could have done so."

And so the skirmishing went on with varying fortunes, till, by some
happy fluke, I hit upon an argument which settled the matter in my
favour.

"Well," I said, "I can't give you a reason for it--in fact I have never
been able to understand why it is so--but it is an undeniable fact that
the public _will_ make a marked difference between your style and mine,
and if your version is to be adopted, it must stand in your name."

"Very well, then," he said, "have it your own way. I am sure you are
welcome to anything I can do for you."

"Truly kind you are, and truly grateful am I, and plucky too I beg you
to believe, for I don't care a pin if people do say: 'There goes
Moscheles hanging on to the tail of Pegasus!'"

I meant it then, and I mean it to-day. You may laugh if you like, but I
have the best of it; it isn't everybody who can boast of having written
five lines of poetry _together with Robert Browning_.

* * * * *

The picture I have now. It just fits a recess in my dining-room,
measuring about five feet by seven. I daily sit opposite it at meals,
and when I watch the golden rays of the sun as they come pouring through
the garden-window, and steal across the canvas, I see a beautiful
picture which I certainly never painted.

First the light plays on the flowing hair where it dips into the water,
and gives it just the aureate tints I tried in vain to mix; then
steadily creeping on, it illuminates, first the closed eyes and the
parted lips, then the body and the seaweed straggling across it, and
presently it reaches the urchin in the Concha, and would fain make me
imagine that I could paint an iridescent shell and a child of flesh and
blood.

Those are moments of happy delusions and I acknowledge it gratefully,
for it is not vouchsafed to every one to paint his pictures together
with the blessed sun, any more than it is to write his poems together
with Robert Browning, or indeed to sit down daily to a square meal, and
to have before him a canvas into which he can weave pleasant memories of
the Past.

* * * * *

A portrait I was painting of Sir James Ingham, the Bow Street
magistrate, led to the following incident. I was telling my sitter how
great were the difficulties I had to contend with as a host and an
impresario when I had a musical At home at the Studio.

Which of one's talented friends should be asked first? Shoul