is indifputable. That he was a great encourager of the arts, thefe records demonftrate. When Hiftorians talk of his pro'fufion, they evidence only in what he diffipated on his favourites. But it is plain that the number and magnificence of his buildings and palaces, must have swallowed great part of the fums maliciously charged to the fingle article of unworthy favourites. It matters not how a prince fquanders what he has tyrannically fqueezed from the fubject. If he exceeds his revenue, it is almoft as ill spent on edifices as on minifters. But it is perhaps no more than juftice to make fome allowance for partial or exaggerated relations. Henry was not a wife prince-may I venture to fay more?—He was not a martial prince. Even in these more fenfible ages one illuftrious defect in a king converts all his other foibles into excellencies. It must have done fo much more in a feafon of fuch heroic barbarifm as that of Henry III. and the want of an enterprizing fpirit in that prince, made even his patronage of the arts be imputed to effeminacy or be overlooked. The extravagance of Lewis XIV. in his buildings, gardens, water-works, paffed for an object of glory under the canon (if I may fay fo) of his ambition. Henry III. had no conquests to illuminate his ceilings, his halls, his bafsreliefs: yet perhaps the generous fentiment implied in his motto, Qui non dat quod habet, non accipit ille quod optat, contained more true glory, than all the fast couched under Lewis's emblem of the fun and his other oftentatious devices. let us compare Henry with one nearer to him. Henry's reign is one of the moft ignominious in our annals; that of Edward I. of the most triumphant. Yet I would afk by which of the two did the nation fuffer moft? By fums lavished on favourites and buildings, or by fums and blood wasted in unjuft wars? If we look narrowly into Edward's reign, we fhall scarce find fewer reprefentations against the tyranny of the fon, than against the encroachments of the father. Who will own that he had not rather employ mafter William and Edward of Westminster to paint the geftes of the kings of Antioch, than imitate the fon in his barbarities in Wales, and ufurpations in Scotland ?"

But

From the reign of Henry III. to the time of Henry VII. Mr. Vertue, it feems, could difcover no records relating to the arts. This chafm our Author has endeavoured to fill up by a chronologic feries of Paintings; in treating of which he lets flip no opportunity of enlivening his fubject, by giving the Reader, as he goes along, an idea of the manners as well as the characters of the times.

"During

"During the reigns of the two first Edwards I find no veftiges of the art, though it was certainly preferved here, at least by Painting on Glass. No wonder that a proud, a warlike and ignorant nobility encouraged only that branch which attefted their dignity. Their dungeons were rendered ftill darker by their pride. It was the cafe of all the arts; none flourished but what ferved to difplay their wealth, or contributed to their fecurity. They were magnificent without luxury, and pompous without elegance. Rich plate, even to the enamelling on gold, rich ftuffs, and curious armour, were carried to excefs, while their chairs were mere pedestals, their cloaths were incumbrances, and they knew no use of steel but as it ferved for safety or deftruction. Their houses, for there was no medium between castles and hovels, implied the dangers of fociety, not the fweets of it; and whenever peace left them leifure to think of modes, they fcemed to imagine that fafhion confifted in transfiguring the human body, inftead of adding grace to it: while the men wore fhoes fo long and picked, that they were forced to fupport the points by chains from their middle; the ladies erected fuch pyramids on their heads, that the face became the centre of the body; and they were hardened to these prepofterous inconveniencies by their priests, who, instead of leaving them to be cured by the ficklenefs of fafhions or the trouble of them, denounced God's judgments on follies, against which a little laughter, and a little common-fenfe, had been more effectual fermons. It was not far diftant, I think, from the period of which I am speaking, that the ladies wore looking-glaffes about the fame height of their bodies, with that, on which the men difplayed fuch indecent fymbols. The representations of thefe extravagancies (as we fee them collected by Montfaucon, in his Antiquities of France) demanded Japanese and Indian Painters, and were not likely to produce Vandycks and Titians. Thus while we are curious in tracing the progrefs of barbarifm, we wonder more that any arts exifted, than that they attained no degree of perfection.".

The sticklers for the honour of our English Painters, will probably indulge themfelves in pursuing the conjectures of bur Author, refpecting the difcovery of painting in Oil; which he thinks there is fome reafon to believe was practifed in England before the time at which it is faid to have been invented by Van Eyck. It appears from record that Oil was ufed, as a varnish or otherwife, in Pictures, above an hundred

years

years before the common æra of painting in oil. John Van Eyck is allowed to have found it in fearching for a varnish; and might have heard that fuch a varnish or compofition was in ufe in England. Nay, Mr. Walpole mentions fome Pic- tures ftill extant, which, painted before that time, bear all the appearances of being done in oil; and hazards a conjecture, not altogether without foundation, that Van Eyck was in England, where it is probable he learned the secret, and took the honour of the invention to himself, as ours was then a country little known to the world of arts, nor at leisure enough, from the confufion of the times, to claim the dif covery of a fecret which foon made fuch fortune abroad. This appears certain, that the Painters employed by Henry III. were Italians, who poffeffed no fuch fecret, but must have found the practice here, not have brought it over with them; for we are exprefsly told that in Italy they knew of no fuch method. When fome of John ab Eyck's Pictures were carried to Alphonfo, King of Naples, the Italian Painters were furprized, fays Sandrart, quod aquâ purgari poffent, coloribus non deletis.

