[Page 385,] line 11 of essay. "Timon" as it was last acted. Referring to the performance of "Timon of Athens," given exactly as in Shakespeare's day, with no women in the cast, at Drury Lane on October 28, 1816.
[Page 385,] line 9 from foot. The Haytian. I can find no authority for Lamb's suggestion that Dawe might have gone to Hayti to paint the court of Christophe. Probably Lamb based the theory, as a joke, upon a story of Dawe which Sir Anthony Carlisle, the surgeon, and a friend of Lamb's, used to tell. The story is told in The Library of the Fine Arts, 1831, in the following terms:—
In a conversation with Sir A. Carlisle, that eminent surgeon told Dawe that he had lately sent to Bartholemew's Hospital a negro of prodigious power and fine form, such as he had never before seen, and the sight of whom had given him better conceptions of the beauty of Grecian sculpture than he had previously possessed. Struck with this account Dawe went to the Hospital where he found the man had been discharged. Any other person would here have given up the pursuit, but Dawe was not to be baffled in a favourite object; he accordingly commenced a strict search through all those parts of the town where such a person was likely to be found; and at length, after much inquiry, found him on board a ship about to sail for the West Indies. Dawe, though his means at that time were not so great as they afterwards became, induced the man to go home with him, where he maintained him some time; and the Negro having among other instances of his strength, told him of his once seizing a buffalo by the nostrils and bearing it down to the ground, Dawe was so struck by the fact as suited for the composition of a powerful picture, that he placed the man in the posture he described, and drew him in that attitude. When the picture was sent for the premium of the British Institution, several of the governors objected to it as being a portrait and not an historical picture; notwithstanding this, however, the better judgment of the majority awarded it the prize.
[Page 386,] line 2. Widow H. This was probably Mrs. Hope, wife of Thomas Hope, the famous virtuoso and patron, who had just died—in February, 1831. Dawe was one of his less capable protégés. It was Mr. and Mrs. Hope whom Dubost, the French painter, out of pique, caricatured as "Beauty and the Beast." On the exhibition of the picture in public, the incident caused some notoriety, and George Dyer's friend Jekyll was engaged in the subsequent law-suit.
[Page 386,] line 16 from foot. His father. Philip Dawe, mezzotint engraver, who flourished 1760-1780, the friend of George Morland and the pupil of that painter's father, Henry Robert Morland (1730?-1797), and engraver of many of his pictures. George Dawe wrote George Morland's life.
[Page 386,] line 13 from foot. Carrington and Bowles. Properly, Carington Bowles, of 69 St. Paul's Churchyard. The laundress washing was probably Lamb's recollection of one of the well-known pair, "Lady's-Maid Ironing" and "Lady's-Maid Soaping Linen," by Henry Morland, the originals of which are in the National Gallery. I cannot identify among the hundreds of Carington Bowles' publications in the British Museum the picture that Lamb so much admired in the Hornsey Road. But the inn would probably be that which is now The King's Head (or Yard of Pork), at the corner of Crouch End Hill (a continuation of Hornsey Lane), Crouch Hill, Coleridge Road and Broadway. The picture has gone.
[Page 387,] line 14 from foot. He proceeded Academician. Lamb wrote to Manning in 1810, "Mr. Dawe is made associate of the Royal Academy. By what law of association, I can't guess."
[Page 388,] line 15 from foot. Sampson ... Dalilah. The letters contain an earlier account of the picture. Writing to Hazlitt in 1805 Lamb says: "I have seen no pictures of note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It is curious to see how differently two great men treat the same subject, yet both excellent in their way: for instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe. Mr. Dawe has chosen to illustrate the story of Sampson exactly in the point of view in which Milton has been most happy: the interview between the Jewish Hero, blind and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has imagined his Locks grown again, strong as horse-hair or porcupine's bristles; doubtless shaggy and black, as being hairs 'which of a nation armed contained the strength.' I don't remember, he says black: but could Milton imagine them to be yellow? Do you? Mr. Dawe with striking originality of conception has crowned him with a thin yellow wig, in colour precisely like Dyson's, in curl and quantity resembling Mrs. Professor's,[73] his Limbs rather stout, about such a man as my Brother or Rickman—but no Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the Clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact: for doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a Temple with a golden tress as soon as with all the cables of the British navy."
[73] Mrs. Godwin.—Ed.