Haydon, with a letter of introduction from Prince Hoare, called upon Northcote. He was shown first into a dirty gallery, then up-stairs into a dirtier painting-room, and then, under a high window, with the light falling full on his bald grey head, stood a diminutive wizened figure in an old blue striped dressing-gown, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead. Looking keenly with his little shining eyes at his visitor, he opened the letter, read it, and with the broadest Devon dialect, said-- 'Zo you mayne tu bee a peinter, doo 'ee? What zort of peinter?' 'Historical painter, sir.' 'Heestoricaul peinter! Why, ye'll starve with a bundle of straw under yeer head.' Presently he read the note again. 'Mr. Hoare zays you're studying anatomy; that's no use--Sir Joshua didn't know it. Why should you want to know what he didn't?' 'But Michael Angelo did, sir.' 'Michael Angelo! what's he tu du here? You must peint portraits here!' Haydon was roused to opposition. 'But I won't!' '_Won't_,' screamed the little man, 'but you _must_! Your vather isn't a moneyed man, is he?' 'No, sir, but he has a good income, and will maintain me for three years.' 'Will hee? Hee'd better make 'ee mentein yeerzelf.' 'Do you think, sir, that I ought to be a pupil to anybody?' 'No,' said Northcote. 'Who's to teach 'ee here? It'll be throwing your vather's money away.' 'Mr. Opie, sir, says I ought to be.' 'Hee zays zo, does hee? ha, ha, ha, ha! he wants your vather's money.' He received many visitors in his studio. He was constantly at home, and liked to talk over his work, for he never paused on account of the callers. He never let go his palette even. He went to the door with a 'Gude God!' his favourite exclamation in his west country dialect, 'what, is it _you_? Come in:' and then climbed his way back to his canvas, asking and answering in his cool, self-possessed way, all about the news of the day. Yet he was violent and angry, and outspoken sometimes, was Sir Joshua's loyal pupil. 'Look at the feeling of Raphael!' said some one to him. 'Bah!' cried the little man. 'Look at Reynolds; he was all feeling! The ancients were _baysts_ in feeling, compared to him.' And again: 'I tell 'ee the King and Queen could not bear the presence of _he_. Do you think he was overawed by _they_? Gude God! He was poison to their sight. They felt ill at ease before such a being--they shrunk into themselves, overawed by his intellectual superiority. They inwardly prayed to God that a trap-door might open under the feet of the throne, by which they might escape--his presence was too terrible!' Certainly he was possessed by no extravagant notions of the divinity of blood-royal. 'What do you know,' he was asked, 'of the Prince of Wales, that he so often speaks of you?' 'Oh, he knows nothing of me, nor I of him--it's only his _bragging_!' the painter grandly replied.