I observed the power and experience of youths much younger than myself,” he says in his generous appreciative fashion, “their masterly manner of sketching in the figure, and their excellent imitation of nature, my spirits fell many degrees, and I felt humbled and unhappy.”  He need not have done so, for the man who thus distrusts his own work is always the truest workman; it is only fools or poor creatures who are pleased and self-satisfied with their own first bungling efforts.  But the great enjoyment of Rome to Gibson consisted in the free artistic society which he found there.  At Liverpool, he had felt almost isolated; there was hardly anybody with whom he could talk on an equality about his artistic interests; nobody but himself cared about the things that pleased and engrossed his earnest soul the most.  But at Rome, there was a great society of artists; every man’s studio was open to his friends and fellow-workers; and a lively running fire of criticism went on everywhere about all new works completed or in progress.  He was fortunate, too, in the exact moment of his residence:  Rome then contained at once, besides himself, the two truest sculptors of the present century, Canova the Venetian, and Thorwaldsen the Dane.  Both these great masters were singularly free from jealousy, rivalry, or vanity.  In their perfect disinterestedness and simplicity of character they closely resembled Gibson himself.  The ardent and pure-minded young Welshman, who kept himself so unspotted from the world in his utter devotion to his chosen art, could not fail to derive an elevated happiness from his daily intercourse with these two noble and sympathetic souls.

After Gibson had been for some time in Canova’s studio, his illustrious master told him that the sooner he took to modelling a life-size figure of his own invention, the better.  So Gibson hired a studio (with what means he does not tell us in his short sketch of his own life) close to Canova’s, so that the great Venetian was able to drop in from time to time and assist him with his criticism and judgment.  How delightful is the friendly communion of work implied in all this graceful artistic Roman life!  How different from the keen competition and jealous rivalry which too often distinguishes our busy money-getting English existence!  In 1819, two years after Gibson’s arrival at Rome, he began to model his Mars and Cupid, a more than life-size group, on which he worked patiently and lovingly for many months.  When it was nearly finished, one day a knock came at the studio door.  After the knock, a handsome young man entered, and announced himself brusquely as the Duke of Devonshire.  “Canova sent me,” he said, “to see what you were doing.”  Gibson wasn’t much accustomed to dukes in those days—­he grew more familiar with them later on—­and we may be sure the poor young artist’s heart beat a little more fiercely than usual when the stranger asked him the price of his Mars and Cupid