SAMUEL PROUT 307

then also a youth.¹ This companionship was probably rather cemented by the energy than the delicacy of Haydon’s sympathies. The two boys were directly opposed in their habits of application and modes of study. Prout unremitting in diligence, patient in observation, devoted in copying what he loved in nature, never working except with his model before him; Haydon restless, ambitious, and fiery; exceedingly imaginative, never captivated with simple truth, nor using his pencil on the spot, but trusting always to his powers of memory. The fates of the two youths were inevitably fixed by their opposite characters. The humble student became the originator of a new School of Art, and one of the most popular painters of his age. The self-trust of the wanderer in the wilderness of his fancy betrayed him into the extravagances, and deserted him in the suffering, with which his name must remain sadly, but not unjustly, associated.

4. There was, however, little in the sketches made by Prout at this period to indicate the presence of dormant power. Common prints, at a period when engraving was in the lowest state of decline, were the only guides which the youth could obtain; and his style, in endeavouring to copy these, became cramped and mannered; but the unremitting sketching from nature saved him. Whole days, from dawn till night, were devoted to the study of the peculiar objects of his early interest, the ivy-mantled bridges, mossy water-mills, and rock-built cottages, which characterise the valley scenery of Devon. In spite of every disadvantage, the strong love of truth, and the instinctive perception of the chief points of shade and characters of form on which his favourite effects mainly depended, enabled him not only to obtain an accumulated store of memoranda, afterwards valuable, but to publish several elementary works² which

¹ [For Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846), see above, p. 130. His father was a printer and publisher in Plymouth.]

² [Rudiments of Landscape, in Progressive Studies, Drawn and Etched in imitation of Chalk (1813); Prout’s Village Scenery (1813); A Series of Easy Lessons in Landscape Drawing (1820); and several other volumes of the kind (see J. L. Roget’s History of the Old Water-Colour Society, i. 351-353).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]