in his sitter so keenly engaged; it is the sensitive fineness of the man's art. His drawing for the Seal of Queen Elizabeth in the British Museum shows what a firmly modulated line his pen could trace. In the little portrait of a young man leaning against a tree at South Kensington, could anything be more beautiful than the rose-leaves and rose-blossoms on the tall briars that seem to embower this curly-headed youth, and make a pattern light on his dark short cloak, and dark on the white hose that encase the slender elegance of his legs? Beside Hilliard's art, the Flemings' robust journeyman's work seems of an altogether coarser world. Hilliard betrays a fastidious temperament, a constant choiceness, a love of fine persons and fine manners, a sympathy with aristocratic youth and its passion for distinction. Fundamentally, we find in him an affinity with Gainsborough.

It is

A few of Hilliard's delightful miniatures are reproduced in the Walpole Society's first volume, others are reproduced in the volume which consists of an annotated catalogue of the famous collection of miniatures at Welbeck. But the first volume also contains a very important document for the history of English painting, Hilliard's treatise on the 'Art of Limning,' here published for the first time. It is surprising that no one should have thought of printing this treatise before. interesting not only for its account of the technical method pursued by Hilliard, but for its opinions, personal touches, and reminiscences. Hilliard has much to say in praise of Albert Dürer, the most exquisite man that ever left us lines to view for true delineation'; but he holds it a defect in his art that he had only German models to draw from, and not the 'faire creatures' that the Italians had seen; and such rare beauties,' he maintains, are more commonly found in this isle of England than elsewhere.' Raleigh once posed Hilliard with a problem of portrait painting, and Hilliard showed him how it was possible to draw a tall man and a short man on two tablets of the same size and yet make it plain to the eye that one was short and the other tall. He has some shrewd remarks on light and shadow; for, allowing that strong light and shade help a picture which is to be seen at a distance, he points out that there is no such necessity for a miniature held in the hand. He is all for what he

calls the truth of the line,' for 'line without shadow showeth all to a good judgment, but the shadow withou line showeth nothing.' In this preference for a draught manship which suggests modelling by expressive lineso to shadow as if it were not at all shadowed is best shadowed-and in his disdain for the easy method of getting relief and roundness by hard, strong shadows, h is at one with Holbein and with the Oriental masters And he recalls how he discussed this matter with Queer Elizabeth when he first drew her portrait. The Queer agreed with his view, but wanted his reasons, which he gave; and she chose to sit for him in the open alley of a goodly garden, where no tree was near.' In short, the 'Art of Limning' (carefully transcribed and edited by M Philip Norman) shows Hilliard not only as a thorough craftsman but as a thoughtful student of art who was well acquainted with the work of Continental masters.

Hilliard's treatise is the earliest of a group of similar treatises still extant in manuscript. The most important of these other tracts is the Miniatura,' by Edward Norgate, in the Bodleian Library. This was quite recently edited by Mr Martin Hardie for the Clarendon Press. Norgate originally wrote his treatise about 1630, and revised it about 1650. It is delightfully written and full of interesting things, and has lively comments on contemporary European artists, besides elaborate technical instructions. For both Norgate and Hilliard painting was not a profession but a pastime. Perhaps it was not an uncommon accomplishment in Elizabeth's day. John White, the Govornor' of that First Colonie of Virginia, sent out by Raleigh, which disappeared before it could be firmly settled, was a good draughtsman and painter in water-colour. A book of his drawings, made in Virginia and the West Indies, is in the British Museum, and is of extreme interest from the geographical and ethnographical point of view; it has considerable interest also as art.

Exquisite as is the art of Hilliard, it is a rather isolated flower, a form of painting which has little relation to the other arts. There was no general movement in England, and no single master capable of flooding the old traditions of competent craftsmanship with the

intellectual curiosity and imaginative ardour which had carried the arts to such heights of achievement in Italy. The Renaissance came late to England. Inigo Jones brought grandeur of style into architecture, but his figure-drawing partakes to the full of the mannerisms into which the Italian style had fallen. Yet everything related to this great name is of interest. Jones' designs for masques, at Chatsworth, still await publication.

