XVill HISTORY AND PLAN 



hand ; and the ribbon round the neck, the lower part of 

 which is concealed in Pass's print, is changed into a George 

 and Garter. 1 But such varieties as these are of ordinary 

 occurrence in copies of the same picture by different hands ; 

 especially where one copier is attending chiefly to the out- 

 lines of the forms without caring to represent the effect of 

 the picture (the practice I think of engravers in Simon 

 Pass's time), and the other is attending to the effect of the 

 picture without caring, or without being able, to preserve 

 the individual details, according to the practice of the popu- 

 lar engravers of the eighteenth century ; whereas in two 

 independent and original portraits of the same face the cor- 

 respondencies which I have mentioned can hardly occur. 

 But however that may be, this mezzotinto appears at least 

 to prove that when it was made there was in existence a 

 portrait which somebody believed to be a portrait of Bacon 

 by Cornelius Johnson, that is (no doubt) Cornelius Janssen. 

 When it was made becomes therefore an interesting ques- 

 tion ; and I regret to say that it is a question which I have no 

 data for determining, beyond the fact that it is in mezzotinto 

 (an art of comparatively modern invention) ; that it was 

 " sold by J. Cooper in James Street Covent Garden ;" and 

 that there was an English engraver called Richard Cooper, 

 who flourished about the year 1763, and among whose en- 

 gravings a portrait of Francis Bacon Lord Keeper and 

 Chancellor is mentioned as one. 2 



With reference to this subject of portraits, I may add that 

 the various engravings of Bacon are all (with one exception 

 which I will mention presently) derived directly or through 

 successive copies from one or other of two originals. One 

 is Simon Pass's print; the features of which may be traced 

 through many generations of copies, each less like than its 

 predecessor; though always to be identified by the hat with 

 irregular brim curving upwards towards the sides, and 



1 If the original picture .really has this badge, we may conclude, I suppose, that it 

 was not a portrait of Bacon at all. And I should not be very much surprised if it 

 turned out to be a Charles I. 



2 See Bryan's Painters and Engraver$, 



