of such good company. One of my friends thought the picture must have been an anticipation of Bill Sykes: put a cap and feathers on his head and you make him Iago, Richard the Third, or any other aristocratic villain. I really think the picture is a very good one of its kind: and one that you will like. [100a]
I am going to get my large Constable very lightly framed, and shall bring it down into Suffolk with me to shew you and others. I like it more and more.
. . . There is something poetical, and almost heroic, in this Expedition to the Niger—the motives lofty and Christian—the issue so disastrous. Do you remember in A. Cunningham’s Scottish Songs [100b] one called ‘The Darien Song’? It begins
We will go, maidens, go,
To the primrose [100c] woods and mourn, etc.
Look for it. It applies to this business. Some Scotch young folks went out to colonize Darien, and never came back.
Oh there were white hands wav’d,
And many a parting hail,
As their vessel stemm’d the tide,
And stretch’d her snowy sail.
I remember reading this at Aldbro’, and the sound of
the sea hangs about it always, as upon the lips of a shell.
Farewell for the present. We shall soon be down amongst you.
P.S. I think Northcote drew this picture from life: and I have no doubt there is some story attached to it. The subject may have been some great malefactor. You know that painters like to draw such at times. Northcote could not have painted so well but from life.