[231] Smith’s little present to Sir George Beaumont is the more interesting to us, because of that painter’s well-known love of brown, and his dictum that “there ought to be at least one brown tree in every landscape.” Beaumont’s name is inseparably associated with the National Gallery, and also with Wordsworth’s noble poem on his picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, containing the lines-- “Ah! then if mine had been the painter’s hand To express what then I saw; and add the gleam, The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration, and the Poet’s dream,-- I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile, Amid a world how different from this! Beside a sea that could not cease to smile; On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.” [232] Henry Salt, the great traveller and British consul-general in Egypt. He sold antiquities to the British Museum, and had dealings, resulting in a quarrel, with Belzoni. [233] Smith evidently refers to the plan affected by Alexander (not the greater John Rosher) Cozens, of throwing a blot, and then working it into a landscape composition. [234] Smith expresses himself rather oddly here, for he married only once, his wife being Anne Maria Prickett, who, after a union of forty-five years, was left his widow. [235] Sir James Winter Lake, Bart., a man of wealth and culture, compiled “Bibliotheca Lakeana” (a catalogue of his library) in 1808, and “British Portraits and Historical Prints, collected by J. W. L.” in the same year. His extra-illustrated _Granger’s History_ extended to forty large folio volumes. Lady Lake is mentioned in one of the many amusing dialogues recorded by Smith in his _Life of Nollekens_. Panton Betew, the silversmith of Old Compton Street, Soho, talking to Nollekens of their common memories, says: “Ay, I know there were many very clever things produced there (at Bow); what very curious heads for canes they made at that manufactory! I think Crowther was the proprietor’s name; he had a very beautiful daughter, who is married to Sir James Lake. Nat. Hone painted a portrait of her, in the character of Diana, and it was one of his best pictures.” [236] Smith’s general meaning is plain, but I cannot with confidence explain the reference to Tooley Street. It may be no more than a slightly contemptuous way of referring to villa-building tradesmen (nobodies, like the three Tooley Street tailors) who at that time were building their Camomile Cottages in the country. [237] The part of Major Sturgeon, J.P., “the fishmonger from Brentford,” was played by Foote in his own comedy, _The Mayor of Garratt_ (1763). Sturgeon brags: “We had some desperate duty, Sir Jacob … such marchings and counter-marchings from Brentford to Ealing, from Ealing to Acton, from Acton to Uxbridge. Why, there was our last expedition to Hounslow; that day’s work carried off Major Molassas.”… Zoffany painted Foote in this character.