Tuesday 26th.--This was the evening appointed for me to call on Marston.... I met Hervey, and Bedingfield, author of _The Peer and the Blacksmith_, &c. What Hervey admires most, and that very highly indeed, in the 2nd No. of _The Germ_, is Gabriel’s _Blessed Damozel_, which he has read to Marston, who agrees in admiring it. We talked of Bailey’s new poem, _The Angel World_, just come out, of Browning, Mrs. Browning, &c. Marston says that Browning, before publishing _Sordello_, sent it him to read, saying that this time the public should not accuse him at any rate of being unintelligible (!!). Browning’s system of composition is to write down on a slate, in prose, what he wants to say, and then to turn it into verse, striving after the greatest amount of condensation possible; thus, if an exclamation will suggest his meaning, he substitutes this for a whole sentence. Mrs. Browning, I find, had published a volume of original poems before her _Prometheus--An Essay on Mind_ &c. which came out in ’26. Of this, Marston showed me a review with extracts, in an old magazine called _The Sunbeam_, to which he had contributed.... Thursday 28th.--Gabriel went to Brown’s in the evening, to have a sketch of his head made on copper as an exercise for Brown in etching.[218] This was done with much freedom of hand.... Sunday, 3rd March.--Gabriel had White, the model, to sit to him for the arms of his Angel Gabriel. He is now looking out for a woman with red hair[219] for the Virgin. I went to see Millais’s picture, at which I found him working--his brother standing to him for the chest of the man knocking out a nail. The figures of St. John and the Virgin, the head of Christ, the legs of the assistant and of St. Joseph, are done, as well as the ground and some other accessory portions; Alexander Tupper is to be the assistant. Millais has sold his _Ferdinand_ to Mr. Ellison, the collector, for £150--£50 more than it had been at first commissioned for. I saw the kind and patronizing review which _The Art Journal_ gives of _The Germ_; saying that he (The Art Journalist) must doff the critic, and not dwell on minor faults, lest the Germ should not fructify....