Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/247

 THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX. 237 In Les Portraits des Rommes Illustres qui ont le plus contribue au EetahUssement des belles lettres et de la vraye Religion {A Geneve, 1673), the woodcut of Knox is contentedly given, as Goulart gave it in his French Translation ; and for that of Beza himself the boiled Figure-head, which Beza denominated Knox ! The little silver Pepper-box is likewise given again there as portrait of Jacobus YI., — Jacobus who had, in the meantime, grown to full stature, and died some fifty years ago. For not in nature, but only in some chaos thrice confounded, with Egyptian darkness superadded, is there to be found any history comparable to that of old bad prints. For example, of that disastrous old Figure-head, produced to view by Beza, who or what did draw it, when or from what authority, if any, except that evidently some human being did, and pre- sumably from some original or other, must remain for- ever a mystery. In a large Granger, fifty or sixty big folios, and their thousands of prints, I have seen a summary collection, of the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, of some fourteen or fifteen Heroes of the Reformation, Knox among them ; all flung down in the form of big circular blotch, like the opened eggs