2G8 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
study. He is looking up with joyous face and quick intelligence, 
as if struck by some effect discernible through the mullioned 
window of the old Tudor Grammar School, and his whole expression 
seems to give promise of the rich future that will open up to him. 
With his master he made many charming excursions, but it was 
more often with his schoolfellow Haydon that his first marine and 
landscape studies w T ere made ; and yet how different the two 
youths ! Prout, always plodding and diligent, imaginative, and 
yet trying to copy with simple truth and honesty what struck him 
as beautiful or picturesque in nature ; Haydon, equally imaginative, 
but impatient, impulsive, restless, not calm and steady enough to 
follow closely and master the details of a subject, but endeavour- 
ing to grasp the whole at a bound, and often retreating disappointed. 
The manhood of each must have been very much the counterpart 
of the boyhood. Prout, ever steadily pressing on to perfection in 
his own beautiful and distinct field of art, and reaching the goal; 
Haydon, with his great and noble aims, constantly missing the 
mark, and the ambitions of his life becoming more and more hope- 
less and visionary. 
" Poor wanderer on a stormy sea ! 
From wave to wave oft driven ; 
And fancy's flash, and reason's ray, 
Served but to light the troubled way." 
There is an impression abroad that Prout began by drawing 
landscapes, but I have it on good authority that this was not so. 
Marine subjects were his first love. He had great fondness for 
drawing boats at the Dockyard, and also at the Barbican. His first 
finished water-colour drawing represented a figure on a rock looking 
into the water. This was given to Dr. Hawker, who was a great 
friend of his father's, and on the death of the doctor was returned 
to Mr. Prout's family. Mr. Euskin mentions the impression the 
wreck of the Button, East Indiaman, on the rocks under the 
Citadel, left on Prout's mind : " The crew were saved by the 
personal courage of Sir Edward Pellew, afterwards Lord Exmouth. 
The wreck held together for many hours under the cliff, rolling to 
and fro as the surges struck her. Haydon and Prout sat on the 
rocks and watched her vanish, fragment by fragment, into the 
gnashing foam. Both were equally awe-struck, and both resolved 
to paint the scene on the morrow. Both," says Euskin, " failed; 
but Haydon, incapable of remaining loyal to the majesty he had 
