[117] Writing to Southey, from Norwich, 3rd June, 1806, William Taylor says, 'Opie is soon to be knighted;' and in 1807 he says that Opie had been at the point of death from abdominal paralysis--probably caused by the absorption into his system of lead-vapours from his paints. [118] Mrs. Gilbert says that her father got 250 guineas for engraving this picture. [119] Opie painted a _replica_ of Mrs. Delany's portrait for the Countess of Bute, for which Horace Walpole designed a frame; and I confess these paintings appear to me to refute entirely the statement that Opie's female portraits were unsuccessful. [120] Lonsdale the painter afterwards occupied it: it now forms part of an hotel. [121] Betty Opie was a remarkably shrewd and sagacious old lady. She gave my father most entertaining accounts of her visit to London, when she went up to see 'Jan,' as she called her illustrious brother, and especially of an escapade of hers at the British Museum, where, having accidentally broken off the finger of a mummy, she brought it home to her brother, who ground it down into a fine brown paint. [122] An old sweetheart of his, whose portrait he once painted in the act of milking a cow. [123] When Opie was painting Charles James Fox's portrait, worried by many and various criticisms, Fox said, 'Don't attend to _them_; you _must_ know best.' [124] In this year he contributed to the Exhibition six portraits, one of them being that of Dr. Samuel Parr. [125] That on 'Design' was delivered on 16th Feb., 1807, the others followed on 23rd Feb., 2nd March, and 9th March. [126] According to his sister's account, the _post-mortem_ examination disclosed 'a bladder on the brain'; but Dr. Sayer thought the patient's malady was a species of painter's colic. [127] Another of his pupils was John Cawse, the well-known subject and portrait painter, of whose works the writer possesses an example. Theophilus Clarke, A.R.A., was another of Opie's pupils. [128] I fancy, notwithstanding the thin disguise of the title of the poem, that Mrs. Opie must have been thinking of this portrait when she wrote the following lines: 'To me how dear this twilight hour, Cheered by the faggot's varying blaze! If this be mine, I ask no more On morn's refulgent light to gaze: 'For now, while on HIS glowing cheek I see the fire's red radiance fall, The darkest seat I softly seek, And gaze on HIM, unseen by all. 'His folded arms, his studious brow, His thoughtful eye, _unmarked_, I see; Nor could his voice or words bestow So dear, so true a joy on me.' [129] When a lad, Opie used to say that he loved painting 'better than bread and meat.' Northcote was himself another of our West-country artists; he was born at Plymouth, close to the Cornish border.