1736.” “Mr. Birch, R., 21st November, 1739.” I have put these dates down here lest, being written in pencil with which the drawings were made, they should hereafter be defaced.
Mr. Parsons had a university education, and was originally intended for the Church, but his love of painting led him to his present profession. He set out as a painter, and copied in his youth a vast number of Sir Peter Lely’s pictures which have deceived some connoisseurs, and were taken for originals. Being carried down by Lord Craven about thirty years ago to view his great collection of old pictures, he found them in a miserable condition, and cleaned them so well that he has ever since had so much employment in that way as to have had scarcely time to paint an original picture. He has however made a great many copies in that time; amongst others, one of Fenton, the poet, for a Mr. Fenton in . Fenton, of whom I did not know there had been any picture, was he says a very handsome man. Addison’s daughter, he informs me, is now living in Warwickshire, and is possessed of an original picture of Dryden, which belonged to her father, and, which Parsons copied some time ago for a Mr. Sneyd of Staffordshire.
He has been lately much employed by Lord Warwick and Lord Scarsdale, and sold the latter about six months ago a very great curiosity, a portrait of Shakspeare by Vandyke. It is now at Lord Scarsdale’s, in Derbyshire. It was brought to Parsons last winter by a dealer with two or three other old
