reat personage is a
"sea-insurer." He is accompanied by Arion on a dolphin; and in a picture a
sea-haven, with a ship under sail making towards it; on the shore the
figure of Fortune, and (who are, think you, the "supercargoes?") over the
cargo "Castor and Pollux." In this mode of portrait-painting it would be
absolutely necessary to go back to the old plan of putting the names
underneath the personages; and even then, though you write under such,
this is Castor, this Pollux, and this the sea-insurer, it will ever puzzle
the whole ship's crew to conjecture how they came there together. Gerard
admits we cannot paint what we have not seen, and by example rather
condemns his own recommendations. Fewer have seen Castor and Pollux, than
have seen a lion, and he says men cannot paint what they have not seen.
"As was the case of a certain Westphalian, who, representing Daniel in the
lions' den, and having never seen a lion, he painted hogs instead of lions,
and wrote underneath, 'These should be lions.'"

By this time, Eusebius, you ought to know how to sit, if you have not made
up your mind not to sit at all. You need not, however, be much alarmed
about the emblems--modern masters cut all that matter short. They won't
throw in any superfluous work, you may be sure of that, unless you should
sit to Landseer, and he will paint your dog, and throw in your superfluous
self for nothing. You would be like Mercury with the statuary, mortified
to find his own image thrown into the bargain.

Besides your own defects, you have to encounter the painter's. His
unsteady, uncertain hand, may add an inch to your nose before you are
aware of it. It is quite notorious that few painters paint both eyes of
the same size; and after your utmost efforts to look straight in his face,
he may make you squint for ever, and not see that he has done so. Unless
he be himself a sensible man, he will be sure to make you look like a fool.
Then, what is like to-day will be unlike to-morrow. His megillups will
change, so that in six months you may look like a copper Indian; or the
colours may fade, and leave you the ghost of what you were. Again, he may
paint you lamentably like, odiously like, yet give you a sinister
expression, or at least an unpleasant one. Then, if you remonstrate, he is
offended; if you refuse to take it, he writes you word that if not paid
for and removed by next Tuesday, he will add a tail to it, and dispose of
it to Mr Polito. Did not