Dear Watts,—I am very glad to have your letter to-night, having been downhearted lately and unable to write to my friends, yet glad of being remembered by them. I have kept a kind letter of Mrs. Prinsep's by me ever so long. It came too late to be answered before the birthday of which it told me.

I will come and sit whenever and wherever and as long as you like. I have nothing whatever to do, and don't mean to have. I hope to be at National Gallery on Tuesday [erased], Wednesday [erased, see end of note], and Thursday afternoons, two to four, not exactly working, but wondering. I entirely feel with you that there is no dodge in Titian. It is simply right doing with a care and dexterity alike unpractised among us nowadays. It is drawing with paint as tenderly as you do with chalk.… I suspect that Titian depended on states and times in colouring more than we do; that he left such and such colours for such and such times always before retouching, and so on; but this you would not call dodge—would you?—but merely perfect knowledge of means. It struck me in looking at your group with child in the Academy that you depended too much on blending and too little on handling colour; that you were not simple enough nor quick enough to do all you felt; nevertheless it was very beautiful. I should think you were tormented a little by having too much feeling.

If it is fine to-morrow I have promised to take a drive, but the second fine day, whatever…