Clever enough in his calling; with pains and some method, he had easily gained subsistence and established a name; but he had one trick that soon ruined him in the business part of his profession.

He took a fourth of his price in advance; and having once clutched the money, the poor customer might go hang for his picture.
The only things Tom Varney ever fairly completed were those for which no order had been given; for in them, somehow or other, his fancy became interested, and on them he lavished the gusto which he really possessed.
But the subjects were rarely salable.

Nymphs and deities undraperied have few worshippers in England amongst the buyers of "furniture pictures." And, to say truth, nymph and deity had usually a very equivocal look; and if they came from the gods, you would swear it was the gods of the galleries of Drury.

When Tom Varney sold a picture, he lived upon clover till the money was gone.

But the poorer and less steady alumni of the rising school, especially those at war with the Academy, from which Varney was excluded, pitied, despised, yet liked and courted him withal.