It is not merely the fact that Mr. Sotheby's book was never published, in the technical sense of the word, that it is so little known to the general public; nor is the reason that it is a needlessly cumbersome and expensive book; it is much more because it belongs to a class of books which the English excel all other nations in producing, books to which Virgil's description of Polyphemus might be applied without alteration:

“Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."

They are huge in bulk; they wallow about shapeless and unwieldy, and their intellectual and spiritual eyesight has been clean put out. Such books as Wornum's "Life of Holbein," W. B. Scott's "Life of Dürer" may be cited by one who has suffered from them as fit companions for Mr. Sotheby's "Ramblings." So far as the mere aggregation of facts is concerned, these books often perform a useful office, though even for this our gratitude is not seldom chilled by the twist that is given to the interpretation of those facts. Of this theorizing there is not much in Mr. Sotheby's book. The chief fault to be found with him is one that he has in common with all his tribe: the lugging in of irrelevant matter, and the giving it an equal place with the matter that really concerns his subject. If Mr. Sotheby's book could have been boiled down and confined within the limits necessary for the investigation of the authenticity of the autographs of Milton, it would have deserved a different fate from the neglect into which it has fallen

The authenticity of the portraits of Milton, or even the enumeration of them, did not concern Mr. Sotheby when he was writing this book; but, perhaps, if he had insisted on minding his proper business, we should have been to this day ignorant of the existence of the bust of Milton, of which he first published a veracious copy. We ought to be cordially thankful to him for this service, and to be sorry that we must speak as we are obliged to of the book in which it appears.

Portraits of Milton that can be depended on can scarcely be said to exist, and even those we have, that may be allowed some claim upon our notice as likenesses of the poet, were taken either when he was very young, or when he was very old. Aubrey, who perhaps knew Milton, speaking of a

Vol. XI.―31.

But

scholar by an artist, whose name, if he knew, he did not record, says: "It ought to be engraved, for the pictures before his books are not at all like him." As Milton left Cambridge in 1632, and Aubrey was born in 1626, Aubrey must have derived his notion that this picture was a good likeness of Milton in his youth from some one else. Perhaps Milton's widow, whom Aubrey went to see, may have told him that her husband or his family had thought it like. we must all of us have felt that his condemnation of the engraved portraits of Milton in his old age was deserved, as we have examined those doleful and depressing effigies of the man in his blind and despised old age, which are to be found prefixed to almost all the editions of his works. And that they were "not at all like him" was a statement Aubrey may perhaps have made of his own knowledge, since he outlived Milton twenty-three years.

The earliest known portrait of Milton is one painted by Cornelius Janssen when the poet was only ten years old. Janssen came from Leyden to England in 1618 (Milton was born in 1608), and this picture must have been one of the first that he painted after his arrival. It is the face of a solid, chubby, sweet, predestined-Puritan cherub. Janssen came over to paint the portraits of James I. and his family, and he made many pictures of the nobility and of people in the court circle. Milton's father, though a Puritan by birth and education, was a man of strong artistic leanings. "He was greatly distinguished," says Mitford, "for his musical talents; indeed, in science, he is said to have been equal to the first musicians of his age." This accomplishment, so much delighted in always in England, would naturally bring him much in the society of artists and of people fond of art. If the greater number of these were to be found in the Court party and among Roman Catholics, or the High Church party, it may be urged that Milton's grandfather was a Roman Catholic, and so bigoted that he disinherited Milton's father for deserting the ancient faith. Yet Milton's brother Christopher was a royalist, and, doubtless, either a Roman Catholic, or, what was the same thing to all intents and purposes, a High Churchman. And from this we may argue that Milton's father may have mingled in a society in whose religion he had no part, but with whose culture and accomplishment he had doubtless much sympathy, and which

probably welcomed him for his own power to contribute to its delight. Milton's artistic leanings are evident enough, and his own culture and accomplishment are well known. It was natural, on the whole, that his father should have met Janssen, and natural that Janssen should have desired to paint the intelligent, sweet-faced boy of ten years. The portrait he made was bought for twenty guineas of the executors of Milton's widow by C. Stanhope. At the sale of the effects of this Mr. Stanhope, it was bought by T. Hollis, Esq., for whose Memoirs Cipriani engraved it. The child is in a striped jacket with a lace collar.

