Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/121

 they are dead. I paint the living, and they make me live!"

KNELLER'S KNOWLEDGE OF PHYSIOGNOMY.

In a conversation concerning the legitimacy of the unfortunate son of James II., some doubts having been expressed by an Oxford Doctor, Kneller exclaimed, with much warmth, "His father and mother have sat to me about thirty-six times apiece, and I know every line and bit of their faces. Mein Gott! I could paint King James now by memory. I say the child is so like both, that there is not a feature of his face but what belongs either to father or mother; this I am sure of, and cannot be mistaken; nay, the nails of his fingers are his mother's, the queen that was. Doctor, you may be out in your letters, but I cannot be out in my lines."

KNELLER AS A JUSTICE OF THE PEACE.

Sir Godfrey acted as a justice of the peace at Wilton, and his sense of justice induced him always to decide rather by equity than law. His judgments, too, were often accompanied with so much humor, as caused the greatest merriment among his acquaintance. Thus, he dismissed a poor soldier who had stolen a piece of meat, and fined the butcher for purposely tempting him to commit the crime. Hence Pope wrote the following lines:

"I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit, Who sent the thief (that stole the cash) away, And punished him that put it in his way."