HAYDON'S INTIMATE FRIENDS.

During these years Haydon discovered it was necessary, if he wished to be on the watch in the interests of his art, to go more into society, and he went. But he far preferred the easier society of his own literary and professional friends. With these he lived in constant intercourse. He was ever a stanch friend, and more than one of them had known with what unbounded generosity, considering his means, he would exert himself on behalf of others in embarrassment or distress. To most of them, however, his position seemed firm and established. He had made it for himself, and the great picture he was then painting, “Jerusalem,” would maintain and increase his reputation and authority on art.

Among his intimate friends at this period of his life, there is a striking absence of lords and rich men. He had tried them and found them wanting, and although he still went among them, it is evident with all his love for the aristocracy that he prefers the society of men with brains to men of mere rank or wealth.

Horace Smith, Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Keats, Hazlitt, Barnes (of.the "Times"), Charles Lamb, Wilkie, Coleridge, the Hunts, Ritchie (the African traveller), Du Bois, and Ugo Foscolo, were, more or less, his intimates; with most of these he lived on familiar terms. Often they would meet at one another's houses, and romp like schoolboys, tell inexhaustible stories, and always laugh at each other's jokes. But their interest in art, in literature, in politics and religion, was anything but boyish. They discussed their favorite subjects, debated over classics, fought Napoleon's campaigns with the fierceness of partisans Hazlitt always supporting Napoleon, Haydon

1 In his Journal for March, 187, I find the following affectionate reference to Keats: "Keats has published his first poems, and great things indeed they promise. . . . Keats is a man after my own heart. He sympathizes with me, and comprehends me. We saw through each other at once, and I hope are friends for ever. I only know that, if I sell my picture, Keats shall never want till another is done, that he may have leisure for his effusions; in short, he shall never want all his life while I live."-ED.

always against him, and in favor of the Duke-very often, it seems, breaking up their evenings in a violent heat, to forget their differences, or meet and renew them on the next occasion. Hazlitt said Haydon was one of the best talkers he knew. "I find him," he said to Bewick, "albeit the best painter in England, well read up in the literature of the day, and never at a loss for subjects of conversation, whether of books, politics, men, or things. He talks well, too, on most subjects that interest one; indeed, better than any painter I ever met. Northcote is talkative and original, but he is narrow in his views, and confined in his subjects. Haydon is more a scholar, and has a wider range and versatility of information. One enjoys his hearty joyous laugh; it sets one upon one's legs as it were better than a glass of champagne, for one is delighted to meet such a cheery spirit in the saddening depression that broods over the hypocrisy and despotism of the world. His laugh rings in my ears like merry bells." This describes him at the time fairly. Talfourd, Miss Mitford, and Wordsworth have all expressed to me a similar opinion, and I believe most of those who remember him would confirm it. His talk was so rapid, so enthusiastic, and without being brilliant, so full of anecdote and illustration, and so earnest, it completely carried you away. Wordsworth said, the last time I saw him, at Christmas, 1848, "your father was a fine, frank, generous nature, a capital talker, and well-informed." And as to his art, he said, "He is the first painter in his grand style of art that England or any other country has produced since the days of Titian. He may be disregarded and scorned now by the ignorant and malevolent, but posterity will do him justice. There are things in his works that have never been surpassed, they will be the text-book of art hereafter." This was high praise from Wordsworth, but Wordsworth knew what he was talking about, and he was too honest not to be sincere. Haydon had, of course, many personal anecdotes of his friends, and has recorded some; but he had such a keen sense of the ridiculous, it would not be fair to repeat them. Of Hazlitt, whose eccentricities offered so much opportunity for light laughter, he had

