[1] ‘A recent London paper advertises a genuine thesaurus of ancient tavern signs and other curiosities at auction, collected during a long life by some curious antiquary. The catalogue covered an extensive and unique collection for a history of ancient and modern inns, taverns, and coffee-houses, in town and country (numbering upwards of 850 signs), formed with unwearied diligence and vast outlay during a lifetime; and illustrated with upwards of 2,500 ancient and modern engravings, comprising topographical and antiquarian subjects, early views of London, caricatures, humorous and satirical subjects, portraits of celebrities whose names have been adopted as signs, characters remarkable for their eccentricities, actors and actresses; others illustrating ancient sports and pastimes, etchings, wood-cuts, and numerous others, plain and coloured, many of great rarity; also 415 drawings in water-colours, sepia, and pen and ink, and numerous copies from scarce engravings and old paintings; together with extensive antiquarian, local, and biographical notices (both printed and in MS.) on signs and their origin, merriments and witticisms in prose and verse, tales, traditions, legends, and remarkable incidents, singular inscriptions on tap-room windows and walls, anecdotes of landlords, guests, visitors, writers, &c.’
[2] Count Pecchio.
[3] Alexander Smith.
[4] Prescott’s Robertson’s Charles Fifth, vol. 1, p. 355.
[5] Brooks’s History of Medford.
[6] A. Trollope.
[7] A Month in England.
[8] Life and Letters of John Winthrop, by Robert C. Winthrop, p. 306.
[9] ‘I would not,’ observes Washington Irving in one of his letters, ‘give an hour’s conversation with Wilkie about paintings, in his earnest but precise and original enthusiasm, for all the enthusiasm and declamation of the common run of amateurs and artists.’
[10] One of the recently-discovered gems of pictorial art in Florence is the ‘coach-house picture;’ so called from being a fresco on a stable-wall; and under the head of ‘Romance of a Portrait,’ the London Athenæum publishes a statement which seems to show conclusively that the famous portrait of Addison at Holland House, which has been copied and engraved time and again, and has been mentioned as authentic by Macaulay, is in fact not a portrait of Addison, but a portrait of Sir Andrew Fountaine, of Narford Hall, Norfolk, vice-chamberlain to Queen Caroline, and the successor of Sir Isaac Newton in the wardenship of the Mint.