280 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
period contain the most charming steel engravings from Pront's 
drawings. In one of these annuals Barry Cornwall had some lines 
beginning — 
"Oh, a brave painter art thou, Samuel Prout." 
The life of Prout was brimful of good, honest work ; and the 
marvel was he could accomplish so much with his weak bodily 
frame. * Yet he not only was devoted to his work, but lived not 
a little in society, and led, I am informed, a less secluded life than 
has generally been supposed. His society, indeed, was courted by 
many persons of rank, who could not only appreciate his rare 
talents as an artist, but his simplicity of character and manners. 
During the last twenty years of his life he always breakfasted 
in his bedroom, seldom coming down before eleven o'clock. This 
was necessitated by his feeble state of health ; but he was in no 
sense a lazy man, or an idle dreamer. If he was late to rise, he 
was late to bed, too late it was to be feared; but he loved his 
work, and when once engaged in it he found it difficult to tear 
himself away from it, and was often in his study up to one and 
two o'clock in the morning, forgetting, in his buoyancy of spirit 
and in the enjoyment of his occupation, the strain on his delicate 
constitution. 
It was not destined he should live to advanced old age, nor that 
he should be laid aside by illness, incapacitating him for work, 
which, with all his brightness of spirit, he had a great dread of, 
although he dreaded not his departure from earth. 
But the silver cord was to be loosed and the golden bowl broken 
of Samuel Prout's life whilst he was in the full enjoyment of his 
art, and of the society of his friends. 
The " last scene of all," as described to me by his daughter with 
great tenderness and feeling, after twenty-eight years have passed 
away, has not (like many an incident in this paper) been made 
public before. 
He had been invited with many literary and artistic celebrities 
to dine at the house of Mr. Euskin, senior, at Denmark Hill, on 
Tuesday, the 9th February, 1852, to keep Mr. John Euskin's birth- 
day, and to hear a letter from Venice, from the younger Euskin, 
who was then in that city. 
Mr. Prout had not been well of late, and during the day had 
* He suffered from hemorrhage of the lungs. 
