spent two days with Mr. Blair, its temporary possessor. The house was built by Waller himself, but there have been considerable additions. Mr. Waller, the present owner, is a young man, the sixth I believe from the poet; and being straitened in circumstances, the estate being now not more than about 1,500l. per annum and much encumbered, has let this house and domain for three years to enable him to pay debts of his father’s to some amount, which, however, he is not under any legal obligation to pay, but means to discharge from a sense of honour.
“There are here two original pictures of the poet, one when he was twenty-three, painted I think by Cornelius Jansen. That in Lord Chesterfield’s collection appears to have been a copy from this. I have never seen it, but the print made of it by Bell (engraved by Cooke) has no resemblance to the picture at Hill-barn, though the dress shows that it was done from some copy of that picture. The other was painted in his old age; and I should have supposed it the portrait from which Vertue engraved his half sheet print, and also that for the quarto edition of Waller’s works, but that Vertue’s band is plain, and that in the picture just mentioned is laced. In all other respects the print and picture correspond, except that I think the character of the face is not so nicely preserved in Vertue’s print as it might be.
“I may say the same of the print which has been just now engraved by Sharpe from a portrait of Henry, Lord Southampton, for my edition Shakspeare: in which though it is tolerably faithful, the character of the face is not so nicely preserved
