his methods. How he would twirl his dirty brush round and dab down a
lump of Prussian blue, imagining it to be sepia, hastily correcting
it a moment afterwards with a lump of lake, and then say chuckling
to himself: 'By Gode, dat is fine!--dat is very nearly a good purple.
Fenwick, my boy, mark me--you vill not find a good purple no-vere!
Some-vere--in de depths of Japanese art--dere is a good purple. Dat I
believe. But not in Europe. Ve Europeans are all tam fools. But I
vill not svear!--no!--you onderstand, Fenwick; you haf never heard me
svear?' And then a round oath, smothered in a hasty fit of coughing.
And once he had cut off part of the skirt of his Sunday coat, taking
it in his blindness for an old one, to clean his palette with; and it
was thought, by the boys, that it was the unseemly result of this rash
act, as disclosed at church the following Sunday morning, which had
led to the poor old man's dismissal.

But from him John had learnt a good deal about oil-painting--something
too of anatomy--though more of this last from that old book--Albinus,
was it?--that he had found in his father's stock. He could see himself
lying on the floor--poring over the old plates, morning, noon, and
night--then using a little lad, his father's apprentice, to examine
him in what he had learnt--the two going about arm-in-arm--Backhouse
asking the questions according to a paper drawn up by John--'How many
heads to the deltoid?'--and so on--over and over again--and with what
an eagerness, what an ardour!--till the brain was bursting and the
hand quivering with new knowledge--and the power to use it. Then
Leonardo's 'Art of Painting' and Reynolds's Discourses'--both
discovered in the shop, and studied incessantly, till the boy of
eighteen felt himself the peer of any Academician, and walked proudly
down the Kendal streets, thinking of the half-finished paintings in
his garret at home, and of the dreams, the conceptions, the ambitions