PREFACE.
(PUBLISHED WITH THE FIRST EDITION IN FOLIO.)

In imparting to the public, five years since, the design of this great work, and the character with which it was proposed to invest it, the author took the liberty to offer some remarks of a general nature, the substance of which it may perhaps be necessary, at all events cannot be improper, to recapitulate in this place.

“It is needless,” he observed, “to descant largely on the extended information and delight which we derive from the multiplication of portraits by engraving, or on the more important advantages resulting from the study of biography. Separately considered, the one affords an amusement not less innocent than elegant; inculcates the rudiments, or aids the progress, of taste; and rescues from the hand of time the perishable monuments raised by the pencil. The other, while it is perhaps the most agreeable branch of historical literature, is certainly the most useful in its moral effects : stating the known circumstances, and endeavouring to unfold the secret motives, of human conduct; selecting all that is worthy of being recorded; bestowing its lasting encomiums and chastisements; it at once informs and invigorates the mind, and warms and mends the heart. It is however,” added he, “from the combination of portraits and biography that we reap the utmost degree of utility and pleasure which can be derived from them: as in contemplating the portrait of an eminent person we long to be instructed in his history, so in considering his actions we are anxious to behold his countenance. So earnest is this desire, that the imagination is generally ready to coin a set of features, or to conceive a character, to supply the painful absence of the one or the other. All sensible minds have experienced these illusions, and from a morbid excess of this interesting feeling have arisen the errors and extravagances of the theory of physiognomy.” It was not then with the mere view of perpetuating the histories or the resemblances of the illustrious dead—of exhibiting the skill of the painter, or the fidelity of the engraver—that this work was undertaken; but in the hope, by a combined effort, to make the strongest possible impression on the judgment and the memory as well as on the imagination; and to give to biography and portraits, by uniting them, what may very properly be called their natural and best moral direction.

Publications of similar character have already appeared in this country, and are held in high estimation. Among these the most important are the superb collections of Houbraken and Birch, and of the imitations of Holbein’s heads from the exquisite original drawings in his Majesty’s library. Each of these has its faults. Houbraken, as the late Lord Orford justly observes in his Catalogue of Engravers, lived in Holland, was ignorant of our history, uninquisitive into the authenticity of the drawings which were transmitted to him, and engraved whatever was sent and adduces two instances, Car, Earl of Somerset, and Secretary Thurlow, as not only spurious, but as being destitute of any the least resemblance to the persons they pretend to represent. An anonymous, but evidently well informed, writer asserts, in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1788, that Thurlow’s, and about thirty of the others, are copied from heads painted for no one knows whom" While Houbraken thus sacrificed the truth of his subjects to the delicacies of his art, Birch, on the contrary, performed his part of the task with a laudable fidelity in his recitals of facts, but with an almost total inattention to delineation of character, or grace of language, as though he feared that the simplicity of truth might be disguised by a decent garb, and that biography might be in danger of degenerating into romance were it occasionally to endeavour to trace remarkable instances in the conduct of mankind to their proper intellectual sources. The defects of the other fine work were in a great measure unavoidable. Confined to the period of a single reign, it was too circumscribed to embrace the objects of the present design, and was intended rather to exhibit choice specimens of a particular master than portraits of distinguished characters. It presents therefore a motley mixture of eminence and obscurity; of the resemblances of princes, heroes, and statesmen, who never could have been forgotten, with those of inoffensive country gentlemen and their wives, of whose very existence we should have remained ignorant but for the immortalizing pencil of Holbein.

How far these various faults may have been avoided in the present publication is a question which it would be presumptuous to affect to answer in this place. The authenticity of the memoirs here presented will stand or fall by the application of tests which are within the reach of every reader; the truth of the correspondent portraits may be tried by an examination of the originals, which are in every instance referred to; and the degree of skill displayed in the engravings will speak for itself. It will be obvious to the experienced eye, that the talents of the engraver have been exerted upon pictures, of very varied degrees of excellence ; for whilst this work has extended our knowledge of some of the finest portraits of Rubens and Vandyke, others have claimed preservation as being the only memorials which are left to us of the persons represented. These are even more valuable, considered historically, for without them we should be deprived of the resemblances of some of the most illustrious characters in history, who lived either in the infancy of the arts, or at periods when they were depressed by the more bustling interest of political strife or warlike contention.

It may be pardonable to assert on the behalf of the proprietors that they have attempted to their utmost to possess their country of a work as perfect as human fallibility could permit; beautiful and correct in its two essential characters, and magnificent in all its subordinate features. They have spared no pains, they have denied no expense, in their anxious endeavours to render it an acceptable tribute to living taste and judgment, and a monument worthy of dedication to the exalted memory of those whom it professes to celebrate. Their diffidence of its merits has certainly been in some degree lessened by a fact which, while gratitude impels them to declare, pride could scarcely have allowed them to conceal—the patronage and success which the work has experienced have been nearly unexampled.

