Sunday 10th.--I sat to Brown for the head of a figure in his picture--that of a minstrel or poet who looks round at Chaucer with a sort of jealous admiration. He would like me to notice in _The Spectator_ the sale of this work to the Dickinsons, and thinks it might be well to write an article on the relations of painters and picture-dealers--a suggestion I propose to adopt.[242] He tells me that, at the election of Hook as Associate, the only competitor brought to the ballot was Harding,[243] who obtained seven votes out of sixteen.... Wednesday 13th.--Gabriel wrote again that after all he might probably return to-day, and did in fact arrive in the course of the morning. His picture remains for the present at the Inn where the coach stops. Hunt expects to be back to-morrow, and Stephens returned on Sunday. Gabriel brings with him a great quantity of translations from the old Italian, and one or two short original poems; he has also written a stanza or two to a poem he had begun shortly before leaving London suggested by some of the Nineveh sculpture[244].... I called on the Editor of _The Spectator_, who appears to be a frank, cordial, and agreeable man, without any pretension to knowledge in art.... He observed that it would not be in the least necessary to get up something about art for every week; and indeed, I think, seemed rather impressed with the notion that I should present him with more than is wanted. Saturday 30th.--... Millais met Frank Stone the other evening, who spoke to him about young men, ignorant of the first principles of art, imagining they are going to do something new, and found a school; and said he supposed Millais and his friends considered _him_ altogether wrong in his productions--to which Millais returned a decided affirmative. An absurd lithograph-caricature is about to be issued of Millais’s last picture, as he is informed by his Brother; something of a big dog sniffing at a cur, with the picture in the background, and some motto to the effect that some one or other fancies he’s like nature, but isn’t.... There was a very laudatory notice ... in _The Guardian_, he says, of his and Hunt’s last pictures; and some persons in Oxford informed him that Ruskin writes in the paper, and that the article may not improbably be his[245].... Woolner, who passed the evening with Gabriel, was yesterday with Patmore, accompanying Tennyson in the search for a house in the neighbourhood of London, but without result. Tennyson is in a state of disgust at the idea of being presented at court on his appointment to the laureateship. Patmore says that Tennyson has in his memory, and on occasion recites, an immense quantity of poetry which he never intends to commit to paper.... Gabriel finished, all but the last verse, his parody on _Ulalume_.[246]