but there's savour of merit and signs of goodly craft for the dark age of its birth. In the group of three children of life-size we have a rare work of the period when few men of genius wielded the brush or daubed canvas, even through the inspiring patronage of a wealthy banker, whose progeny they are—and this is executed too before academies and societies offered their fostering aid, and when Hogarth struggled on probably side by side with Dandridge. Some of your readers may have traces of him and of his works, and may be able to trace his memory to the grave. All that Walpole has of him is (p. 439.):
"Son of a house painter; had great business from his felicity in taking a likeness. He sometimes painted small conversations, but died in the vigour of his age."
QUESTOR.
Athenæum, Nov. 20. 1850.
Chaucer's Portrait by Occleve.—Is the portrait of Chaucer which Occleve drew in his translation of Egidius de Roma to be found in all the MSS. of that work? and, if so, has it ever been engraved. I have not Urry's Chaucer by me, or perhaps he could save you the trouble of answering the question.
On reference to Watts, I find he does not even mention this work of Occleve, but contents himself with a piece of supercilious criticism; whereas the notices which Occleve takes of passing events (of which the character of Chaucer is one) are at least valuable (although his poetry may not be the best in the world), and his work is also valuable in giving us the phraseology of the fourteenth century.
P.
John o'Groat's House.—Does any authenticated view of the building called John o'Groat's House in Caithness exist, and are any traditions respecting it known beyond the certainly ridiculous account in the fifth volume of Beauties of Scotland, p.83.?
Can any of your readers point out an engraving of the old Konigs or Kaiserstuhl, at Rheuse, on the Rhine, as well as of its restoration in 1848, after being destroyed by the hordes of revolutionary France, in 1792? It is not in Merian or Zeiler. I have seen it, but cannot call to mind the author. Perhaps Alsatia Illustrata?
WILLIAM BELL, Phil. Dr.