to his usual liberty, borrowed the face of a dean with whom he was at variance. By the persuasion of lord Exeter, he condescended at last to serve kirg William, and was sent to Hampton-court, where, amongst other things, he painted the great stair-case as ill as if he had spoiled it out of principle. His eyes failing him, queen Anne gave him a pension of 2001. for his life; but he did not long enjoy it, dying at Hampton-court in

1707.

Simon Varelst was a real ornament of the age of Charles, and one of the few who have arrived at capital excellence as a flower-painter. He was a Dutchman: it is not certain. in what year he arrived in England. His works were greatly admired, and his prices higher than had been known in this country. He was patronised by the duke of Buckingham, who had too much wit to be long beneficent; and perceiving the poor man to be immoderately vain, he piqued him to attempt portraits. Varelst, thinking nothing impossible to his pencil, fell into the snare, and drew the duke himself; but crowded it so much with fruits and sun-flowers, that the king (to whom it was shown) could not spy out his grace, and took it only for a flower-piece. However, as it sometimes happens to wiser buffoons than Varelst, he was laughed at till he was admired; and sir Peter Lely himself became the real sacrifice to the jest. He lost much of his business, and retired to Kew, while Varelst engrossed the fashion, and for one half-length was paid 110. His portraits were extremely laboured, and finished with the same delicacy as his flowers, which he continued to introduce into them. Lord chancellor Shaftesbury, going to sit to him, was received by the artist with his hat on: "Don't you know me?" said the peer.-"Yes," replied the painter," you are my lord chancellor; and do you know me? I am Varelst. The king can make any man chancellor, but he can make nobody Varelst." The chancellor was disgusted, and sat to Greenhill.

In 1785 Varelst was a witness on the divorce between the duke and duchess of Norfolk. One who had married into his family was brought to set aside his evidence, and deposed to his having been mad and confined. Mad he certainly was; and his lunacy was self-admiration. He called himself the God of Flowers; went to Whitehall, saying he wanted to converse with the king for three hours: being repulsed, he cried out, "He is king of England-I of painting!-why should we not converse familiarly?" He showed an historic piece, boasting that it contained the several manners and excellencies of Raphael, Titian, Rubens, and Vandyck. He was shut up towards the end of his life, and recovered his senses at last, but not his genius: he lived to a great age, and afforded a melancholy instance of the consequences of vanity.

Mrs. Anne Killigrew, the daughter of Dr. Killigrew, was born a little before the Restoration. Her family were remarkable for loyalty, accomplishments, and wit: and this young lady promised to be one of its fairest ornaments. Antony Wood says-" she was a grace for beauty, and a muse for wit ;" and Dryden has celebrated her genius for painting and poetry in a long ode, in which the rich stream of his numbers has hurried along with it all that his luxuriant fancy produced in his way :-it is an harmonious hyperbole, composed of the fall of Adam, Arethusa, vestal virgins, Diana, Cupid, Noah's ark, the Pleiades, the valley of Jehosaphat, and the last assizes. Yet Wood assures us there is nothing in it to which she was not equal, if not superior. Her poems were published after her death, with a print of her, from her portrait, drawn by herself in a much better style than her poetry, and evidently in the manner of sir Peter Lely. She was maid-of-honour to the duchess of York, and died in her 25th year, of the small-pox, in 1685.

William Vandeville, the son of Vandeville, painter of

sea

sea-fights, was the greatest master that has appeared in this branch of painting. The palm is not less disputed with Raphael for history, than with Vandeville for that most sublime element the sea, with ships upon it. Annibal Carracci and Mr. Scott have not surpassed these chieftains. W. Vandeville was born at Amsterdam, and wanted no master but his father till the latter came to England. Then, for a short time, he was placed with Simon De Vlieger, an admired ship-painter of the age, but whose name is only preserved now by being united with that of his pupil. Young William was soon demanded by his father, and favourably received by the king, to whose particular inclination his genius was adapted.