The next picture of which we have any information is the one that Aubrey saw at the house of the poet's widow, and on which he" wrote his name in red letters with his widowe to preserve." As we have remarked, he does not appear to have known by whom it was painted, and no conjecture seems to have been made since his day. Milton was at that time twenty-one years old,—“ a Cambridge schollar"-and the picture was purchased after his widow's death from her executor by Speaker Onslow. Both Janssen's portrait and this anonymous one have been engraved, the latter frequently. Good engravings of them on a small scale may be found in Professor Masson's "Milton and His Times."

There remain to be noticed two portraits in crayon, one by Faithorne, and one which was in the possession of Jonathan Richardson, the artist and critic, drawn by we know not whom. There is also mention of another crayon drawing, made by Robert White, and Mr. Sotheby says that Mr. John Fitchett Marsh, who made a hobby of the portraits of Milton, and who collected no less than one hundred and fifty engraved portraits of the poet, was of the opinion that from these three drawings the greater number of the engraved portraits have been copied or made up.

The portraits by Faithorne and White, with the one by an unknown hand in the possession of Richardson, were all taken when Milton was well advanced in years; Faithorne's, which is the best of the three, or at least the one the world has shown the greatest liking for apparently, as coming nearest to its notions of the man, was made about 1670, when Milton was sixty-two years old. The drawing, if we may judge by the engravings, should be a clear, strong piece of work, with decided human character, and the look of having been certainly

taken from life. Faithorne was an artist of some repute. He was a royalist, and was banished from England on refusing to take the oath to Cromwell. He went to France, where he is said to have studied engraving under Nanteuil, and returned to England in 1660. How he came to take Milton's portrait does not appear. Milton belonged to the party that had persecuted and banished him, and that party was now defeated, and its greatest advocate and defender under a cloud, old, sick, and poor. Faithorne died in 1691, seventeen years after Milton. It was when Faithorne's crayon-drawing was shown to Deborah Milton, the poet's youngest daughter, by Vertue, the engraver, that she cried out, "O Lord! that is the picture of my father! How came you by it?" and, stroking down the hair of his forehead, "Just so my father wore his hair.” *

Mr. Sotheby thinks best of the portrait that was in the possession of Richardson, but which he calls "the Baker portrait," because, when he knew it, it was in the possession of William Baker, Esq., of Hayfordbury, Herts. He gives a photograph from it in his book, facing the photograph from the bust. To our thinking, it is a very unsatisfactory picture. The drawing is weak and undecided; the face has no particular character, and the mouth, the most important feature, impossible to have been Milton's, or any man's mouth at fifty-eight. Indeed, it

is not a mouth at all. It is the sort of thing young ladies used to be taught to make by the fashionable drawing-master. The whole picture looks as if it were painted by a

novice.

Of course, there are other portraits of Milton, but we ourselves know little or nothing about them. Mr. Mitford, in his Life of Milton, prefixed to the beautiful Pickering edition of the Poems, says he remembers having seen at Lord Braybrooke's, Audley-End, a portrait of the poet with a beard. Also another of him, as a young man, at Lord Townshend's, at Rainhams. He records, also, that Charles Lamb had an original portrait of Milton, "left by his brother and accidentally bought in London."

