Benjamin Robert Haydon would doubtless be flattered, though a bit surprised, by his inclusion in a volume on Romantic prose writers. His fame rests first, as he would have wanted, on his reputation as a historical painter and figure of controversy in the art world of Regency London, and second on his friendships with John Keats, William Wordsworth, and other notable British Romantic writers. Apart from descriptions of his paintings, scattered polemics aimed against the Royal Academy and other perceived enemies, an article on painting written for the Encyclopædia Britannica, and a series of lectures on painting and design he gave toward the end of his life, Haydon published no major literary work in his lifetime. But shortly after his death in 1846, his wife and his publisher commissioned Tom Taylor, a dramatist and professor of English literature at London University, to edit and bring out an...