THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX. 303 of klnsMp with the Knox Portrait ; and visited there- upon, and examined, with great minuteness, whatever Porbuses we could hear of in London, or neighbour- hood. And always, as was evident to me, with grow- ing clearness of conviction that this Portrait of Knox was a coarse and rapid, but effective, probably some- what enlarged copy after Porbus, done to all appearance in the above-named Baron Somerville's time ; that is, before 1766. Mr. Boehm, with every new Porbus, became more interested in this research ; and re- gretted with me that so few Porbuses were attainable here, and of these, several not by our Buchanan Porbus, Francois Porbus, or Pourbus, called in our dictionaries, Ic vieux, but by his son and by his father. Last Autumn Mr. Boehm was rusticating in the IS'etherlands. There he saw and examined many Porbuses, and the following is the account which he gives of his researches there :
- I will try, as best I can, to enumerate the reasons
- why I think that the Somerville Picture is a copy,
- and why a copy after Francis Porbus.
' That it is a copy done in the latter half of the last ^ century can be easily seen by the manner of paint-