innumerable stories. Wordsworth added to the stock by one (of Hazlitt's evening amusements at the lakes) which combined such an union of the fiendish, the ludicrous, and the sublime as not to be surpassed by any story ever told of Hazlitt. Of Coleridge, I have heard him say that he did not always talk, but would sometimes sit silent, apparently taking no notice of the conversation, when suddenly, like the "locutus bos" of Livy, he would come out with something so prodigiously wise everybody became silent, and then he would pour forth for an hour, as the humor took him. The story of Lamb, on his way to the India House, leaving Coleridge at 10 A.M. in a doorway talking with his eyes shut, and coming back at 4 P.M. to find Coleridge still there with his eyes shut, talking away, as he thought, to Lamb, I have heard my father declare, though only on Lamb's authority, to be strictly true; but then Lamb delighted in such fictions about his friends. Byron he never met. They were to have met, but something prevented Byron from coming, and the opportunity never occurred again; Haydon regretted it all his life. Shelley he met occasionally. His account of their first meeting, in 1816, is characteristic; it was at a dinner-one of the last he went to at Leigh Hunt's. Haydon arrived late and took his place at the table. Opposite to him sat a hectic, spare, intellectual-looking creature, carving a bit of brocoli on his plate as if it were the substantial wing of a chicken. This was Shelley. Suddenly, in the most feminine and gentle voice, Shelley said, “As to that detestable religion, the Christian—” Haydon looked up. But says he in his diary, “On casting a glance round the table, I easily saw by Leigh Hunt's expression of ecstasy and the simper of the women, I was to be set at that evening ‘vi et armis.' I felt exactly like a stag at bay, and I resolved to gore without mercy." The result was a heated and passionate argument, and the resolution on the part of Haydon to subject himself no more to the chance of these discussions. And thus it was, to some extent, he gradually broke off his intimacy with Leigh Hunt. Warmly attached as he was to all his friends, this resolution gave Haydon certain pain. But the offensively condescending and

patronizing tone, which, under the plea of impartiality and fair judgment, Hunt would insist upon assuming when speaking of our Lord and His Apostles, looking down upon them, as it were, from the point of view of a very superior person, irritated and shocked Haydon to a degree that was unendurable. It was altogether inconsistent, in his view, with the relations of man to his God. He protested warmly against it, but being persisted in by Hunt with all the light geniality of his audacious romancings over the Biblical conception of the Almighty, their intimacy was dissolved. Later on, Haydon found in Talfourd as faithful and fearless a friend; he was also a more judicious adviser.

Among the gentler sex Haydon had many and sincere friends and admirers; Miss Mitford was among the oldest and warmest. With two very opposite characters, Maria Foote and Miss Mellon, afterwards Duchess of St. Albans, he was always a great favorite. Of Holly Lodge he had many lively stories. And as Maria Foote was just at this time delighting the town, Haydon, who used to escort her to and from the theatre, saw a good deal of life behind the scenes, but he soon tired of that. He sympathized with Johnson when he said to Garrick, in excuse for not again coming behind "Old Drury," "Oh, Davy, Davy, the silk stockings and the white bosoms of your actresses excited my amorous propensities!" It is so with all studious men. The sandals of Aspasia turned the heads of the Greek philosophers. They come out from their studies into the world, and are first astonished at the vivacity of their own emotions, and then shocked that no one else seems to share them; a little practice renders them equally insensible. But Haydon was one of those men who found love in any form a serious affair; he, therefore, preferred a fatiguing virtue to a convenient vice." The former fitted into his habits of thought and reflection, troubled him least, and did not disturb his principles or shake the peace of his mind. "Non ita difficile est quam captum retibus ipsis exire et validos Veneris perrumpere nodos." Possibly he was so much liked by the sex on account of this earnestness, and he was evidently much run

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after on account of his good looks and reputation. How it was he was not married much earlier in life it is difficult to say, under all the circumstances that have come to my knowledge; but he was a striking example that the common belief a clever women can marry any man she likes, is not always true. In love it is sometimes only one of the two that loves. We as often see clever and fascinating women, trying to attack the man they prefer, succeeding no further than to make him think of the love they feel, or fancy they feel, or wish they felt. He encourages them because it is agreeable, and they continue to try for the same reason. The illusions of love are always delightful. At length she notices a change in his manner-he is more apt, more spirited by her side. She anticipates her triumph, she sees him already at her feet, when-presto!—one fine morning she learns, to her exquisite mortification, that he has married the woman who makes him feel what she has only disposed him to. This was Haydon's fate. The explanation in his case was, I think, that there are many qualities, in both men and women, which although quite endurable in a friend, would be simply intolerable in a husband or a wife. He had the sagacity and good fortune to find this out in time.

"CHRIST'S ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM."

By the early spring of 1820, the "Jerusalem " was at length completely finished. It was moved down safely to the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly-the frame alone weighed 600 lbs.-put up without accident, pitched into its place, glazed, and toned; and towards the end of March the exhibition was ready. The private day was crowded; dukes and duchesses, court beauties, distinguished foreigners, connoisseurs, and dilettanti. The great doubt of Haydon was the head of our Saviour. He had departed from the traditional type, and in his anxiety and dissatisfaction at not at first realizing his conception, had painted the head in and out six times. Leonardi da Vinci, in a similar difficulty, left his Christ headless. Haydon says that the moment the picture was up, and he could walk back forty feet to look at it, he felt he had not reached his true conception. Very