Monday 21st.--Millais called in the evening, to take Gabriel with him to Mr. Bateman’s (the Illuminator): they also picked up Woolner on the way. The visit ... afforded unqualified satisfaction. Gabriel recited lots of Patmore, Browning, Mrs. Browning, etc.... We (Gabriel and myself) presented Bernhard Smith, on his departure, with a Browning, bearing the following inscription--“Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory has departed. Travels Waring West away?” Smith leaves on Wednesday[156].... Wednesday 23rd.--... Hunt ... has completed his design of the Ancient Britons and Monk, and has resumed the one from _Isabella_, “He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch.” ... Millais has made considerable progress with the _Caen Nunnery_, having put-in the greater part of the populace. He says his poem is considerably advanced, and that he will work hard on it to-night. He having informed us, almost as soon as we entered, that he had been reading Patmore’s _Woodman’s Daughter_ and _Sir Hubert_,[157] and had found several faults of diction etc. therein, we proceeded to a most careful dissection, and really the amount of improvable is surprisingly small--as he also agreed in thinking.... In the course of conversation, Millais said that he had thoughts of painting a hedge (as a subject) to the closest point of imitation, with a bird’s nest--a thing which has never been attempted. Another subject he has in his eye is a river-sparrow’s nest, built, as he says they are, between three reeds; the bird he describes as with its head always on one side, “a body like a ball, and thin legs like needles.” He intends soon to set about his subject from Patmore, Sir Hubert and Mabel, “as she issues from the trees”[158].... Thursday 24th.--... Millais came; soon after which we fell to portrait-taking. Millais’s, of Woolner, Hancock, and Hunt, have come highly successful. He has done something to his poem.... Sunday 27th.--Gabriel and I went in the morning, by appointment, to Dickinson’s,[159] where we met Ford Brown and Cave Thomas. Dickinson says that, when Cottingham first mentioned to him his intention of buying Gabriel’s picture, he descanted glowingly on his genius, and expressed his horror at having “found him in a garret.”[160]