[491] Maso Finiguerra, a skilful Florentine goldsmith, engraved in 1452 a silver plate to be used as a pax in the church of San Giovanni, and in order to judge of the effect of his design, the lines of which he intended to fill with enamel, he poured some liquid sulphur upon the plate. He then succeeded in taking impressions of the design on paper. These impressions were once thought to be the earliest known engravings. It is now proved that they were not, and that Finiguerra may have had direct instruction from an early German engraver.
[492] The site of Mr. Atkinson’s villa and grounds is indicated by Grove End Road, west of Lord’s Cricket Ground.
[493] Smith misquotes Ramsay, who wrote—
“How halesome ’tis to snuff the cawler air,
And all the sweets it bears, when void of care.”
Gentle Shepherd, 1st ed., Act i. Sc. i. 5, 6.
[494] William West, actor and composer, lived to a great age, and was known as the “Father of the Stage.” Some of his songs, such as “When Love was fresh from her Cradle Bed,” were popular. He died in 1888.
[495] The Rev. Thomas Hartwell Horne, Rector of St. Edmund the King and St. Nicholas Acon, was a valuable servant of the British Museum, to which he came as cataloguer in 1824. He died at his house in Bloomsbury Square, January 27, 1862. Watt was Robert Watt, the bibliographer, compiler of Bibliotheca Britannica, etc.; he died in 1819.
[496] The Post Angel, of which the British Museum has a copy, was one of the enterprises of John Dunton. His rigmarole preface sets forth that “by Post-Angels I mean all the invisible Host of the Middle Region, that are employed about us either as Friends or Enemies”; his design is “to shew how we should enquire after News, not as Athenians but as Christians, or (in other words) a Divine Employment of every Remarkable Occurrence.” Features of this periodical were “The Lives and Deaths of the most Eminent Persons that Died in that Month,” and recurrent pious reflections under the head of “The Spiritual Observator.”
[497] John Taylor, who was Smith’s life-long friend and the most genial and patriarchal of artists, died at his house in Cirencester Place, November 21, 1838, in his ninety-ninth year. Smith mentions under the year 1779, that he had been the pupil of Frank Hayman, after which he took up the drawing of portraits in pencil, for which he received seven-and-sixpence to a guinea each. It is said that, in Oxford alone, in six or eight years, Taylor drew, or painted, more than three thousand heads. Finding this employment poorly paid, he took the advice of his fellow-artist “Jack” Gresse and set up as drawing-master, investing his savings in annuities which were to expire in 1840. He died just in time to escape want. See the early reference to Taylor, [p. 80].