These pictures may, or may not, have been valuable as portraits; but, as we have said, we know nothing more of them than that they existed. So far as the world is concerned, there existed for it until a late

Todd's "Milton." Deborah Milton lived 76 years, dying August, 1727.

day only Janssen's portrait of Milton as a child of ten, the portrait of the poet at the age of twenty-one when a scholar at Cambridge, and the portrait in crayon by Faithorne. To these must now be added the bust in the possession of Christ's College, Cambridge, represented in our engraving. Knowing that Professor Masson, now so widely distinguished as the biographer of Milton and the editor of his Poems, had made a careful examination of all the existing portraits, but not finding any allusion in his book, so far as published, to the bust, we ventured to write to him, and ask for his judgment on its authenticity, and its value as a portrait. We have received in reply the following courteous and interesting let

ter:

10, REGENT TERRACE, EDINBURGH,

November 2, 1875.

GENTLEMEN: I regret the delay in answering your queries about the Milton Bust at Cambridge; but it has been inevitable. I I wrote a good while ago to a friend in Cambridge on the subject. He chanced to be absent at the time, but promised that he would see the bust on his return, and write to me. Time passing, I wrote to another friend; but the long vacation interfered. A day or two ago, however, I had two letters on the subject-one from Mr. W. Aldis Wright, the other from Professor Cowell; and I now send you the substance of the information which they contain.

The bust is in Christ's College, Cambridge -not Trinity, as stated under the photograph in Mr. Leigh Sotheby's book. That photograph was taken from the bust for the late Mr. Sotheby by permission of the Master of Christ's; but, by some mistake consequent

on

Mr. Sotheby's death near the time of the publication of his book, "Trinity" was substituted for "Christ's" in the acknowledgment. Both my informants agree in saying the photograph does not rightly represent the bust. Mr. Aldis Wright says it "makes the face much more heavy than it is in reality;" and Professor Cowell specifies "the stoutness of the lower cheek and jaw" in the photograph as a "striking discrepancy" from the original, adding that the countenance in the photograph 66 directed more upward" than it should be. It chanced that Mr. Woolner, the sculptor, was with Mr. Aldis Wright when he last inspected the bust. As it was then under glass, and the key of the case was away, Mr. Woolner could not handle it, so as to be I enabled to say whether the material was clay

seems

or plaster. "But he was inclined to believe it to be clay (which is the tradition), and considered it to be unquestionably, in that case, an original model taken from life." So Mr. Aldis Wright tells me; and Professor Cowell, who talked with the Master afterward, says definitely: "It is a clay model. There is, however, no authority on the bust itself for the date 1654, assigned by Sotheby as the probable one.'

The bust has been in the possession of Christ's College for about sixty or seventy years. It was presented to the College by the Rev. Dr. Disney, who died in 1816. This Dr. Disney had inherited it, with much other property, from Mr. Thomas Brand Hollis, of the Hyde, Ingatestone, Essex, who died in 1804. His name had been originally Thomas Brand; but he had assumed the name Hollis on his succession, in 1774, to Mr. Thomas Hollis, the previous owner of the property. To this last Mr. Thomas Hollis (born 1720, died 1774), the possession of the bust is, therefore, clearly referred. He was a man of some celebrity, and a great enthusiast in Milton and collector of Milton relics. His Memoirs were published in London in 1780, in two volumes 4to; and the following extract from the second volume (p. 513) is very obligingly sent me by Mr. Aldis Wright. He is so accurate in all such matters that I need not compare with the book in our Library here. You will see that the extract furnishes further interesting information about the bust:

For an original model in clay of the head of Milton, "Mr. Hollis, in a paper dated July 30, 1757, says: £9 12s-which I intended to have purchased myself had it not been knocked down to Mr. Reynolds by a mistake of Mr. Ford, the auctioneer. Note: about two years before Mr. Vertue died he told me that he had been possessed of this head many years, and that he believed it was done by one Pierce, a sculptor of good reputation in those times, the same who made the bust in marble of Sir Christopher Wren, which is in the Bodleian Library. My own opinion is that it was modelled by Abraham Simon, and that afterwards a seal was engraved after it, in profile, by his brother Thomas Simon, a proof impression of which is now in the hands of Mr. Yeo, engraver in Covent Garden. This head was badly designed by Mr. Richardson, and then engraved by Mr. Vertue, and prefixed to Milton's Prose Works, printed for A. Miller, 1753. The bust probably was executed soon after Milton had written his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano'-Mr. Reynolds obligingly parted with this bust to Mr. Hollis, for twelve guineas.'

