After such lines Mr. Jervas would scarcely care to receive others, yet others were addressed to him, and among them some by "the Right Honourable the Countess of W- :"viz.-" To Mr Jervas,

occasioned by the sight of Mrs. Chetwind's picture," in which the Countess seems to suggest that the painter should be rewarded with the hand of the fair sitter.

This lady was Anne, Countess of Winchelsea, who wrote a good many couplets strung together to look like poems, including a tragedy published in 1713. She was good enough to patronise and advise Pope in some verses prefixed to the first edition of his

Works," published in 1717. These verses of course begin with "The Muse, &c.," and trip it in the regular "balancé " step, till 43 lines are achieved. Of these I will give the best, as they are evidently the most truthful—

"Me Panegyrick Verse does not inspire,

Who never well can praise what I admire !"'

I am tempted to mention here another lady of title, who was a very voluminous writer, because there are three beautiful engravings of her that are desiderata for a collection of engraved portraits.

The Duchess of Newcastle wrote an immense number of poems and plays, of which were published as many as made ten folio volumes, but she was as amiable and beloved in her domestic relations as she was persevering in her literary pursuits. One of the prints in which her portrait appears is by Clouvet after Diepenbeke, representing her and her husband, William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, (who himself published a fine book on Horsemanship) surrounded with their family, seated before a large Elizabethan fire-place. Beneath are these lines (which I quote from memory) :

"Here in this semi-circle, where they sit
Telling of tales of pleasure and of wit,
Here you may read without a sin or crime;
And how more innocently pass your time ?"

The other two prints are both after Diepenbeke, by Van Schuppen. In one she is represented standing in a niche surrounded with emblems of Minerva and Apollo. In the other, she is seated in

her study, writing. Both have inscriptions. That

to the last is,

"Studious she is and all alone,

Most visitants when she has none :
Her library on which she looks

It is her head; her thoughts her books. ·
Scorninge dead ashes without fire,
For her own flames do her inspire!"

The first is exces

These prints are uncommon. sively rare. Bishop Wilkins, who, in his curious book on 'A World in the Moon,' suggested the possibility of one day reaching that satellite, was asked by her: "Doctor, where am I to find a place for baiting at, in the way up to that planet ?" "Madam," said he, "of all the people in the world, I never expected that question from you, who have built so many castles in the air, that you may lie every night at one of your own?"

Recurring to the 'Art of Painting' :—many years later W. Mason translated Fresnoy's Poem into verse, (Dryden having only given himself time for a prose translation,) and then he inscribed his labours to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His verses seem sad twaddle after Pope's, but he has some thoughts on the subject we are now upon which will suffer quotation.

*

"How oft, on that fair shrine where Poets bind The flowers of song, does partial passions blind Their judgment's eye!

Let Friendship as she caus'd, excuse the deed;
With thee, and such as thee, she must succeed.
But what, if fashion tempted Pope astray?

The Witch has spells, and Jervas knew a day
When mode-struck Belles and Beaux were proud to come
And buy of him a 'thousand years of bloom!'
E'en then I deem it but a venial crime:

Perish alone that selfish sordid rhyme,
Which flatters sordid sway, or tinsel pride;
Let black oblivion plunge it in her tide."

* Friendship's.

E

VIII.

Portraits Wanted.

VELYN complains that painters in his time -and the same complaint equally applies

to the present day-never put the names of the persons represented on their pictures, though it was the practice of Holbein, "to whose fame it was no diminution, and who really painted to the life beyond any man this day living." He seems, without apparent cause, to attribute this omission to the 'pride' of painters, adding, "There is not that wretched print but weares the name of the noartist, whilst our Painters take no care to transmitt to posterity the names of the persons whom they 'represent, through which negligence so many excellent pieces come after a while to be dispersed among Brokers and Up-holsters, who expose them to the streets in every dirty and infamous corner. 'Tis amongst their dusty lumber we frequently meete with Queene Elizabeth, Mary Q. of Scots, the Countesse of Pembroke, Earles of Leycester and