Page:Nollekens and His Times, Volume 2.djvu/134

 122 by degrees, obtained money from his patron, amounting altogether to the sum of 350l. when his Lordship visited his Artist's studio to see what he was about, and to his great surprise, he found the group was colossal, and, in his opinion, very bad. A dispute then arose, and his Lordship, notwithstanding the majority of the committee had given it against Locatelli, generously paid him a farther sum, and sent the model to Houghton; where it was destroyed, when that mansion unfortunately suffered by fire.

Nollekens's remarks upon this group of Theseus and Hercules, were sometimes laughable enough: he said, "The figures look like the dry skins of two brick-makers stuffed with clotted flocks from an old mattress;" and at other times he observed, "I think Locatelli must have studied Goltzius's Hercules;" a figure well known to the collectors of engravings under the appellation of the potatoe-man, in consequence of his muscles appearing more like that root, than any thing produced either above or below the earth. Mr. Smith, the Sculptor, who designed and executed the cenotaph, erected by the munificent Citizens of London, to the memory of Lord Nelson, in their Guildhall, was the pupil of this artist; and his son,