Thursday 21st.--I went to Patmore’s with the proof of his _Macbeth_. He has got one out of some half-dozen copies of Tennyson’s Elegies that have been printed strictly for private perusal; the publication of the work being postponed for some while, till about Christmas. Patmore says Tennyson is too lazy to go to Woolner’s for his portrait, but will be at home for him any evening he may call. He learned Italian so as to be able to read Dante, Patmore says, in one fortnight’s study. Patmore himself is desirous of making the experiment; and would, if he thought he could succeed equally well. He has been occupied the last month with his poem on Marriage,[223] of which, however, he has not meanwhile written a line; but, having meditated the matter, is now about to do so. He expresses himself quite confident of being able to keep it up at the same pitch as the few astonishing lines he has yet written, and which he read us some time ago. He is now anxious to have published as soon as possible his papers advocating certain principles in architecture, as the subject has of late been treated by others, and he is fearful of finding himself in a certain manner forestalled. He was a good deal struck with the quotations in my notice of _The Strayed Reveller_;[224] and has also a great desire to hear Gabriel’s _Bride-Chamber Talk_, of which he has heard Woolner and Millais speak. Brown finished to-day his design for the King Lear etching, and Gabriel his of Chiaro’s painting. He is now engaged, as regards writing, on a tale entitled _An Autopsychology_,[225] originally suggested to himself by an image he introduced into _Bride-Chamber Talk_.... Saturday 23rd.--... In the morning Gabriel had been at work repainting the Virgin’s head in his picture. He has begun his etching--as also has Brown. To-day’s _Athenæum_ contains an announcement of “the new poem by Mr. Browning”--_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_--to appear on the 1st April, price six shillings. There is also a review here, among _Poetry of the Million_, of a volume by a Rev. Mr. Harston, containing decidedly good things, and which deserves to be reviewed in _Art and Poetry_.[226] Monday 25th.--I called on Collinson on my way to see Hunt, and the latter himself came in while I was there. He has been on a foraging expedition to Battersea Fields after Gipsies, on the recommendation of one who sat to him for his Druid’s head, and as he wants to get some woman with good hands of a proper savage brownness. He finds himself quite disabused of old ideas concerning “sloshiness” and commonplace of gipsies, having fallen in with some of the most extraordinary-looking people conceivable. He found a very beautiful woman for what he wants, fit for Cleopatra; she consented to sit for £5 an hour, but finally came down to a shilling, and fixed a day to come. His Cleopatra asked him for a pot of beer, over which she and a most hideous old hag, her mother, made their bargain....