MY TRAVELLING COMPANION.


My picture was a failure. Partial friends had guaranteed its success;
but the Hanging Committee and the press are not composed of one's
partial friends. The Hanging Committee thrust me into the
darkest corner of the octagon-room, and the press ignored my
existence--excepting in one instance, when my critic dismissed me in a
quarter of a line as a 'presumptuous dauber.' I was stunned with the
blow, for I had counted so securely on the L.200 at which my grand
historical painting was dog-cheap--not to speak of the deathless fame
which it was to create for me--that I felt like a mere wreck when my
hopes were flung to the ground, and the untasted cup dashed from my
lips. I took to my bed, and was seriously ill. The doctor bled me till
I fainted, and then said, that he had saved me from a brain-fever.
That might be, but he very nearly threw me into a consumption, only
that I had a deep chest and a good digestion. Pneumonic expansion and
active chyle saved me from an early tomb, yet I was too unhappy to be
grateful.

But why did my picture fail? Surely it possessed all the elements of
success! It was grandly historical in subject, original in treatment,
pure in colouring; what, then, was wanting? This old warrior's head,
of true Saxon type, had all the majesty of Michael Angelo; that young
figure, all the radiant grace of Correggio; no Rembrandt shewed more
severe dignity than yon burnt umber monk in the corner; and Titian
never excelled the loveliness of this cobalt virgin in the foreground.
Why did it not succeed? The subject, too--the 'Finding of the Body of
Harold by Torch-light'--was sacred to all English hearts; and being
conceived in an entirely new and original manner, it was redeemed from