Tuesday 15th.--W. B. Scott (to whom Gabriel wrote some days ago, sending a copy of _The Germ_, and requesting contributions) answered, enclosing two poems, viz.: a sonnet, _Early Aspirations_, and a blank-verse piece, _Morning Sleep_. The latter, which is gloriously fine, must absolutely come into No. 2.... Wednesday 16th.--... Gabriel ... in the evening began a rough sketch of a design for my _Plain Story_, which (it is likely) may appear in our 4th No., and which he thinks of illustrating. Collinson was at his studio all day, working on the etching[202].... I had a letter from Stephens, giving me a list of the subscribers he has obtained, and suggesting that we need not print so many as 700 copies of No. 2: 300 would, he thinks, suffice. In answering him I concurred in the reasonableness of the suggestion, but consider that 400 will not be too much.... Thursday 17th.--George Tupper ... advises that 500 copies should be published of the 2nd No., to which I agreed.... Friday 18th.--This was to have been a P.R.B. meeting at Collinson’s, but the day turned out so intensely sloshy that only Hunt and I kept the appointment.... We had some argument concerning the limitability of the P.R.B.: Hunt maintaining that it ought inviolably to consist of the present Members, for which Collinson and I do not see any very cogent necessity.... Monday 21st.--By enquiry at the Publisher’s I learn that he has sold 120 or 130 copies, which is at least as good as I looked for. He sent me a letter he has received from a Mr. Bellamy, Secretary to the National Club (to which I sent a copy), advising him to send one to the Proprietor of _The John Bull_.... Yesterday’s _Dispatch_ contains a few words in praise of No. 1.... Tuesday 22nd.--Ford Brown showed Gabriel his article _On the Mechanism of a Historical Picture_. He will finish it and copy it out, and is to let Gabriel have it back to-morrow. After dinner I went for the first time to see Hunt at his new lodgings, 5 Prospect Place, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where he seems very comfortably settled. He has made a good deal of substantial progress with his picture; of which, since I saw it last, he has done some more figures in the background, the boy listening on the floor, the straw &c. on the roof, with some sparrows in it, and something of the view outside the hut. The figure he is now painting at is that of the foremost man pushing at the door. Whilst I was there he went on working upon a stump of a beech-tree which forms one of the supports of the hut, and on which he means to paint a net hanging.... Stephens came with John Tupper, who read, and left with me, a poem of his written on Penge Wood. This, should there be room for it, will come into No. 2[203].... At half-past ten o’clock Hunt was requested to allow his gas to be turned off, as the family were about to go to bed!! which did not exactly meet his views or intentions....