of the Month,’ to accompany a new design of Solomon’s, the poem appearing later in the second series of Poems and Ballads.  Very few English artists—­not even Millais—­began life with fairer prospects.  Thackeray wrote in one of the ‘Roundabout Papers’ for 1860:  ’For example, one of the pictures I admired most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my knowledge, set eyes.  The picture is (346) “Moses,” by S. Solomon.  I thought it finely drawn and composed.  It nobly represented to my mind the dark children of the Egyptian bondage. . . .  My newspaper says:  “Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object,” and so good-bye, Mr. S. S.’  This beautiful picture, painted when the artist was only nineteen, is now in the collection of Mr. W. G. Rawlinson, and was seen quite recently at the Franco-British Exhibition, where those familiar with his work considered it one of Solomon’s masterpieces.  Very few students of Thackeray realised, however, that the painter thus singled out for praise formed the subject of a sordid inquest reported in the Times of August 18th, 1905.

That Solomon’s pictures were at first better known to the public than those of his now more famous associates is shown by Robert Buchanan confessing that he had scarcely seen any of their works except those of Solomon, which he proceeded to attack in the famous The Fleshly School of Poetry.  As a sort of justification of the criticism, in the early seventies, the extraordinary artist had become a pariah.  He was imprisoned for a short while, and on his release was placed in a private asylum by his friends.  Scandal having subsided, since he showed no further signs of eccentricity, he was, by arrangement, sent out to post a letter in order that he might have a chance of quietly escaping and returning to the practice of his art.  He returned to the asylum in half an hour!—­a proceeding which was almost an evidence of insanity.  He was subsequently officially dismissed, and from this time went steadily downhill, adding to his other vices that of intemperance.  Every effort was made by friends and relatives to reclaim him.  Studios were taken for him, commissions were given him, clothes were bought for him.  He spent his week-ends in the lock-up.  Several picture-dealers tried giving him an allowance, but he turned up intoxicated to demand advances, and the police had to be called in.  He was found selling matches in the Mile End Road and tried his hand at pavement decoration without much success.  The companion of Walter Pater and Swinburne became the associate of thieves and blackmailers.  A story is told that one afternoon he called for assistance at the house of a well-known artist, a former friend, from whom he received a generous dole.  Observing that the remote neighbourhood of the place lent itself favourably to burgling operations, Solomon visited his benefactor the same evening in company with a housebreaker.  They were studying the dining-room silver when they were disturbed; both were in liquor, and the noise they made roused the sleepers above.  The unwilling host good-naturedly dismissed them!