FROM ZOUCH 9 JANUARY 1760 35 If, when you have finished a page or two of your intended work,101 may be indulged with a sight of it, be assured, Sir, that it shall be re­ turned without the profanation of a letter—it might give me perhaps a clearer idea of your plan, for I am too dull entirely to understand it. The ancients I findver y curious in such kinds of histories—Franciscus Junius11 hath given us a list of the names (for their works are perished) of writers upon painting, statuary, etc., and of the lives of the eminent painters and artists. King Juba12 also wrote upon painters, as Pliny'3 tells us. It will be of no consequence perhaps to ascertain the time when painting was first introduced into this island: it hath been said we are indebted for it to Venerable Bede, who, you know, flourished about the seventh century. Have you any evidences more than what Par­ ker gives us in his history,1* that William of Wickham1* was a cele­ brated architect?1^ Upon what account was the £200 that Ann16 granted to Sir Anthony Vandyke? When I ask questions of this kind, I mean them only as hints to yourself, which still may be and most likely are of no moment at all. How long hath etching been invented? for we are told (in the Transactions) that Sir Christopher Wren1? found a curious and speedy way of etching—as also a method of drawing pic­ tures by microscopical glasses.18 Mr Bird,19 a carver of Oxford, invented

10. The Anecdotes of Painting. ham had the sole direction of the buildings 11. Franciscus Junius (or Francois du at Windsor and Queenborough Castle, not Jon) (1589-1677), philologist and antiquary. to mention his own foundations' (Anec­ His The Painting of the Ancients, 1638 dotes1 i. 112), 'The assumption that he was (first published at Amsterdam in Latin, De the architect either of these buildings or of pictura veterum, 1637) contains a list of an­ those he afterwards undertook on his own cient painters (pp. 49-52) and a list of account seems baseless' (James Tait in ancient writers on painting whose works DNB sub Wykeham). have perished (pp. 105-9). 15a. Parker describes Wykeham as 'sum- 12. Juba II (fl. 20 B. C), K. of Numidia. mus architectus non minori sedulitate A number of fragments have been attrib­ quam intelligentia' (De antiquitate, 1729 uted to him, including one on painting and edn, p. 384). painters. 16. Anne of Denmark (1574-1619), m. 13. Gaius Plinius Secundus (23 or 24- (1589) James L Van Dyck was granted an 79), 'Pliny the elder.' His Natural History annuity of £200 by Charles I in 1633, as 1 frequently refers to Juba as an authority, recorded in Anecdotes ii. 90; he apparently but no reference has been found to Juba made his first trip to England in 1621. on painters. 17. Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), 14. Matthew Parker (1504-75), Abp of architect. Canterbury, De antiquitate Britannica ec- 18. These references have not been found clesice et privilegiis ecclesice Cantuariensisin the Philosophical Transactions of the cum archiepiscopis eiusdem LXX, 1572. Royal Society. Zouch may have had in 15. William of Wykeham (1324-1404), mind a passage in Thomas Birch's History Clerk of the Works, Bp of Winchester, and of the Royal Society of London, 1756; 'Dr lord chancellor; founder of New College, Wren presented some cuts done by himself Oxford, and Winchester College. 'Wyke­ in a new way of etching, whereby, he said,