Friday 16th to Friday 23rd.--A hit at the P.R.B. (conscientiously speaking, very stupid) appears in _Punch_ of Wednesday, introducing caricatures of the _Mariana_ and of Collins’s picture. It is admitted, however, with a reference to Ruskin, that the P.R.B. pictures are _true_; and the article is directed in part against supposed Romanizing tendencies. On the 16th Woolner, Gabriel, and myself, were at Tupper’s; this being the first day since his illness that Woolner has returned to work, doing something on the minor Wordsworth monument[264] for which he was commissioned. He is to be introduced next week at Carlyle’s to Ruskin; who, as Patmore informs him, had written his second letter to _The Times_, but now thinks of withholding it on the consideration that it casts so strong a slur on all non-P.R.B. living painters.... Carlyle the other night, in talking with Woolner was speaking of “Alfred” (as he calls Tennyson) and Browning in reference to their embodying their thoughts in verse, when there is so great need of doing things in the directest way possible: “Alfred” he said, “knows how to jingle, but Browning does not.” He spoke however of Browning’s intellect in the highest terms. He then referred to the P.R.B.; “These Præraphaelites they talk of are said to copy the thing as it is, or invent it as they believe it must have been: now there’s some sense and hearty sincerity in this. It’s the only way of doing anything fit to be seen.” Woolner’s medallion pleased him very greatly. We saw Tupper’s bas-relief which the Academy rejected. It is illustrative of _The Merchant’s Second Tale_, by (or ascribed to) Chaucer, and represents the chess-playing between the merchant and the old man he meets in the strange city. It is at the extremest edge of P.R.Bism, most conscientiously copied from nature, and with good character. The P.R.B. principle of uncompromising truth to what is before you is carried out to the full, but with some want of consideration of the requirements peculiar to the particular form of art adopted. According to all R.A. ideas, it is a perfect sculpturesque heresy, whose rejection--especially seeing that it is the _introductory_ sample of the P.R.B. system in sculpture--cannot be much wondered at, though certainly most unjustifiable.... Saturday 24th.--... Gabriel, who has given notice to quit his present studio in Red Lion Square, has received from Brown the offer of a share in his; and purposes to accept it. He is inclined to paint this year, instead of _The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice on Earth and in Paradise_ (which he is re-designing), some other Dantesque subject--probably from the _Vita Nuova_. * * * * * 1853, 23rd January.--I at last resume the P.R.B. Journal, not too sanguine of continuing it for long.