college chum, where he had been voluptuously grovelling for four or five years.