Samuel Cooper was an admirable painter, and might be called an original genius; for though he was indebted for part of his merit to the works of Vandyck, he was the first who gave the strength and freedom of oil to miniature. Other artists in this line touch and re-touch with such careful fidelity, that you cannot help perceiving they are nature in the abstract. Cooper's pictures are so bold, that they seem perfect nature, only of a less standard. Magnify the former, they are still diminutively conceived: if a glass could expand Cooper's to the size of Vandyck's, they would appear to have been painted for that proportion. If his portrait of Cromwell could be so enlarged, Vandyck might appear less great by the comparison. To make it fairly, one must not measure Vandyck by his most admired work-cardinal Bentivoglio: the quick finesse of eye in a florid Italian writer was not a subject equal to the protector; but the fair experiment would be to balance Cooper's Oliver and Vandyck's lord Strafford; to trace the lineaments of equal ambition, equal intrepidity, equal art, and equal presumption; and to compare the skill of the masters in representing the one exalted to the height of his hopes, yet perplexed

with

with a command he could scarcely hold, did not dare to relinquish, and yet dared to exert: the other, dashed in his career, yet willing to avoid the precipice; searching all the recesses of so great a soul to break his fall, and yet ready to mount the scaffold with more dignity than the other ascended the throne. Had the artists worked in competition, they could not have approached nearer to the points of view than in delineating the character of these heroes, in which both so eminently excelled.

Cooper, with all this merit, had two defects: his skill was confined to a mere head; his drawing of the neck and shoulders was so incorrect, that it accounts for the numbers of his works unfinished. Probably he was sensible how small a way his talent extended. This poverty explains another deficiency-his want of grace; a signal defect in a painter of portraits, yet how rarely possessed! Cooper, content like his countrymen with the good sense of Truth, neglected to make her engaging. Grace, in painting, seems peculiar to Italy. The Flemings and the French run into contrary extremes: the first never approach the line; and, though the latter do not go beyond (for they never arrive at it), they substitute false taste in its stead: no attitude is natural, and no form simple. Cooper's women, like those of his model Vandyck, are seldom very handsome. A noble author has said, "it was Lely alone who excused the gallantries of Charles II, and painted an apology for that voluptuous court:" but surely no eminence of talent can atone for presenting allurements to vice, no beauty afford plea for prostitution of genius.

The anecdotes of Cooper's life are few: his works are his history. He died in London, 1672.

The art of engraving travelled from Italy into Flanders, where Albert Durer, considering the bad taste and

country

country in which he lived, carried it to a great height. It does not appear when this art first reached England: it is a notorious blunder of Chambers to affirm it was first brought over from Antwerp, by Speed, in the reign of James I. We had it in some degree nearly as soon as printing, the printers themselves using small plates for their devices and rebuses. Caxton's Golden Legend has a group of saints, and many other cuts, dispersed through the body of the work. Even portraits were used in books; yet there is no trace of a single print being wrought off till 1540. The observation is trite, that gunpowder was discovered by a monk, and printing by a soldier; but it is no small honour to the latter profession to have invented mezzotinto.

Few royal names appear at the head of discoveries; nor is this surprising. When necessity ceases to be a spring of action, when every want is supplied without labour, and every wish anticipated without invention, the mind becomes enfeebled: its faculties are blunted; it no longer retains quickness to seize or sagacity to apply; and luxury is found to be a soil equally unfavourable to industry and to genius,

Prince Rupert, born with the taste of an uncle whom his sword was not fortunate in defending, was fond of those sciences which soften and adorn the hero, and knew how to mix them with his private hours of amusement, without dedicating his life to their pursuit, like those who, wanting capacity for momentous views, make serious study of what should only be the recreative occupation of a genius. He one morning observed the sentinel at a distance from his post very busy doing something to his piece: asking what he was about, the man replied, that the dew of the night had made his fusil rusty, and that he was scraping it. The prince, on examining, was struck with something like a figure eaten into the barrel, with innumerable little holes, closed together like

friezed