46 THE MODEL MERCHANT 



There is every indication about the engraving of Elstrack that it was 

 copied from an original. A ftxncy porti'ait would undoubtedly have taken 

 pains to represent liim in the best light, and would have endeavoured to 

 give him such good looks as a poetic or romantic imagination would have 

 suggested ; whereas in Elstrack' s portrait there is none of that fictiti- 

 ous attempt at embellishment so amusingly described in Foote's Farce 

 called Taste, in which Lady Pentweasel is represented as addressing 

 the artist as follows : — 



Lady Pentweasel: "Pray now Mr. Carmine, how do you limners contrive to 

 overlook the ugliness and yet preserve the likeness r " 



Mr. Carmine : " The art, Madam, may be conveyed in two words ; where 

 nature has been severe, we soften ; where she has been kind we aggravate." 



Now there has evidently been no such tampering with the subject 

 in the instance of Elstrack' s engraving, and we have therefore every 

 reason to believe that it is taken from a genuine and original portrait. 



Up to this point we have established two early representations of 

 "VVhittington in connection with a Cat, we now come to a third. In 

 the Patent Rolls, 1, Ilen.YL, there is a grant to the Executors of the "Will 

 of Richard Whittington, late Citizen and Mercer of London, that they 

 may pull down and build anew the King's Gaol at Newgate, together 



of Queen Mary for his opposition to Popery, says " that a greate nombre 



of them whych purchased those superstycyouse mansyons {i.e. the monasteries) 



reserved of the lybrary bookes some to scoure their candlestycks, and some to 



rubbe their bootes ; some they sold to the grossers and sopesellers, and some they 



sent over see to the bookcbj-nders, not in small nombre, but at tj'mes whole 



shyppes full, to the wonderingc of foren nacyons. Tea, the universities of this 



realme are not all clere in this detestable fact. I know a merchauntman, whych 



shall at this tyme be namelesse, that boughte the contentes of two noble lybrares 



for forty shillings pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. This stuffe hath he occupied 



in the stede of graye paper by the space of more than these ten ycrcs, and yet he 



had store ynough for as many yercs to come ; a prodigyouse example is this, and 



to be abhorred of all men who love their nacyon as they should do."* It is 



certainly to be feared that Sir John Whittington either cared less for books than 



his pocket, or was a more zealous reformer than lover of the history of his country. 



Lastly, the Great Fire of London deprived us of a vast number of valuable 



muniments. Xo wonder, then, that with such serious losses to our nation's 



records, many of our traditions have nearly passed into fable, and it needs to work 



them out, bit by bit, by the most careful investigation, and to replace them in 



their true position. 



* Dugdale's Monaaticon, 



