Among Browne's posthumous pieces is included "Answers to Sir William Dugdale's Enquiries about the Fens." On July 11, 1853, Macaulay recorded in his Diary: "Read Haydon's Memoirs. Haydon was exactly the vulgar idea of a man of genius. He had all the morbid peculiarities which are supposed by fools to belong to intellectual superiority, eccentricity, jealousy, caprice, infinite disdain for other men; and yet he was as poor, commonplace a creature as any in the world. He painted signs, and gave himself more airs than if he had painted the Cartoons. Whether you struck him or stroked him, starved him or fed him, he snapped at your hand in just the same way. He would beg you in piteous accents to buy an acre and a half of canvas that he had spoiled. Some good-natured Lord asks the price. Haydon demands a hundred guineas. His Lordship gives the money out of mere charity, and is rewarded by some such entry as this in Haydon's journal: A hundred guineas, and for such a work! I expected that for very shame he would have made it a thousand. he is a mean, sordid wretch.' In the mean time. the purchaser is looking out for the most retired spot in his house to hide the huge daub which he has bought for ten times its value out of mere compassion." There is somewhere in America, But unless the flames have claimed their own, Haydon's "great picture" of Christ's entry into Jerusalem. It was exhibited in London in 1820; if we can trust the painter's account, more than fifteen hundred pounds were taken in shillings at the door. It is said that he estimated that his genius deserved three thousand pounds a year, and that at the rate of three thousand pounds a year he had a right to live, whatever income he made. The base tradesmen with whom he dealt, indifferent to genius and its rights, not getting their accounts settled, twice threw him into a debtors' prison. That he would condescend to receive small payments is shown by the following letter, addressed to my mother's cousin, Mr. Tilt, a London publisher, for whom he seems to have been engraving some plates: DEAR SIR, Cash & activity are the sinews of War—if you proceed as you began - You are the man. I send you 12 To 12 Num.- £2.5 The rest as soon as dry; the bearer is trust worthy Ju. 7, 1835. Yours &c BR HAYDON MR TILT Fleet St. The following letter from Professor Jowett, the famous Master of Balliol College, was written when I was working at my edition of Boswell. It was by the Clarendon Press-the press and publishing house of the University of Oxfordthat the book was brought out. This great establishment was founded with the money made by the sale of Clarendon's "History of the Great Rebellion." Soon after the middle of last century it had sunk into the neglect that overwhelmed learning in the university. In a curious manuscript volume in the possession of the Delegates of the Press it is stated that in 1764 "the under-servants and pressmen were a set of idle, drunken men, and the house appeared more like an ale-house than a printing-room." Of the men who did most to give it fresh life, Sir William Blackstone stands among the first. It has long been famous for the beauty and excellence of its printing. Americans who come to Oxford commonly pay a visit, I am told, to the little shop in the High Street where its publications are sold, so that they may carry away a memorial of the place. A family Bible, I learn, is what they almost always select, an admirable choice, no doubt, in itself, but not one which brings any satisfaction to authors. They should procure also a specimen of that great division of the Clarendon Press which has always been known as the |