the retirement he loved, chiefly occupied in making designs for books. Lawrence and Hoppner were the fashionable portrait painters. Jackson,-at this time a young man of six or seven and twenty, rising in reputation; Wilkie, Etty, Hilton, Mulready, were students; Landseer, Leslie, Eastlake, were in their boyhood. Barry was living, but in a state of seclusion, which, combined with his morbid temper and eccentric habits, gave some colour to the report that he was deranged. Over his successes and his failures, his turbulent arrogance, his magnificent views, his battles with antiquaries, academicians, and patrons of art, the scene was now closing fast. and Haydon and Wilkie went together to see the unhappy He died shortly afterwards, painter lie in state at the Adelphi; but they went as to a spectacle, and Haydon, in the flush of youth, health, and ambition, never dreamed that his own career would so nearly resemble that of the dead man sleeping under his pall, to conclude with even a deeper reverse and a darker tragedy.

While absent from London, called home by his father's dangerous illness, Jackson wrote to him, 'There is a raw, tall, 'pale Scotchman come up; an odd fellow, but there is something in him; he is called Wilkie.' This was sufficient to fix Haydon's attention when they afterwards met in the Academy. I watched him come in,' said Haydon; we sat and drew in 'silence for some time; at length Wilkie rose, looked over my 'shoulder, said nothing, and sat down. I went and looked over his shoulder, and sat down again. We had seen enough to satisfy us of each other's skill, and when the class broke up we went and dined together.' Such was the beginning of this strange intimacy between two men so dissimilar; an intimacy based as it should seem in contrasts, rather than in sympathies, often clouded, yet never severed, faithful if not constant. Haydon makes merry with Wilkie's oddities, fiercely resents his occasional neglects and chilling caution, and acknowledges, characteristically, that Wilkie's reputation often disturbed his 'peace,' but loved him notwithstanding, appreciated his talents, and heartily enjoyed his triumphs. The two friends became almost inseparable, studied together, breakfasted, dined, went to the theatres, ranged the London streets together; and Haydon records, with excusable satisfaction, that at this period they were neither of them tempted into vice, and that in after life they dwelt on this recollection with mutual respect and pleasure. No 'doubt,' says Haydon, 'an Etonian, or a Winchester, or a Rugby boy will laugh at this, but with us it was a fact. At twenty I had an object which sustained me far above the temptations of a London life.' Both the young men had a deep sense of

VOL. XCVIII. NO. CC.

M M

religion that of Wilkie was the severe Presbyterianism of his country; that of Haydon somewhat peculiar, tinctured, we suspect, by his mother's High Church enthusiasm and his own excitable temperament. He says, 'at this time I never rose without prayer, and never retired without it, and occasionally in the day time, in the fervour of conception, I inwardly ' asked a blessing on my designs.' These prayers and religious outpourings, without which he never begun or ended a picture, are plentifully scattered through the pages of his journals. How is it that we are so edified when we read of the old monkish painters imploring, on bended knees, a blessing on their work, and that we read these prayers of Haydon with a sort of shrinking? Is it that they want humility?—that they are more like adjurations than supplications?-passionate appeals for what he needed or desired, hurled upwards, as it were, with a strange vehemence, as if he would have taken Heaven's mercy by storm? While reading them we are irresistibly reminded of the exclamation of Rosalba*, when she looked, with soft eyes wide open, after Sir Godfrey Kneller, who had been, as usual, swaggering and boasting in her atélier-This man can have no religion, 'for he has no modesty!' Yet we cannot doubt that Haydon's religion was, in its kind, perfectly sincere; that the Almighty was to him-as to Dr. Johnson and other men of undoubted piety an almost material impersonation of power, in whom he implicitly believed, and that this belief influenced his inward life, his relations with his family, and, so far as his necessities 'did not interfere, with the world.' If Dr. Johnson, in the prayers and ejaculations which fill the pages of his Diary, may invoke the Almighty against his bilious melancholy, beseech help in early rising,' and return thanks for all the comforts he had received in the friendship of Anna Williams,' why should it give offence that Haydon should pray for success in his cartoon, and return thanks for being enabled, through Divine help, to give the right expression to a head? It may seem absurd to compare the poor painter and the lofty moralist. Yet in both was not the piety equally unspiritual and equally tinctured by the individual temperament? We return to our

narrative.

Jackson, who was intimate with Haydon and Wilkie, was at this time especially patronised by Lord Mulgrave, and, with a generous unselfish feeling, introduced both to his noble friend; Haydon also obtained the notice of Sir George Beaumont, and interested Lady Beaumont by his liveliness, frankness, and

The celebrated crayon painter.

genuine enthusiasm. He was asked to dinner, and describes very humorously his trepidation on this his first entrance into fashionable life-how he dressed, and redressed, and brushed up his hair, and looked in the glass, and studied the cut of his coat, and acted over his début, and wished that his mother 'could see him!' But once in Lady Beaumont's drawingroom, his self-esteem placed him quite at ease - perhaps rather too much so. Another and more serious matter for trepidation was the sending his first picture to the Exhibition. It was a Riposo,' painted before he was one-and-twenty. Like other young beginners, he thought every eye would be on his picture, and was full of those 'cursed torturing anxieties' which a youth of a less excitable character might be excused for feeling. His friend Northcote would have hung him up close to the ceiling. His friend Fuseli interfered in his behalf: Why,' said he, 'you are sending him to heaven before his time! take him down! dat is shameful!' So he was taken down, and for this time reprieved. The picture, one of great promise, was afterwards purchased by Mr. Thomas Hope. Haydon records, with affectionate exultation, the success of Wilkie's Blind Fiddler,' in the same exhibition (1807)—as the centre of attraction, and ⚫ deserving to be so.'

