JERVAS THE INSTRUCTOR OF POPE.
What will recommend the name of Jervas to inquisitive posterity, was his intimacy with Pope, whom he instructed to draw and paint. The poet has enshrined the feeble talents of the painter in "the lucid amber of his flowing lines." Spence informs us, that Pope was "the pupil of Jervas for the space of a year said a half," meaning that he was constantly so, for that period. Tillemans was engaged in painting a landscape for Lord Radnor, into which Pope by stealth inserted some strokes, which the prudent painter did not appear to observe; and of this circumstance Pope was not a little vain. In proof of his proficiency in the art of painting, Pope presented his friend Mr. Murray, with a head of Betterton the celebrated tragedian, which was afterwards at Caen Wood. During a long visit at Holm Lacy in Herefordshire, he amused his leisure by copying from Vandyck, in crayons, a head of Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, which was still preserved there many years afterwards, and is said to have possessed considerable merit. For an account of Pope's skill in painting fans, see vol. I. page 201 of this work.
JERVAS AND DR. ARBUTHNOT.
Jervas, who affected to be a Free-thinker, was one day talking very irreverently of the Bible. Dr. Arbuthnot maintained to him that he was not only a speculative, but a practical believer. Jervas denied it. Arbuthnot said that he would prove it: "You strictly observe the second commandment;" said the Doctor, "for in your pictures you 'make not the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth'"!
JERVAS' VANITY.
His vanity and conceit knew no bounds. He copied a picture by Titian in the Royal collection, which he thought so vastly superior to the original, that on its completion he exclaimed with great complacency, "Poor little Tit, how he would stare!" Walpole says, "Jervas had ventured to look upon the fair Lady Bridgewater with more than a painter's eye; so entirely did that lovely form possess his imagination, that many a homely dame was delighted to find her picture resemble Lady Bridgewater. Yet neither his presumption nor his passion could extinguish his self-love." One day, as she was sitting to him, he ran over the beauties of her face with rapture—'but,' said he, "I cannot help telling your ladyship that you have not a handsome ear." "No!" returned the lady, "pray, Mr. Jervas, what is a handsome ear?" He turned his cap, and showed her his own. When Kneller heard that Jervas had sent up a carriage and four horses, he exclaimed, "Ah, mine Got! if his horses do not draw better than he does, he will never get to his journey's end!"