THE PAINTINGS OF POPE.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") Ssa,—Since my last communication on this subject I have met with a passage in Allan Cunningham's Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, which you may consider worthy of quotation, as giving a description of a painting by Pope, and also a high professional opinion of his deficiency in that branch of art. In the Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds Cunningham says :- " A fan which the poet presented to Martha Blount, and on which he had painted with his own hand the story of Cephalus and Procris, with the motto Aura veni,' was to be sold by auction. Sir Joshua sent a person to bid for it, and it was put into the hand of the painter. See,' said he to his pupils, who gathered round him, see the painting of Pope. This must always be the case when the work is taken up from idleneSs and is laid aside when it ceases to amuse; it is like the work of one who paints only for amusement.' "
This fan, celebrated by Pope himself in one of his imitations of Waller, was afterwards stolen from Sir Joshua's studio. Cunningham, writing in 1829, did not apparently know what bad become of it, but it should be easily identified if it is still P.S.—A note on p. 354 of the edition of Pope in the "Chandos Classics" says: "Pope was a good painter; a portrait by his hand is in the possession of the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel Castle."
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