The letters which Sir George Beaumont addressed to him and to Wilkie about this time are excellent for the profound appreciation of the difficulties and triumphs of Art, and a true sympathy with the artist; they are, besides, written with much elegance. His advice, however, must be taken with a difference.' For instance, his reasons for choosing subjects from history rather than from the poets, are excellent as addressed to such a man as Haydon, but would only have misled or encumbered such a man as Stothard, whose genius was so essentially lyrical that he impressed this character on every thing he painted, who seemed born to illustrate fiction and poetry, and whose historical and religious pictures bear the same relation to High Art that one of Metastasio's operas bear to tragedy. But these speculations would carry us far out of our way; we resume our story.

There are some sketches of Haydon's student life at this time over which we would gladly linger; for instance, the description of the circle of young men who used to assemble of an evening at Wilkie's lodgings in Rathbone Place. Wilkie himself, Scotch and careful-reserved, yet argumentative - unlettered, but kindled by a steady flame of genius.' Haydon energetic, ambitious, full of grand ideas, and romantic hopes, eloquent and overbearing. Du Fresne, an accomplished French

man, gay and careless, a scholar, a musician, an artist. William Allen since Sir William - full of Scotch humour and lively anecdote; with others of less note; all young- ardent - poor. And the only woman among them, a certain 'Lizzy,' who lodged on the second floor, and made tea for them. The 'position,' says Haydon, of this generous-hearted girl, though 'somewhat anomalous, was perfectly innocent.' She listened to all; sympathised with all; but kept all at a distance. Ultimately she married the Frenchman, and disappeared, heaven knows whither.

We

The news of his mother's illness interrupted for a time his artistic pursuits. The account of the death of this good mother, the sketch of her early life, and of her deaf and dumb lover, is one of the best and most pathetic passages in the book. cannot give it at length, and should only mar it by compression. Haydon laid his mother in the grave with honest filial tears, returned to London, and 'prepared to renew the battle of life.'

He began his picture of Siccius Dentatus, the old Roman hero, who, when attacked by the satellites of the Decemvirs, set his back against a rock, and sold his life dearly. Haydon does not tell us how or when he was led to choose this subject, full of fierce action, but destitute of repose, of grace, or any variety of sentiment. The choice was certainly characteristic. While preparing his picture, he spared no pains; made elaborate studies of heads, limbs, armour, and meditated deeply on the theory of his art. He was puzzled by the differences between nature and the antique, and knew not how to harmonise them. The Academy could not help him. His models showed him one thing - his teachers another. So he blundered impatient along the barren beaten path, bewildered with theories of beauty and form, vainly in search of some guiding principle to steer by. If I 'copied nature,' he says, my work was mean; if I left her, 'mannered.' While he was thus astray, the Elgin Marbles arrived in England; and he went casually, with his friend Wilkie, to visit them.

We are now so accustomed to look up to these majestic relics sitting god-like on their pedestals, or floating like a sublime vision, group after group, along the walls, in all their acknowledged grandeur, and to test the lofty pretensions of Greek art by their unquestioned excellence, that we can hardly imagine a time when they were lying in Lord Elgin's yard in Park Lane, to be profaned by foolish critics, misnamed by blundering antiquaries, and undervalued by gaping academicians; while others, provoked by such fatuity, fell into the opposite extreme, and

raved about them rather as intoxicated by their beauty than as truly understanding their value and significance as works of art. Lord Liverpool and his official advisers, confounded by the 'din,' and wondering at the public excitement about a parcel of mutilated fragments, afraid to decide, afraid of being taken in, showed the uncertainty of judgment which marked many of their more important public acts.

That Haydon had thought deeply, inquired earnestly, and felt truly in regard to the principles of his art, was proved by the fervent enthusiasm with which he at once hailed these divine relics. He was as clear-sighted as he was unhesitating in the judgment he pronounced. Here was demonstrated the possible harmony between the essential truth of nature, and the highest ideal in art. No longer in alto mare senza governo, even while he drank in the beauty of these wonderful monuments, he was sufficiently prepared by his early studies to perceive and interpret the principles on which they were executed.

'Now,' he says, exulting, 'now was I mad for buying Albinus without a penny to pay for it! now was I mad for lying on the floor hours together copying its figures! I felt the future, I foretold that these marbles would prove themselves the finest things on earth, that they would overturn the false beau idéal where Nature is nothing, and would establish the true beau idéal, of which Nature alone is the basis. I do not say this now, when all the world acknowledges it; but I said it then, when no one would believe me.' (Vol. i. p. 85.)

And in another place, after years of study and contemplation, he breaks out into a mingled invocation and thanksgiving:

Every day and every hour they grow more exquisite to me; I thank God for being in existence on their arrival. May they take deep root in my nature! may their spirit be interwoven in my soul! may their essence be mingled in my blood and circulate through my being! may I never think of Form, select from Nature, draw a line or paint a touch without instinctive reference to these exquisite productions!'

He tells us that, after seeing these marbles for the first time, he returned home, looked at his figure of Dentatus with absolute disgust, seized his brush, dashed it all out in a fury, then threw himself on his bed, and dreamed of the Ilyssus. During the next few months he studied constantly at Lord Elgin's, drawing sometimes fifteen hours a day. We find him, while his 'Dentatus' was in progress, alternately obliterating his work in fits of angry self-condemnation; and then, with like inconsistence, exulting in his own capability to paint like Titian'draw like Michael Angelo.' But we sigh while we read. For in spite of the Elgin Marbles -in spite of his admirable theories