s great a fib as he did the
governor, that he was a very Raffaelle in outline, and Titian in coloring.
And what shall the "recording angel" do? Poor fellow! he had no conceit.

But you, Eusebius, need not trust or give your countenance, in the way of
the art to any man because you like his history or his manners. A thing
you are very likely to do in spite of this advice, though you multiply
portraits for "Saracen's Heads."

Foolish artists themselves, who affect to talk of the great style, and set
themselves up as geniuses, speak slightingly of portrait-painting, as
degrading--as pandering to vanity, &c. I verily believe, that half this
common cant arose from jealousy of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Degradation
indeed!--as if Raffaelle and Titian, and Vandyk and Reynolds, degraded the
art, or were degraded by their practice; and as to pandering to
vanity--view it in another light, and it is feeding affection.

I knew a painter, who honourably refused to paint a lady's picture, when
he waited upon her on purpose, sent by some injudicious friends to take
her portrait in her last days. She had been a woman of great
celebrity--she received the painter--but, with a weakness, pointed first
to one side of the room where were portraits of earls and bishops, saying,
"these are or were all my particular friends"--and then to the other side
of the room, to a well filled library--"and these are all my works." "Now,"
said the painter to me, "I did not think it fair to her reputation to take
her portrait--and she had had many taken at better times." Here was one
who would not pander to vanity. After all, it is astonishing how few
flattering painters there have been. Even he who made Venus, Minerva, and
Juno, starting with astonishment at the presence of Queen Elizabeth,
certainly made her by far the ugliest of the quartette. You may see the
picture at Hampton Court. She must have been difficult to please, for she
insisted upon being painted without shadow. "Glorious Gloriana" was to be
the sun of female beauty. She is quite as well as some in "The Book." For
modern "beauty" manufacturers make beauty to consist in silliness or
sentimentality.

Do you believe in the story of the origin of portrait--the Grecian maid
and her lover? I cannot--for I have often tried my hand, and such frights
were the result, that it would have been a cure for love.

For lack of the art of portrait-painting, we have really no idea what
mankind were like before