Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez, 1656. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Las Meninas (detail), by Diego Velázquez, 1656. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Arts & Letters

Volume III, Number 2 | spring 2010

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790