Mulgrave had recently been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.] where they met ministers, generals, great ladies and men of genius, and rose daily in hope and promise. Haydon now began the picture of the 'Death of Siccius Dentatus' that his patron had suggested, but he found the difficulties so overwhelming that, by Wilkie's advice, he decided to go down to Plymouth for a few months, and practise portrait-painting. At fifteen guineas a head, he got plenty of employment among his friends and relations, though he owns that his portraits were execrable; but as soon as he had obtained some facility in painting heads, he was anxious to return to town to finish his large picture. Mrs. Haydon was now in declining health, and desiring to consult a famous surgeon in London, she decided to travel thither with her son and daughter. Unfortunately her disease, angina pectoris, was aggravated by the agitation of the journey, and on the road, at Salt Hill, she was seized with an attack that proved fatal. Haydon was obliged to return to Devonshire with his sister, but as soon as the funeral was over he set off again for town, where his prospects seemed to justify his exchanging his garret in the Strand for a first floor in Great Marlborough Street.

He found the practice gained in portrait-painting a substantial advantage, but he still felt himself incapable of composing a heroic figure for Dentatus. 'If I copied nature my work was mean,' he complains; 'and if I left her it was mannered. How was I to build a heroic form like life, yet above life?' He was puzzled to find, in painting from the living model, that the markings of the skin varied with the action of the limbs, variations that did not appear in the few specimens of the antique that had come under his notice. Was nature wrong, he asked himself, or the antique? During this period of indecision and confusion came a proposal from Wilkie that they should go together to inspect the Elgin Marbles then newly arrived in England, and deposited at Lord Elgin's house in Park Lane. Haydon carelessly agreed, knowing nothing of the wonders he was to see, and the two friends proceeded to Park Lane, where they were ushered through a yard to a dirty shed, in which lay the world-famous Marbles.

'The first thing I fixed my eyes on,' to quote Haydon's own words, 'was the wrist of a figure in one of the female groups, in which were visible the radius and ulna. I was astonished, for I had never seen them hinted at in any wrist in the antique. I darted my eye to the elbow, and saw the outer condyle visibly affecting the shape, as in nature. That combination of nature and repose which I had felt was so much wanting for high art was here displayed to midday conviction. My heart beat. If I had seen nothing else, I had beheld sufficient to help me to nature for the rest of my life. But when I turned to the Theseus, and saw that every form was altered by action or repose-when I saw that the two sides of his back varied as he rested on his elbow; and again, when in the figure of the fighting metope, I saw the muscle shown under one armpit in that instantaneous action of darting out, and left out in the other armpits; when I saw, in short, the most heroic style of art, combined with all the essential detail of everyday life, the thing was done at once and for ever.... Here were the principles which the great Greeks in their finest time established, and here was I, the most prominent historical student, perfectly qualified to appreciate all this by my own determined mode of study.'

On returning to his painting-room, Haydon, feeling utterly disgusted with his attempt at the heroic in the form and action of Dentatus, obliterated what he calls 'the abominable mass,' and breathed as if relieved of a nuisance. Through Lord Mulgrave he obtained an order to draw from the Marbles, and devoted the next three months to mastering their secrets, and bringing his hand and mind into subjection to the