"'My father and my mother
And my sisters four—
Their beds are made in swelling turf,
Fronting the western door.'
"'Child, if thou speak to them,
They will not answer thee;
They are deep down in the earth—
Thy face they cannot see.'"
"The Little Mourner."—Dean Alford.
FROM "ENGLISH SACRED POETRY."
By Frederick Sandys.
By permission of Messrs. George Routledge & Sons.
Watson was a kind-hearted, liberal-minded man, and gifted in many ways outside his art. In the early days of our connection with him he often spoke of what he called his "fatal facility," and no doubt that gift told to his detriment. His art was no trouble to him; and this was the root of a certain indolence shown in his later productions which, generally speaking, were far inferior to what might have been expected from his natural powers—though his work was at all times full of tender refinement, beauty and sympathetic feeling.
He did many very clever drawings for the periodicals. One of his finest, perhaps, was for London Society, the subject being the figure of a man on his knees in the attitude of "Abject Prayer."
During the sudden rage that sprung up for water colour drawings his work was much sought after by the dealers. We remember him on one occasion speaking of this eagerness for his pictures, and saying: