shall see, take that journey on foot through the south of France,
after the manner of an earlier vagabond of literature--Oliver Goldsmith.
Haydon was to be far too much taken up with his own troubles during the
coming months to think any more about the Borrows when he had once
completed the portrait of the mayor, which he had done by July of this
year. Borrow's letter to him is, however, an obvious outcome of a remark
dropped by the painter on the occasion of his one visit to his studio
when the following conversation took place:

'I'll stick to the heroic,' said the painter; 'I now and then
dabble in the comic, but what I do gives me no pleasure, the
comic is so low; there is nothing like the heroic. I am engaged
here on a heroic picture,' said he, pointing to the canvas;
'the subject is "Pharaoh dismissing Moses from Egypt," after
the last plague--the death of the first-born,--it is not far
advanced--that finished figure is Moses': they both looked at
the canvas, and I, standing behind, took a modest peep. The
picture, as the painter said, was not far advanced, the Pharaoh
was merely in outline; my eye was, of course, attracted by the
finished figure, or rather what the painter had called the
finished figure; but, as I gazed upon it, it appeared to me
that there was something defective--something unsatisfactory in
the figure. I concluded, however, that the painter,
notwithstanding what he had said, had omitted to give it the
finishing touch. 'I intend this to be my best picture,' said
the painter; 'what I want now is a face for Pharaoh; I have
long been meditating on a face for Pharaoh.' Here, chancing to
cast his eye upon my countenance, of whom he had scarcely taken
any manner of notice, he remained with his mouth open for some
time, 'Who is this?' said he at last. 'Oh, this is my brother,
I forgot to introduce him----.'

We wish that the acquaintance had extended further, but this was not to
be. Borrow was soon to commence the wanderings which were to give him
much unsatisfactory fame, and the pair never met again. Let us, however,
return to John Borrow, who accompanied Haydon to Norwich, leaving his
brother for some time longer to the tender mercies of Sir Richard
Phillips. John, we judge, seems to have had plenty of shrewdness, and
was not without a sense of his own limitations. A chance came to him of