6th.--Spent the morning in a sort of luxury of idleness, tidying-up the painting-rooms, and hanging up two fresh pictures in them, viz.: the pencil _King Lear_, and a study of Major Freulick’s horse--painted at Ghent when I was fifteen or sixteen--at the time I painted my father’s portrait, and the head of the old woman[147] I still value. At this time, when I first began art seriatim, and before I fell into any kind of mannerism, many of my studies are better than I was able to do for many years afterwards. This same horse, which is the facsimile of the one it portrayed, was the most unmilitary-looking brute I think I ever beheld, or at any rate ever saw Major mounted on. It fell under me one day as I was trotting it over one of the Flemish wooden drawbridges, and peeled the skin off my chin. However, with the loss of a saddle-girth, we were none the worse for it much, either of us. FOOTNOTES: [4] There was a painter, then of some repute, named Marshal Claxton: I presume that he and his family are here referred to. [5] This refers to the mortal illness of Mrs. Brown, in Rome: she died soon afterwards. [6] Lucy Brown had been placed at the boarding school (a very good one) kept at Gravesend by her aunt by marriage, Mrs. Helen Bromley. This was a most estimable Scotch lady (Miss Weir): she died in 1886. [7] The residence of the painter Charles Lucy. [8] Highgate Cemetery, where Mrs. Madox Brown was buried. [9] The surgeon who constantly attended Brown and his family; also Dante Rossetti. He became Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy, President of the Royal College of Physicians, &c. [10] According to Brown’s original plan, the centre picture of Chaucer was flanked by two side-pictures, containing figures of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Burns, and Byron. This scheme was finally abandoned in the large painting, but it is to be seen in one or two minor versions of the work. [11] Thomas is William Cave Thomas, a painter (still living) who had distinguished himself in the Cartoon competitions at Westminster Hall. He is also known as the writer of some very thoughtful books on the Theory of Fine Art, as co-ordinate with Science and Morals. [12] The studio was in Clipstone Street, Marylebone; the same in which Dante Rossetti first visited Madox Brown. [13] In this instance and others Brown wrote “togam” instead of “toga.” I suppose he had, at some time, seen the word printed in its accusative case. In matters of this sort he had a _curiosa felicitas_ for going wrong. [14] Evidently means Shakespeare’s birth-house. Possibly Mr. Thomas’s rather summary proposal was founded on his not believing that building to be the true birth-house. [15] A blank is left in the MS. [16] From a very early stage in his professional practice, Brown paid unusual attention to questions of true lighting, such as this. [17] So far as I remember, these figures are not included in any version of the Chaucer subject.