"There is a decided move in the matter of 'The Bible.' Hunt, Watts, and Leighton will not, I expect, work for you, as they say they are, with me, in honour bound to work for the publisher who first made the proposal. There can be no doubt but that we should, in such a case, work together.
"Yours very faithfully,
"John Everett Millais."
The "publisher who first made the proposal" here referred to was Mr. Joseph Cundall, who was not at that time in business as a publisher, but had formed a project of publishing an "Illustrated Bible." His progress in the matter merely consisted in his having commissioned the several artists named by Millais, with two or three others, while his actual purchase was three small drawings of minor importance. These, with his "priority of claim," we subsequently purchased from him. We never used the drawings, however, not considering them favourable specimens.
In a letter, which is without date, showing how earnestly Millais laboured and how anxious he was to give his most perfect work in producing the charming series of illustrations to "The Parables of Our Lord," he says:
"I send off by post the Parable of 'The Leaven which the woman hid in the three measures of meal'; she is mixing the leaven in the last of the three. The girl at the back I have made near the oven with one of the loaves, and the other rests against the wall of the window."
The Leaven.
FROM "THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD."