That Lough must have been poor enough at this time, is evident from the
fact that, during the execution of his Milo, he did not eat meat for
three months; and when Peter Coxe found him out, he was tearing up his
shirt to make wet rags for his figure, to keep the clay moist. He had a
bushel and a half of coals during the whole winter; and he used to lie
down by the side of his clay model of the immortal figure, damp as it
was, and shiver for hours till he fell asleep.

[Footnote 1: Haydon's _Autobiography_, vol. ii., p, 155.]

Chantrey once said to Haydon, "When I have made money enough, I will
devote myself to high art." But busts engrossed Chantrey's time. He was
munificently paid for them, and never raised himself above the
money-making part of his profession. When Haydon next saw Chantrey at
Brighton, he said to him, "Here is a young man from the country, who has
come to London; and he is doing precisely what you have so long been
dreaming of doing."

The exhibition of Milo was a great success. The Duke of Wellington went
to see it, and ordered a statue. Sir Matthew White Eidley was much
struck by the genius of young Lough, and became one of his greatest
patrons. The sculptor determined to strike out a new path for himself.
He thought the Greeks had exhausted the Pantheistic, and that heathen
gods had been overdone. Lough began and pursued the study of lyric
sculpture: he would illustrate the great English poets. But there was
the obvious difficulty of telling the story of a figure by a single
attitude. It was like a flash of thought. "The true artist," he said,
"must plant his feet firmly on the earth, and sweep the heavens with his
pencil. I mean," he added, "that the soul must be combined with the
body, the ideal with the real, the heavens with the earth."