.2n<iS. VII. ArRiLSO. '59.1 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



351 



when he had sent it all over, he came over himself, and 

 translated it out of Italian into English and Latin. My 

 father sent it to them to desire the favour of them to 

 send him their pictures, Avhich they did accordingly, 

 drawn upon canvass half way ; and my father put them 

 into plain black frames. I had them in my possession for 

 some time, but they were burnt in my lodgings in Fleet 

 Street, in the great fire at London, I being then in the 

 country. I have heard my father say, that he believed 

 they were Protestants in their hearts, though they durst 

 not own it, or else they might have discovered the busi- 

 ness he came about, which might have cost him his life 

 in the Inquisition. I rest. Sir, 



" Your very humble Servant, 



" Basil Bkknt." 



But not to stop here, we are informed by Mb. 

 Larkikg that — 



" There were formerly at Roydon Hall portraits of both 

 Sarpi and Fulgentius, sent to Sir Roger Twysden from 

 Venice bj' his brother William, who, in the letter which ac- 

 companied them, declares them to be admirable likenesses ; 

 and he asserts, on the authoritj' of Fulgentius himself, that 

 that of Sarpi was the best and most correct likeness of his 

 master which he had ever seen. Some thirty years ago 

 or more, I consigned these temporarily to the care of a 

 j'oung artist in London who was residing in furnished lodg- 

 ings. The landlord suffered an execution in his house ; 

 the officers of the sheriff carried off these two pictures, 

 and I did not hear of the event till it was too late to re- 

 cover them. From that hour to this I have never been 

 able to trace them." 



It is difficult, however, to reconcile these differ- 

 ent statements respecting Father Paul's portrait 

 with the following notices of it by Dr. Hickes, which 

 occur in some remarks on Burnet's Life of William 

 Bedell, in his work entitled Some Discourses upon 

 Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, occasioned by the 

 late Funeral Sermon of the Former upon the Lat' 

 ter, 4to. 1695. At p. 31. he says : — 



"But to go on with the inventions of our historian, 

 p. 17., Dr. Burnet saith, that 'P. Paulo might never be 

 forgot by Bedell he gave him his picture, the invaluable 

 manuscript of the History of the Council of Trent, toge- 

 ther with the History of the Interdict, and of the Inqui- 

 sition.' Nobody doubts of Father Paul's kindness to Mr, 



the Council of Trent, which he had come into England to 

 publish. {Collectanea Cwiosa, ii. 2^.) Were these dupli- 

 cate copies, or did each bring a portion of the work? 

 Much reliance, however, cannot be placed upon the state- 

 ments either of the biographer of Wotton or that of 

 Bedell. For Walton, in his notice of Father Paul in his 

 Life of Wotton, complains of his want of " a view of some 

 papers in his late Majesty's letter office," and that " the 

 printer's press stays for what is written." If the worthy 

 Piscator could have consulted the valuable Calendars of 

 the State Papers, recently compiled b}' Mrs. Green and 

 Mr. Bruce, we should no doubt have had a better account 

 of Sir Henry Wotton and his contemporaries. But as for 

 Bishop Burnet, his simple object in writing the Life of 

 Bishop Bedell was, that he might claim the gentle and 

 saintly Shepherd of Kilmore for one of his " Scotch psalm- 

 singing fraternity," as William Cole has it. Perhaps j-our 

 valuable correspondent, the Rev. L, B. Larking, will be 

 kind enough to favour us, from Sir Roger Twysden's MSS. 

 with a true elucidation of the circumstances attending 

 the " smuggling " into England of Sarpi's History of the 

 Council, as well as the truth as to certain alleged tara- 

 perings with the text of that work. 



Bedell, but it will appear that these tokens of it are more 

 than questionable from what follows: First, as to his 

 picture, he that reads his Life will scarce believe he was 

 so forward to give his picture, or that he had it to give. 

 ' For he would never let his picture be drawn from the 

 natural, notwithstanding it were desired by kings and 

 great princes.' And although many of his pictures go 

 abroad for originals, yet they are all but copies of one 

 which is said to be in the gallery of a great king, which 

 was taken against his will, and by stratagem. But for 

 himself this may give assurance, that he did not endure 

 to have his picture drawn, because in the last years of 

 his life, being intreated by the most illustrious and ex- 

 cellent Dominico Molin, and likewise by his confidant 

 Fra Fulgentio being set on to beseech him, yet it could 

 not be obtained so much as to give a famous painter leave 

 to take his picture, though he was promised he should 

 not sit above an hour.'* Whosoever considers this ac- 

 count, and more to the same purpose in the same place, 

 must needs think that the Father had no pictures of 

 himself to give Mr. Bedell. Indeed there is mention of 

 an original picture of the Father sent by Sir Henry Wot- 

 ton to Dr. Collins t ; but by the account 1 have given out 

 of the Father's Life, which was written by a great friend 

 of his,^ must have been that which he saith was ' in the 

 gallery of a great king,' or one ' taken by the like strata- 

 gem.' " 



Dr. Hickes's conjecture does not appear quite 

 correct ; for Sir Henry Wotton, in his letter to 

 Dr. Collins, expressly states that — 



" The true picture of Padre Paolo the Servita was first 

 taken by a painter whom I sent unto him from my house 

 then neighbouring his monastery. I have newly added 

 thereunto a title of mine own conception, Concilii Triden- 

 tini Eviscerator ; and had sent the frame withal, if it were 

 portable, which is but of plain deal, coloured black, like 

 the habit of his order. You will find a scar on his face ; 

 that was from a Roman assassin, that would have killed 

 him as he was turned to a wall near to his convent." 



That renowned worthy, Master Tom Coryate, 

 in his Crudities Hastily Gobbled up, ii. 7., edit. 

 1776, informs us, that both Sir Henry Wotton 

 and Father Paul resided in the same street, called 

 St. Hieronirao. Coryate reached Venice in his 

 memorable travels just after the Interdict had 

 been revoked. An engraved portrait of Father 

 Paul, by Lombart, is prefixed to his Life, Lond. 

 8vo. 1651. J. Yeowell. 



13. Myddelton Place, Sadler's Wells. 



WAS SHAKSPEARE EVER A SOLDIER ? 



(^Concluded from p. 333.) 



One word more before I adduce the proofs that 

 Shakspeare had seen military service derivable 

 from his writings. The Lord Chief Justice, in. 

 investigating the evidence of Shakspeare's legal 

 knowledge, had the advantage of being himself a 

 master of the art on which he was treating, while 

 I, in discussing Shakspeare's soldierly knowledge, 

 have the disadvantage of being utterly incompe- 



* Life of Father Paul, Lond., p. 76. 

 t Bedell's Life, p. 255. 



