life
shine through the skin, and the lips appear red."

It is bold, perhaps, thus to exalt a single portrait, giving to it the
palm of Venus; nor do I know that it is entirely proper to classify
portraits according to beauty. In disputing about beauty, we are too
often lost in the variety of individual tastes, and yet each person
knows when he is touched. In proportion as multitudes are touched,
there must be merit. As in music a simple heart-melody is often more
effective than any triumph over difficulties, or bravura of manner, so
in engraving the sense of the beautiful may prevail over all else, and
this is the case with the Pompone, although there are portraits by
others showing higher art.

No doubt there have been as handsome men, whose portraits were
engraved, but not so well. I know not if Pompone was what would be
called a handsome man, although his air is noble and his countenance
bright. But among portraits more boldly, delicately, or elaborately
engraved, there are very few to contest the palm of beauty.

[Illustration: POMPONE DE BELLIEVRE.

(Painted by Charles Le Brun, and Engraved by Robert Nanteuil.)]

And who is this handsome man to whom the engraver has given a lease of
fame? Son, nephew, and grandson of eminent magistrates, high in the
nobility of the robe, with two grandfathers chancellors of France,
himself at the head of the magistry of France, first President of
Parliament according to inscription on the engraving, _Senatus Franciae
Princeps_, ambassador to Italy, Holland, and England, charged in the
latter country by Cardinal Mazarin with the impossible duty of
making peace between the Long Parliament and Charles the First, and at
his death, great benefactor of the General Hospital of Paris,
bestowing upon it riches and the very bed on which he died. Such is
the simple catalogue, and yet it is all forgotten.

A Funeral Panegyric pronounced at his death, now before me in the
original pamphlet of the time,[5] testifies to more than family or
office. In himself he was much, and not of those who, according to the
saying of St. Bernard, give out smoke rather than light. Pure glory
and innocent riches were his, which were more precious in the sight of
good men, and he showed himself incorruptible, and not to be bought at
any price. It were easy for him to have turned a deluge of wealth into
his house; but he knew that gifts insensibly corrupt,--that the
specious pretext of gratitude is the