happiest of my life. When I gave the effect I intended to any part of
the picture for which I had prepared my colours; when I imitated the
roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil; when I hit the
clear, pearly tone of a vein; when I gave the ruddy complexion of
health, the blood circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the
face, I thought my fortune made; or rather it was already more than
made, I might one day be able to say with Correggio, '_I also am a
painter!_' It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit; but it did not make
me less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my work in the chair
to look at it through the long evenings; and many a time did I return to
take leave of it before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending
it with a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up there
by the side of one of the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George).
There was nothing in common between them, but that they were the
portraits of two very good-natured men. I think, but am not sure, that
I finished this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same day that
the news of the battle of Austerlitz came; I walked out in the
afternoon, and, as I returned, saw the evening star set over a poor
man's cottage with other thoughts and feelings than I shall ever have
again. Oh for the revolution of the great Platonic year, that those
times might come over again! I could sleep out the three hundred and
sixty-five thousand intervening years very contentedly!--The picture is
left: the table, the chair, the window where I learned to construe Livy,
the chapel where my father preached, remain where they were; but he
himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, and charity!



NOTES to ESSAY I