The art of Painting on Glafs is generally fet down among the artes perdita: Mr. Walpole, however, fhews, by a regular ferics of artists and their performances, that this fecret has never been loft, as is commonly imagined. This kind of Painting, indeed, being banifhed the churches by the reformation, fell nearly into difufe: it has, notwithstanding, been practifed by feveral artifts from that time to the prefent, wherein the tafte for painted Glafs feems to be revived.

It would take up too much room, for us here to give a detail of the many curious particulars contained in this work; in which, as we have already intimated, the Writer has manifefted no lefs tafte for Architecture, Sculpture, and the other concomitant arts, than for that which is more confeffedly his fubject.

With regard to the perfonal Anecdotes, ufually inferted in works of this kind, they are frequently fo baldly narrated, or fo impertinently introduced and applied, as to afford little entertainment to a fenfible Reader. On the contrary, the prefent Writer hath, for the most part, selected those which ferve to expose the want of tafte, difplay the merit, or otherwife characterize the profeffors, patrons, or fubjects of the art. Every one knows or must have heard of a Painter, whose Portraits were, a little while ago, greatly esteemed in

feveral

4

feveral parts of Europe; not to depreciate his merit, however, the extravagant admiration, in which his pieces were held, feemed in a great degree owing to the extravagant length of his beard. We are furnished, in thefe Anecdotes, with a ftill more extravagant inftance of caprice both in the artift and the public. The story is told of Ketel, a Dutchman, who got much credit by feveral noble performances here as well as abroad; but not content with the glory he acquired by thefe, and inftead of aiming at greater perfection, he took it into his head to make himself known by a method of Painting entirely new. To this end, he laid afide his brushes and painted only with his fingers, beginning with his own portrait. The whim took; he repeated the practice, and, they pretend, executed thofe fantastic works with great purity and beauty of colouring. In this manner he painted two heads for the Sieur Van Ös, of Amsterdam; the firft, a Democritus, was his own portrait; the other of M. Morofini, in the character of Heraclitus. The Duke de Nemours, who was a performer himself, was charmed with the latter, and bought it. Another was the picture of Vincent Jacobson, a noted wine-merchant of Amfterdam, with a glass of rhenish in his hand. As his fuccefs increased, fo did his folly; his fingers appeared too eafy tools: he undertook, therefore, to paint with his feet, and his firft effay he pretended to make in public on a picture of the God of Silence; while that public, who began to think, like Ketel, that the more a Painter was a mountebank, the greater was his merit, were fo good as to applaud even this caprice.

We shall quote another short Anecdote or two for the entertainment of our Readers.

There are few perfons, acquainted with the English History, who have not heard of Jeffery Hudson, the famous dwarf, whose Picture, painted by Mytens, is now at St. James's; where he is drawn holding a dog by a string, in a Landscape, coloured warmly and freely, like Snyder or Rubens. The following is given as the hiftory of this diminutive perfonage." He was born at Oakham in Rutlandshire, in 1619, and about the age

Particularly a large Picture of the trained bands of Amfterdam, with their Captain, Herman Rodenburg Beths, at their head; in which Picture he introduced his own Portrait. This piece, it is faid, was placed in the gallery of the Mall at Amfterdam. The curious will hardly find it by that direction. It is now, together with another capital piece, if we are not mistaken, by the fame hand, in the Krygs, or Krygs-raad Chamber in the Stadthoufe of Amfterdam.

of

of feven or eight, being then but eighteen inches high, was retained in the fervice of the Duke of Buckingham, who refided at Burleigh on the Hill. Soon after the marriage of Charles I. the King and Queen being entertained at Burleigh, little Jeffery was ferved up to table in a cold pye, and prefented by the Duchefs to the Queen, who kept him as her dwarf. From feven years of age till thirty, he never grew taller; but after thirty he fhot up to three feet nine inches, and there fixed. Jeffery became a confiderable part of the entertainment of the court. Sir William Davenant wrote a poem, called Jeffreidos, on a battle between him and a turkeycock; and in 1638 was published a very small book, called The New-Year's Gift, prefented at court from the Lady Parvula to the Lord Minimus, (commonly called Little Jeffery) her Majefty's feryant, &c. written by Microphilus, with a little Print of Jeffery prefixed. Before this period Jeffery was employed on a negociation of great importance: he was fent to France to fetch a mid-wife for the Queen, and on his return with this gentlewoman, and her Majesty's dancingmafter, and many rich prefents to the Queen from her mother Mary de Medici, he was taken by the Dunkirkers. Jeffery, thus made of confequence, grew to think himself really fo. He had borne with little temper the teazing of the courtiers and domeftics, and had many fquabbles with the King's gigantic porter. At laft, being provoked by Mr. Crofts, a young gentleman of family, a challenge enfued; and Mr. Crofts coming to the rendezvous armed only with a fquirt, the little creature was fo enraged, that a real duel enfued; and the appointment being on horfeback with piftols, to put them more on a level, Jeffery, with the first fire, fhot his antagonist dead. This happened in France, whither he had attended his miftrefs in the troubles. He was again taken prifoner by a Turkish rover, and fold into Barbary. He probably did not long remain in flavery, for at the beginning of the civil war he was made a captain in the royal army; and in 1644 attended the Queen to France, where he remained till the restoration. At laft, upon fufpicion of his -being privy to the popish plot, he was taken up in 1682, and confined in the Gate-houfe, Weftminster, where he ended his life, in the fixty-third year of his age."

A bas-relief of this dwarf and giant, is to be feen Exed in the front of a houfe near the end of Bagno court, on the east side of Newgate-street.

There