The Walpole Society has done good service by publishing, with very full illustrations, the Note Book of Nicholas Stone, preserved in the Soane Museum. This forms its latest volume. It has been admirably edited by Mr Walter Spiers, late Curator of the Soane Museum, who died in 1917. Unfortunately, he did not live to see his work published and enjoy the appreciation it has earned. It is a valuable contribution to the history of English sculpture. Stone worked under Inigo Jones for a time. He was a master mason who knew his craft thoroughly, but he was also a sculptor and architect, and his numerous memorial monuments show a remarkable variety and inventiveness of design. The diary of younger Nicholas Stone on his travels in Italy-a document of lively interest-is printed for the first time as a supplement to this volume.

the

English painting in the 17th century is overshadowed by Van Dyck and by Lely. There were English painters of distinguished talent, but little has been done to sift their work and make it known. In the Garrick Club, which contains so fascinating a collection of English pictures, often by men whose names are forgotten, there is a remarkable portrait of Nat Lee the dramatist. It is well-known from engravings. This picture is still generally referred to as a work by William Dobson, though that painter was dead before Lee was born. That is an instance of the kind of indifference to any precision and the ready acceptance of casual attributions which we meet with continually. The Walpole Society has published several careful and informing articles on 17th-century portraiture. The group of Lely's English contemporaries who worked mainly in pastel presents a dark problem, on which Mr Bell, of the Ashmolean Museum, and Mr Collins-Baker have now shed some light. Edmund Ashfield and

T. Thrumton are artists to whose names known works can now be attached.

Interesting as these painters are, the one who stands pre-eminent among them is Samuel Cooper, a master who has never received anything like his due of fame from his own countrymen. Had he painted in oils, and on the larger scale-his portraits are miniatures, but there is nothing small about his style-he would doubtless be more famous. There are portraits of women by his hand which are singularly intimate and expressive of subtle personality; beside them, the women of Lely, and many of Van Dyck too, seem superficial. With this insight, he had the delicacy that only real power achieves. There is nothing in Cooper of the later vague, elusive prettiness into which miniature painting decayed; he has precision, but is never dry. This school of portraiture, which from Hilliard descends through the Olivers to Cooper, Flatman, and Hoskins, can show many a small masterpiece. In it the medieval tradition of the manuscript painters seems to have a sort of survival or revival. The union of firm craftsmanship with a sort of modesty and reserve is characteristic in both.

The 18th century brings us to Hogarth, who for most people counts as the originator of the English school of painting. In the art of this century there is less work for investigators to do, though artists of some interest have been rediscovered in recent years. Some day, perhaps, the Walpole Society may devote attention to the 18th-century book-illustrators, who have passed into an obscurity not entirely deserved.

The beginnings of landscape art in England provide again a field in which discoveries may still be made. It is curious that England should have been so late in producing her school of landscape, afterwards 80 vigorous and distinguished. In the recently published 'Miniatura' of Norgate, already mentioned, we find directions for painting landscape; and though an art 'so new in England,' he writes of it as having got much credit and being 'much in request.' One cannot help thinking that even in the 17th century there was more painting of landscape than has hitherto been supposed, passing now under foreign names, or destroyed, or

lurking forgotten in country-houses. If, however, there was anything like a school of landscape painters in gouache at this period, it cannot have had much strength or character. Such landscape art as there was probably depended on Flemish example. The decorative landscapes by R. Robinson, published by Mr Tristram in the third Walpole volume, are curious as showing a passing influence from Chinese compositions on 17th-century art. These are panels which once decorated a house in Botolph Lane, and have happily been preserved with the room they adorned. But it is not till the 18th century that landscape art becomes serious achievement. Mr Bell contributes informing notes on some of our early masters in water-colour, bringing one or two hitherto unknown personalities to light, and correcting, from newly discovered material, received accounts. The fully illustrated articles on Turner's sketch-books by Mr A. J. Finberg also form valuable documents. All this is the kind of work which, when the subject was minor Italians of the 15th century, has been pursued by English students with solemn enthusiasm ; but why should not the art of their own country receive some of their attention?

Compared with France, or with the Netherlands, England can show no persistent and commanding tradition in the arts. In the Middle Ages England was not behind the countries of the Continent; at certain times, and in certain arts, she led. The Black Death came, a destroying blight; the Hundred Years' War, the War of the Roses, unsettled life, diverted money and wasted blood, treasure, energy at

once. Puritanism both obliterated all it could of the once-cherished art of the past, and frowned down beauty in its own experience of life. The Renaissance came late to these islands, too late and tired and weakened to breathe fervour and force into the English arts. Traditions had been too effectually broken. The embers were cold. The imagination of the race flowed into literature. We see a man like Blake, who, born in the later Middle Ages, with a heritage of sound craftsmanship, might have shone for later time with a glory of rare achievement generating masterpieces in his successors-we see him reaching out from the prison of his own age to the halfdiscerned Gothic grandeur, striving to bridge over that