270 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
the extreme, obtained some reputation. Prout probably knew him; 
but one of the young artist's best friends and counsellors was the 
excellent and gentle Ambrose Bowden Johns, whom many yet 
living remember. He was seven years older than Prout ; had been 
apprenticed when a boy to the bookseller Haydon, and received his 
first artistic inspirations at Port Eliot, where he had been sent to 
arrange a collection of books. He was a great authority on art in 
Plymouth, and through a long life had become acquainted with 
many eminent artists. Especially was he presumed to know some- 
thing about every artist who had ever sprung from this neighbour- 
hood. " Now do tell us, Mr. Johns," said a visitor to him one day, 
" what sort of a looking man was Sir Joshua? What was he like?" 
And the good old gentleman could only protest, with every dis- 
position to oblige, " But, my dear sir, I never saw him." 
But as to Prout and Mr. Johns. The young artist's very earliest 
works were chosen, as I have said, from marine subjects, and he 
afterwards tried his hand at landscape. He wished to be a land- 
scape painter, and made many adventures in the neighbourhood. 
On returning from one of these tours, he called on Mr. Johns with 
his portfolio in his hand. Johns asked him how many sketches he 
had made, and what success he had met with. Prout, bursting 
into tears, and wringing his hands with grief, replied, " Oh, Mr. 
Johns, I shall never make a painter as long as I live!" Johns then 
examined his sketches, and noticing the power shown in the draw- 
ing of old cottages and mills, said, " If you won't make a landscape 
painter you will make a painter of architecture, and I would advise 
you to keep to that" Encouraged by this, he went away, rejoicing 
that there was still a field open to him in art. This interesting 
circumstance was mentioned by Mr. Johns to Mr. Philip Mitchell. 
" Whole days, from dawn till night," says Buskin, "he devoted 
to the study of the peculiar objects of his early interest — the ivy- 
mantled bridges, mossy water-mills, and rock-built cottages, which 
characterise the valley scenery of Devon. In spite of every dis- 
advantage, the strong love of truth and the instinctive perception 
of the chief points of shade and characters of form on which his 
favourite effects mainly depended, enabled him not only to obtain 
an accumulated store of memoranda, afterwards valuable, but to 
publish several elementary works which obtained extensive and 
deserved circulation, and to which many artists now high in repu- 
tation have kindly and frankly confessed their early obligations. " 
