The good portrait painter always flatters; for it is his business, not,
indeed, to alter and amend features, complexion, or mien, but to select
and fix (which it demands genius and sense to do) the best appearance
which these ever do wear. Happy the creature of sense and passion who
has always with him that self which he could take pleasure in
contemplating! Happy--to pass graver considerations--the fair one whose
countenance continues as youthful as her attire! When Queen Elizabeth's
wrinkles waxed deep and many, it is reported that an unfortunate master
of the mint incurred disgrace by a too faithful shilling; the die was
broken, and only one mutilated impression is now in existence. Her maids
of honour took the hint, and were thenceforth careful that no fragment
of looking-glass should remain in any room of the palace. In fact, the
lion-hearted lady had not heart to look herself in the face for the last
twenty years of her life; but we nowhere learn that she quarrelled with
Holbein's portraitures of her youth, or those of her stately prime of
viraginity by De Heere and Zucchero.
He who has "neither done things worthy to be written, nor written things
worthy to be read," takes the trouble of transmitting his portrait to
posterity to very little purpose. If the picture be a bad one, it will
soon find its way to the garret; if good, as a work of art, it will
perpetuate the fame, probably the name, indeed, of the artist alone.
These are the _obscurorum virorum imagines_ which, as Walpole said, "are
christened commonly in galleries, like children at the Foundling
Hospital, _by chance_"--Q. Rev.
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