Therewith began the battles of the Romantic school, and all the daring of Théophile Gautier, Thiers, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Baudelaire, Bürger-Thoré, Gustave Planche, Paul Mantz, and others had to be called upon in order to storm the heights held by the batteries of the Classical critics. Count Forbin gave proof of no less courage when he bought the picture, torn to shreds as it was by hostile criticism, for the State, at the price of six thousand francs. This enabled Delacroix to visit England. He spent the time from spring to autumn of 1825 in London, where he consorted amicably with all the artists of the day. And he took an interest not only in English art, but also in literature and the drama. His preference for Shakespeare, Byron, and Walter Scott, who were already his favourite poets, found new sustenance. An English opera made him acquainted with Goethe's _Faust_; and henceforth these poets entered into the foreground of his works. A picture of "Tasso" (the poet in a cell of the madhouse, through the window of which two grinning lunatics look in upon him) in 1826, the "Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero" and the "Death of Sardanapalus," both after Byron, in 1827, and "Faust in his Study" in 1828, followed the "Massacre"--all of them obviously the works of a painter who loved bright, glowing colour, had studied Rubens and had recently returned from England. In 1828 was published, in seventeen plates, his cycle of illustrations to _Faust_, to accompany a translation of the poem into French; and this was followed by a number of lithographs on Shakespearian subjects.