SAMUEL PROUT, ARTIST. 
267 
was on terms of the warmest friendship and intimacy with Prout, 
" we have heard the painter express with a melancholy smile the 
distinct recollection remaining with him of a burning autumn morn- 
ing on which he sallied forth alone" (from the streets of Plymouth), 
" himself some four autumns old, armed with a hooked stick, to 
gather nuts. Unres trainable alike with pencil or with crook, he 
was found by a farmer towards the close of the day lying moaning 
under a hedge, prostrated by a sunstroke, and was brought home 
insensible. From that day forward he was subject to attacks of 
violent pain in the head, recurring at short intervals, and until 
within the last ten or twelve years of his life not a week passed 
without one or two days of absolute confinement to his room or to 
his bed." To use Prout's own words towards the close of his 
career, " I have to endure a great fight of affliction ; can I therefore 
be sufficiently thankful for the merciful gift of a buoyant spirit V 
This buoyancy of spirit was one of the most remarkable elements 
of his character. It never left him when in the acutest suffering ; 
and when free from pain it showed itself in a joyous brightness, 
amounting sometimes to hilarity. 
It has been mentioned to me by his daughter (Miss Prout), to 
whom I am under obligations for kindly giving me many interesting 
facts and reminiscences of her father's life, that on one occasion 
when Prout, Hay don, and Eastlake were associated together in 
lodgings in London (shortly after their first meeting there), the 
mirth of the trio, provoked by a portrait or caricature which Hay- 
don had made of Eastlake, became so uproarious that the landlady 
felt it necessary to interfere, and threaten the party with something 
like summary dismissal if they did not desist their noise. But 
I must not anticipate. One of the earliest associates, j)laymates, 
and fellow-students of Prout was Benjamin Hay don, whose father 
was a bookseller in Pike Street. Haydon was three years younger 
than Prout, and they both went to the Plymouth Grammar School, 
of which Dr. Bidlake was then master. He was himself a painter, 
as well as poet and musician. His most important published poem 
is entitled " The Year." He is said to have possessed the merit of 
gathering around him minds of still larger power than his own, 
and giving them an impulse which directed their course in life. 
That young Prout was a favourite pupil of his cannot, I think, be 
doubted. The family preserve with reverence a fine life-size portrait, 
it is thought by Opie, of Samuel Prout, taken in Dr. Bidlake's 
