At length Lough went from Newcastle to London, to push his way in the world of art.  He obtained a passage in a collier, the skipper of which he knew.  When he reached London, he slept on board the collier as long as it remained in the Thames.  He was so great a favourite with the men, that they all urged him to go back.  He had no friends, no patronage, no money; What could he do with everything against him?  But, having already gone so far, he determined to proceed.  He would not go back—­at least, not yet.  The men all wept when he took farewell of them.  He was alone in London; under the shadow of St. Paul’s.

His next step was to take a lodging in an obscure first floor in Burleigh Street, over a greengrocer’s shop; and there he began to model his grand statue of Milo.  He had to take the roof off to let Milo’s head out.  There Haydon found him, and was delighted with his genius.  “I went,” he says, “to young Lough, the sculptor, who has just burst out, and has produced a great effect.  His Milo is really the most extraordinary thing, considering all the circumstances, in modern sculpture.  It is another proof of the efficacy of inherent genius.” [1] That Lough must have been poor enough at this time, is evident from the fact that, during the execution of his Milo, he did not eat meat for three months; and when Peter Coxe found him out, he was tearing up his shirt to make wet rags for his figure, to keep the clay moist.  He had a bushel and a half of coals during the whole winter; and he used to lie down by the side of his clay model of the immortal figure, damp as it was, and shiver for hours till he fell asleep.

[Footnote 1:  Haydon’s Autobiography, vol. ii., p, 155.]

Chantrey once said to Haydon, “When I have made money enough, I will devote myself to high art.”  But busts engrossed Chantrey’s time.  He was munificently paid for them, and never raised himself above the money-making part of his profession.  When Haydon next saw Chantrey at Brighton, he said to him, “Here is a young man from the country, who has come to London; and he is doing precisely what you have so long been dreaming of doing.”

The exhibition of Milo was a great success.  The Duke of Wellington went to see it, and ordered a statue.  Sir Matthew White Eidley was much struck by the genius of young Lough, and became one of his greatest patrons.  The sculptor determined to strike out a new path for himself.  He thought the Greeks had exhausted the Pantheistic, and that heathen gods had been overdone.  Lough began and pursued the study of lyric sculpture:  he would illustrate the great English poets.  But there was the obvious difficulty of telling the story of a figure by a single attitude.  It was like a flash of thought.  “The true artist,” he said, “must plant his feet firmly on the earth, and sweep the heavens with his pencil.  I mean,” he added, “that the soul must be combined with the body, the ideal with the real, the heavens with the earth.”