[42] From this observation it might be inferred that Brown in 1847 was a decided Protestant and Anti-Catholic. He may possibly have been so, and must, at any rate, have been a votary of freedom of religious thought. As I knew him (beginning in 1848), he was neither Catholic nor Protestant. [43] The handwriting of all this part of the diary confirms the statement as to weak sight. [44] I do not recognize the name Elliott; a later entry shows him to have been a painter. Rossetti, whom we here find for the first time in Brown’s narrative, is of course Dante Gabriel. No account is given of the first interview of all, when Brown (as related elsewhere) called round at Rossetti’s house with a “thick stick.” The letter from my brother, March 1848, which led to that interview, has been published. [45] It will be seen that Brown, having now consigned to the Free Exhibition the moderate-sized picture of _Wiclif and John of Gaunt_, resumed work on the large _Chaucer_ and its accessories. [46] William and Mary Howitt were much connected with this publication. [47] Daniel Casey was a painter, of Irish birth or extraction, settled in Paris. Brown had a good opinion of his abilities, within certain limits. I own a small oil-picture of his--horsemen abducting a woman--spirited in action. He died towards 1888. [48] I do not think that Brown ever applied for a mastership in the Schools of Design, under their old _régime_. He did so (as shown further on) under the new _régime_. [49] Holman Hunt, of course. [50] I fancy this may have been Brown’s first acquaintance with Keats. Dante Rossetti may have set him going. Towards this same time Millais began his first “Præraphaelite” picture, from Keats’s _Isabella_. [51] The picture is, I think, the one which was afterwards named _The Infant’s Repast_ (sometimes here spoken of as _Mother and Child_). [52] For side-panel of the Chaucer picture. [53] _The Girlhood of Mary Virgin._ [54] I do not know what the lectures may have been, nor what Brown wrote about them. See the entry for 10th October. [55] This may, I suppose, have been a portion of what Brown was writing regarding Mr. Thomas’s lectures. [56] I think this means a copy of a head of his daughter Lucy, painted in her early infancy towards 1843. [57] The composition for the oil-picture of _Cordelia at the Bedside of Lear_: not to be confounded with other Lear subjects (at least two) which Brown executed at later dates. [58] This seems to relate, not to the _Lear_ picture, but to the small work named _The Infant’s Repast_. [59] _i.e._ The jester, or fool (he is immediately afterwards termed the fool), of King Lear. This head is a very fair likeness (not exactly a striking one) of Dante Rossetti. [60] It was the fifth storey if one reckons the sunk basement as first storey. The house was No. 50 Charlotte Street, Portland Place.