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401 pictures; and having been much conversant with Vandyke’s pictures he knew the hand at once.

He is equally clear that it is a portrait of Shakspeare. It has more resemblance he says to the picture said to be painted by, of which there is a mezzotinto by Simon, than to the Duke of Chandos picture. Vandyke came to England, I think, about the year 1630; so that he must have copied this picture from that from which the print prefixed to the first folio, 1623, was made, or from the old picture formerly in the possession of Davenant, and now belonging to the Duke of Chandos, or from some other original. There is, Parsons says, great spirit in the portrait; it contains a hand which, according to Vandyke’s manner, is spread on the left side of the body. The drapery is black without any figure or flowers in it.

My two ruins of Rome, Parsons thinks were done by, after ; and he inclines to think that my Duke of Monmouth which in my grandfather Collier’s catalogue is called Sir Peter Lely’s, was painted either by Mrs. Bale or the elder Richardson. The landscape, in the large picture of the Creation painted by De Foss, was done he says by, who always was employed by De Foss in that part of his pictures.

I had thought my large landscape by Abraham Houdens, 1687, was a great rarity as well as a very