POPE AS A PAINTER.
ITo THE EDITOR or Tar " SPECT/MOR.") SIR, —The gentleman whose letter you published last week cannot have read all the correspondence in your columns upon this subject, or he would have noticed that the- anecdote of Reynolds. from Allan Cunningham's Lives was quoted in one of My letters. I much regret that the correspondence failed to elicit any description of the-portrait by the hand of Pops, said to be in Arundel Castle. A note (which I think is by Arthur Murphy) to an early edition of Johnson's Lives of the Poets blames the Doctor for negligence in his relation of Pope's love of painting, and states that the picture of Betterton at Caen Wood House was "certainly copied from Kneller by Pope." It Is probable- that the poet's weakness of vision may have
disqualified him for painting from lift, and in that case any portraits by him must necessarily be copies.—I am, Sir, &e.,
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