Cotmania. Vol. XI. 1935-6

his work on it first & then if you will let me have it again I can go thro' it carefully shortly before you return + give or send you my remarks while they are fresh.
Perhaps my chief criticism is connected with a sentence in your letter that Cotman's work is too good to be popular. Except for the early work which he never gave the public a chance to appreciate, for you can't expect a /
large public for something which is scarcely shewn to them & not persisted in thro' thick & thin, he was neither good nor popular. That is his tragedy & his puzzle. The solution is partly in himself & his want of character & determination, partly in the movements of popular taste which he failed, for all his efforts, ever to meet. I don't see how you can get this aspect of his environment fully into your book, but it is the one thing that is missed, I think, & it is wanted in order to explain his failure. Of course you never suggest in your book that his failure was due to his being too good, nor even that it was due to his having refused to compromise sufficiently