The "Mr. Reynolds" who thus bought the bust at a sale when Mr. Hollis meant to buy it, but who afterward let Mr. Hollis have it, was probably Sir Joshua Reynolds (not knighted till 1768). If, as seems implied, the

sale was that of the effects of the engraver George Vertue (born 1684, died July 24, 1756), we arrive at Vertue as the first known owner of the bust. He was an excellent judge of portraits, and did not a few of Milton's himself; and I should place great trust in his opinion. I may mention that I have a copy of an engraving of 1801, bearing this imprint: "Milton: from an Impression of a seal of T. Simon, in the possession of the late Mr. Yeo." It is a wretched thing, and I see no resemblance in it to the bust.

Let me end this too long letter by saying, for myself, that I prefer the Faithorne portrait of Milton to all others, and see in it what I consider most truly the noble, sorrowful, blind face. The photograph opposite that from the bust in Sotheby is one form of it.

I am, gentlemen, yours very truly,

DAVID MASSON. To the Editors of SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY.

To admirers of Milton, whether as poet or man, or both, the importance of this discovery-for it is, to all intents and purposes, a discovery-can hardly be overstated. We have now a portrait of Milton in the very prime of his glorious and energetic life. Mr. Sotheby considered that its probable date was 1654, when the poet was forty-six years of age; and, although he had no authority for that date, he appears to us justified in his conviction by the bust itself, which represents a man of that age-not younger, and certainly not older.

Mr. Sotheby, in his book, gives us Mr. Disney's own description of the bust, which is as follows; he added it as a memorandum to the first volume of the copy of Prose Works of Milton, Ed. 1753, which he presented to the Library of Christ's College, Cambridge:

"A Bust in plaster modeled from, and big as life; was in the possession of Thomas Hollis, of Lincolnshire, done soon after

Milton had written his 'Defensio pro Populo Anglicano,' as some think by one Pierce, a sculptor of good reputation in those times, the same who made the bust of Sir Christopher Wren, which is in the Bodleian Library; or, as others, by Abraham Simon. A print of this bust very badly designed is prefixed to Milton's Prose Works, published at London, 1753.*

It will be seen that he speaks of the bust as plaster, and without any misgivings; whereas Mr. Woolner, the eminent sculptor, is inclined to think it clay, though, as it was locked up when he and Mr. Aldis Wright went to Cambridge to see it, he could not handle it, and so settle the matter definitely. Professor Cowell, who afterward talked about it with the Master of Christ's College, reports that the Master said definitely: "It is a clay model." But we do not understand why Mr. Wright, in reporting Mr. Woolner's suspicion that it was clay, should add, “ which is the tradition," since the tradition is divided. Mr. Disney describes it as plaster, and Mr. Hollis speaks of it as clay. However, this is really of some importance, since, if it is in clay, there is the more reason for believing it to be a model from the life.

We may add that this is not the first time the bust has been engraved, though it seems to be certain that it has never before been done justice to by engraving. Disney and Mr. Hollis speak of one engraving by Vertue, after a drawing by Richardson, made for an edition of Milton's works, published in 1753. It was also engraved by Cipriani with the following title: "Drawn and etched 1760 by J. N. Cipriani, a Tuscan, from a bust in plaster modeled from life, now in the possession of Thomas Hollis, Esq., F. R. S., F. S. A.” It will be noticed that this same Mr. Hollis, in the Memoirs from which Professor Masson gives an extract, speaks of the bust as a clay model.

Sotheby. The writer of this has never seen the engraving.