Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/217

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secured for a comparatively small sum. Edward VI. may be bought for half a sovereign. Henry Wriothsley, Earl of Southampton, for 15s. Sir Walter Raleigh for 35s. Of this latter we reproduce an illustration, (facing p. 144), with inscription, "The true and lively portraiture of the honourable and learned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh." There is another fine portrait taken from the many fine portraits left to posterity by Simon van de Passe, of Sir Francis Bacon, which we reproduce with inscription denoting that like prints "Are to be Sould by Iohn Sudbury & George Humble at the Signe of the white horse in Pope's head-Ally." The coat of arms at the top of the ornamental scroll bearing the motto Moniti meliora, with its stars and stripes as quarterings, gives a piquancy to the feverish interest exhibited in America, which pertinaciously continues, in spite of all disproof, to attribute to Bacon all that Shakespeare wrote. (Opposite p. 146.)

The engravers of Tudor days were more or less imbued with Continental technique and with Flemish traditions; innumerable portraits were engraved, both in England and abroad, of Queen Elizabeth, who loomed large in European politics. But with the Stuart dynasty arose a new school of engravers, more national, and having a fine sense of the picturesque. Vandyck had painted his gallery of beauties and his courtly band of noble-men—all that was fair and all that was chivalrous in an age when graceful elegance in costume was at its zenith. His masterpieces of the English aristocracy are scattered across the great European galleries