Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/91

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became his patron, bringing him to England. In 1640 appeared his beautiful set of twenty-six plates, entitled, "Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus," representing the costume of English ladies of all ranks of that period. We reproduce (opposite p. 36) an enlargement of a portion of a delicate little costume-study from this series. From 1642 to 1644 he published other sets of ladies in the costumes of the different nations of Europe.

It was not a felicitous time for lovers of the fine arts nor for those who wished to work uninterruptedly apart from the rude buffetings of the world. Herrick, the golden-mouthed, was singing in Devonshire "To Anthea," and recording Julia's charms in imperishable verse. But Hollar was nearer the Court, and was drawn into the seething turmoil of the civil war. The battle of Chalgrove Field had been fought in 1643, in which Hampden was mortally wounded. Oliver Cromwell had won Marston Moor, and the king had been routed at Naseby. The bloody hand of war had stretched over the land, and had graved deep furrows. Art was pestilential to the nostrils of the Puritan, and Hollar, who put down his etching-needle to take up the sword, was made prisoner at Basing House in 1645.

In 1647 he was at Antwerp, and was engaged in engraving from the priceless collection of pictures of the Earl of Arundel, which that nobleman happily carried with him in his flight from England. In the reproduction from the Arundel Collection here illustrated the inscription runs: "H. Holbein incidit in lignum. W. Hollar fecit Aqua forti, 1647. Ex Collectione Arundeliana."