ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

institutions he used as resources. With a couple of ideas in mind for a suitable subject
he went to the British Museum to consult one of the latest authorities on English
history, Mackintosh's The History of England:
In the summer of [18]45 I went to the British Museum to read Sir James
Mackintosh’s history of England, having heard that it was of a
phylosophical [sic] nature, with a view to select some subject connected
with the history of this Country of a general and comprehensive nature. I
was already wavering in my mind between two that struck me, one was
“The first naval victory,” and the other the Origin of our native tongue.
The former subject had first engaged my attention but the sight of
M’Clise’s [Maclise] cartoon of “Chivalry” and the wish to handle more
luxuriant & attractive materials afterwards changed the current of my
thoughts.
In this mood, glancing over the pages of the above named history I fell
upon a passage to this effect as near as I can remember “And it is scarcely
to be wondered at, that English about this period should have become the
judicial language of the country, ennobled as it had recently been by the
genius of Geoffrey Chaucer.” This at one fixed me, I immediately saw
visions of Chaucer reading his poems to knights & Ladyes fair, the king &
court amid air and sun shine.
When I arrived at Rome, from the library of the English Academy I
procured the works and life of our first poet and fortunately I found that
109