would regard as involving a deeper degradation than painting
pot-boilers.

Haydon began his new career by painting the 'portrait of a gentleman.'
'Ah, my poor lay-figure,' he groans, 'he, who bore the drapery of
Christ and the grave-clothes of Lazarus, the cloak of the centurion
and the gown of Newton, was to-day disgraced by a black coat and
waistcoat. I apostrophised him, and he seemed to sympathise, and bowed
his head as if ashamed to look me in the face.' Haydon's detestation
of portrait-painting probably arose from the secret consciousness that
he was not successful in this branch of his art. His taste for the
grandiose led him to depict his sitters larger than life, if not
'twice as natural.' His objection to painting small pictures was
partly justified by his weakness of sight. It was easy for him to dash
in heads on a large scale in a frenzy of inspiration, but he seemed to
lack the faculty for 'finish.' The faults of disproportion and
apparent carelessness that disfigure many of his works, are easily
accounted for by his method of painting, which is thus described by
his son Frederick, who often acted as artist's model:--

'His natural sight was of little or no use to him at any distance, and
he would wear, one over the other, two or three pairs of large round
concave spectacles, so powerful as greatly to diminish objects. He
would mount his steps, look at you through one pair of glasses, then
push them all back on his head, and paint by the naked eye close to
the canvas. After some minutes he would pull down one pair of his
glasses, look at you, then step down, walk slowly backwards to the
wall, and study the effect through one, two, or three pairs of
spectacles; then with one pair only look long and steadily in the
looking-glass at the side to examine the reflection of his work; then