h that you would sit to him as Pharaoh; he thinks you
would make a capital Pharaoh." "I have no wish to appear on canvas,"
said I; "moreover he can find much better Pharaohs than myself; and, if
he wants a real Pharaoh, there is a certain Mr. Petulengro."
"Petulengro?" said my brother; "a strange kind of fellow came up to me
some time ago in our town, and asked me about you; when I inquired his
name, he told me Petulengro. No, he will not do, he is too short; by the
bye, do you not think that figure of Moses is somewhat short?" And then
it appeared to me that I had thought the figure of Moses somewhat short,
and I told my brother so. "Ah!" said my brother.

On the morrow my brother departed with the painter for the old town, and
there the painter painted the mayor. I did not see the picture for a
great many years, when, chancing to be at the old town, I beheld it.

The original mayor was a mighty, portly man, with a bull's head, black
hair, body like that of a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding;
a man six foot high at the least. To his bull's head, black hair, and
body the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, in which
the portrait did not correspond with the original--the legs were
disproportionably short, the painter having substituted his own legs for
those of the mayor, which when I perceived I rejoiced that I had not
consented to be painted as Pharaoh, for, if I had, the chances are that
he would have served me in exactly a similar way as he had served Moses
and the mayor.

Short legs in a heroic picture will never do; and, upon the whole, I
think the painter's attempt at the heroic in painting the mayor of the
old town a decided failure. If I am now asked whether the picture would
have been a heroic one provided the painter had not substituted his own
legs for those of the mayor--I must say, I am afraid not. I have no idea
of making heroic pictures out of English mayors, even with the assistance
of Norman arches; yet I am sure that capital pictures might be made out
of English mayors, not issuing from Norman arches, but rather from the
door of the "Checquers" or the "Brewers Three." The painter in question
had great comic power, which he scarcely ever cultivated; he would fain
be a Rafael, which he never could be, when he might have been something
quite as good--another Hogarth; the only comic piece which he ever
presented to the world being something little inferior to the b