As, however, during this long reign of fifty-eight years, women were the presiding geniuses of the court and the virtual directors of the kingdom, I cannot give a faithful portrait of the times without some allusion, at least, to that woman who was as famous in her day as Madame de Montespan was during the most brilliant period of the reign of Louis XIV.

Between Nov. 20th of this year and Jan. 4th of the year 1884, he sat several times to Mr John Collier for his portrait: the picture was exhibited in the Academy of 1884; it is a most successful and excellent likeness.

Still shaking her head over her mistake, she drew Flora's latest portrait carefully from its place in the album, and putting on her hat and jacket went round to make a call in Peter Street.

The books went first, as if they could be most easily dispensed with; the remnants of his plate followed; then his pictures were sold; and at last even the portrait of his first wife, by Reynolds, was left in pledge for a 'further remittance.'

To judge from a portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly handsome; but he is described as tall, well built, and of a slight and graceful figure.

According to one quite as reliable as any other, the Prince and the Beau had in their days of amity intended to exchange snuff-boxes, and George the Greater had given George the Less an order on his jeweller for a tabatière with his portrait on the top.

I give the portrait in my large edition.

Yours ever truly, C.L. [Lamb's portrait of his father is reproduced in Vol.

Horne Tooke is a matchless portrait.

With what a gusto Mr. Lamb describes the Inns and Courts of law, the Temple and Gray's Inn, as if he had been a student there for the last two hundred years, and had been as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with his portrait or writings!

She also remembered a portrait over the fireplace.

In the Gem for 1831 was a poem by Barton, "To Milton's Portrait in a Friend's Parlour."] LETTER 391 CHARLES LAMB TO

[The portrait to which Lamb refers will be found opposite page 706 in my large edition.

It is quite likely, Mr. J.A. Rutter suggests, that Hill the drysalter, a famous busy-body, and a friend of Theodore Hook, stood for the portrait of Tom Pry in Lamb's "Lepus Papers" (see Vol. I.).

The last poem, by Mitford himself, was "Lines Written under the Portrait of Edward VI.

The artist who painted Lamb recently was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), the portrait being that which serves as frontispiece to this volume.

The Lambs were just moving to Enfield for good, as they hoped (see next letter), Milton was the portrait.

[Leigh Hunt had asked Lamb for his portrait to accompany his Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries.

To draw a portrait from the life is not to create a character, still less when the lines are distorted by satire.

He talked of Maulevrier Castle, and said that I reminded him of a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier.

Dost thou know that when I first saw the portrait of thy beauteous face I fell down in a swoon before it?"

And for his part, Philidor made a lightning sketch of an ancien who stood by, leaning upon his stick, which brought him several other commissions at ten sous the portrait.

Mre GuŽgou, a woman younger than her lord, looked at them askance until her good man exhibited the portrait by Monsieur Philidor, when she burst into smiles and hospitality.

She was the Olga of the portrait with the added graces of a not too obtrusive sympathy and a manner which seemed subtly to suggest self-elimination.

As she viewed the portrait now in the light of time and event, she saw, more clearly than ever, her soul and body as Markham had seen it.