"....Yea, I will go and lie in wait for Death, the king of souls departed, with the dusky robes, and methinks I shall find him hard by the grave drinking the sacrificial wine. And if I can seize him by this ambush, springing from my lair, and throw my arms in circle round him, none shall snatch his panting body from my grasp till he give back the woman to me." [Illustration: "HERACLES STRUGGLING WITH DEATH FOR THE BODY OF ALCESTIS." 1871 By permission of the Fine Art Society, the owners of the Copyright] This work made a landmark in Leighton's career. "Dante at Verona" had combined a complicated design of many figures with a dramatic feeling; "Cimabue's Madonna" and the "Syracusan Bride" had proved Leighton's "great power of rich arrangement," to quote D.G. Rossetti's words respecting "Cimabue's Madonna"; but in the "Heracles Wrestling with Death" there was felt to be a more profound tragedy; indeed, the objective treatment had in this instance ceded to one more subjective, in so far that the subject had appealed to him through a personal experience, though the feeling was, as in nearly all Leighton's greatest works, veiled in a classic garb. In a letter to his mother, dated November 13, 1864, he wrote:-- _November 13, 1864._ I returned so suddenly on account of a grave and terrible anxiety, _now quite removed_, about my dear friend Mrs. Sartoris. I must tell you that for some time past she has been looking dreadfully ill, getting daily worse, haggard and thin. I, in common with all her friends, had been growing very anxious, and conjectured that some day or other a crisis must come in which only the surgeon could avail her. I little thought how near at hand the moment was! She on her part had borne up with an amount of moral and physical courage which everybody says was quite incredible. Her nearest relations have not known from her that she was in so dangerous a state. A week ago I arrived at Francport, the château of the Marquis de l'Aigle, where I expected to find Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris and their children. I found instead Mme. de l'Aigle in the deepest anxiety and commotion, having received a letter saying that on that very day poor Mrs. S. was undergoing an operation of which the event was very doubtful! I need hardly say that I instantly hurried off to England in the greatest alarm, and in fear and trembling lest she should have succumbed. You may judge of my relief, next morning, on hearing from the servant in Park Place that she was doing well. I hurried off to the doctor, a friend of mine, and heard that for six hours her life had been in jeopardy, but that, thank God, she was doing amazingly well, that for a week there could be no _certainty_ of her recovery, but that the possible chances doubled every day. Since then, thank God, she