A sort of boyish unconsciousness, indeed, was the keynote and charm of his nature.

A less sophisticated creature never followed the mystic calling of art.
Fortunately for me, he was not one of those painters who understand and expound their own work.

On the contrary, he was a perfect child about it, and painted for no more mysterious reason than that his eye delighted in beautiful natural effects, and that he loved to play with paint and brushes.

Though he was undoubtedly sensitive somewhere to the mystic side of Nature, her Wordsworthian "intimations," you would hardly have guessed it from his talk.

"A bully bit of colour," would be his craftsmanlike way of describing a twilight full of sibylline suggestiveness to the literary mind.