SAMUEL PROUT 309

almost the first to create a sensation with lovers of Art, Mr. Prout received so many offers of encouragement, if he would consent to reside in London, as to induce him to take this important step-the first towards being established as an artist.

7. The immediate effect of this change of position was what might easily have been foretold, upon a mind naturally sensitive, diffident, and enthusiastic. It was a heavy discouragement. The youth felt that he had much to eradicate and more to learn, and hardly knew at first how to avail himself of the advantages presented by the study of the works of Turner, Girtin, Cozens,¹ and others. But he had resolution and ambition as well as modesty; he knew that

“The noblest honours of the mind

On rigid terms descend.”²

He had every inducement to begin the race, in the clearer guidance and nobler ends which the very works that had disheartened him afforded and pointed out; and the first firm and certain step was made. His range of subject was as yet undetermined, and was likely at one time to have been very different from that in which he has since obtained pre-eminence so confessed. Among the picturesque material of his native place, the forms of its shipping had not been neglected, though there was probably less in the order of Plymouth dockyard to catch the eye of the boy, always determined in its preference of purely picturesque arrangements, than might have been afforded by the meanest fishing hamlet. But a strong and lasting impression was made upon him by the wreck of the Dutton East Indiaman

¹ [For other references to Thomas Girtin (1773-1802), see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. iv. § 18; Notes on his Drawings by Turner (Introduction); Art of England, §§ 166, 172, and a letter printed in Cosmo Monkhouse’s Earlier English Water-Colour Painters (1889), and reprinted in a later volume of this edition. For John Robert Cozens (1752-1799), see Mornings in Florence, § 118; Art of England, § 166.]

² [Thomson: A Poem to the Memory of the Right Hon. Lord Talbot, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, Addressed to his Son, lines 288, 289:-

“Yet know, these noblest honours of the mind

On rigid terms descend:...”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]