The author of the memoirs too may perhaps be allowed to use a few words on his part of the task. He claims no degree of merit beyond that which may justly belong to patient circumspection, laborious research, and impartial relation; and he has no other motive for asserting that those advantages really have been bestowed on them, than a wish to procure for them the favour of a mere perusal. Without this caution, it is more than probable that they might sink unobserved under the weight of a general and most excusable prejudice; for when he recollects the vague and frothy essays which almost invariably wait on engravings in ceremonious portions of what on such occasions is most properly called “letter-press,” being in fact nothing else, he feels it necessary thus to bespeak for the fruits of his labour, humble as they may be, at least a fair trial. He has employed the best powers of his mind to give to these tracts as much of the true character of biography as the space allotted to them could allow. He has silently passed over minor and insignificant facts, and sought diligently for original and novel intelligence. He has lost no opportunities of correcting misrepresentation; of placing neglected or misconceived objects in their just lights; or of endeavouring to describe characters with strict impartiality and truth. It has been indeed his chief anxiety to distinguish himself from those “gentle historians,” whose strains of unvaried panegyric were once honoured beyond their deserts by a sarcasm from the pen of the incomparable Burke. His judgment, however frequently it maybe found erroneous, and his expression of it, have been wholly unbiassed by any private motives. He has described men and things as he thought they deserved, and his friends have told him that he has sometimes spoken too plainly, but they have not been able to convince him that he has done wrong.

Quitting, however, these selfish topics, let us hasten to conclude this short address with a sincere declaration of those better feelings which perhaps alone rendered any sort of preface essentially necessary to the following sheets. Be it permitted to us most gratefully to acknowledge the condescension with which our solicitations for the powerful aid of those not less distinguished by their taste than by their exalted rank have been received, and the liberality with which the use of a vast treasure of inestimable pictures has been granted by the possessors of the most eminent collections in the land. Patronised and encouraged in every way by the noblemen and gentlemen who are respectively named on the several plates, from their bounty have arisen the means of producing a work which has laid us under such deep obligation to public favour. Justly ascribing it then to their splendid generosity, be it, with the most profound respect and gratitude, to them dedicated.

APPENDIX TO PREFACE

The design of this collection of Portraits and Biography, more extensive than any which has been formed in this or in any other country, and so eminently illustrative of British History, has been fully laid down in the preceding Preface from the author which accompanied the first edition of the work. Any address at the termination of it would have been unnecessary, except so far as it afforded the projector an opportunity to state that in conducting the work to its completion, the same attention to excellence in the execution of its several important details has been invariably persevered in, as was pledged to be observed when the Prospectus was first issued for the intended publication, more than twenty years ago. Since that period the most extraordinary patronage that ever attended any literary effort to obtain public approval, has accompanied and cheered the projector of the work in the execution of his arduous but gratifying labour, and among the numerous acknowledgments with which he has been honoured expressive of satisfaction with his endeavour to merit the favour thus profusely extended to him, the following testimony from the pen of him who delighted his countrymen by the fertility of his talent, at the same time that he exalted the reputation of his country’s literature by the splendour of his genius, is at once a subject of exultation and of regret,—exultation at the approval of so accomplished an authority, and regret that the writer of it should so soon have ceased to be numbered among the living honours of his country. The decease of the illustrious author of the following letter prior to the completion of the work which formed the subject of his eulogy, has afforded the humble individual to whom it is addressed the gratification, although a mournful one, of enriching this Collection of Portraits and Lives of British Worthies, with the memorial of one of the most illustrious men of his age.

“Sir,

“I am obliged by your letter, requesting that I would express to you my sentiments respecting Mr. Lodge’s splendid work, consisting of the portraits of the most celebrated persons of English History, accompanied with memoirs of their lives. I was at first disposed to decline offering any opinion on the subject; not because I had the slightest doubt in my own mind concerning the high value of the work, but because in expressing sentiments I might be exposed to censure, as if attaching to my own judgment more importance than it could deserve. Mr. Lodge’s work is however one of such vast consequence, that a person attached as I have been for many years to the study of history and antiquities, may, I think in a case of this rare and peculiar kind, be justly blamed for refusing his opinion, if required, concerning a publication of such value and importance.

“Mr. Lodge’s talents as an Historian and Antiquary are well known to the public by his admirable collection of ancient letters and documents, entitled Illustrations of British History, a book which I have very frequently consulted; and have almost always succeeded in finding not only the information required, but collected a great deal more as I went in search of it. The present Work presents the same talents and industry; the same patient powers of collecting information from the most obscure and hidden sources, and the same talent for selecting the facts which are the rarest and most interesting, and presenting them to the general reader in a luminous and concise manner.

“It is impossible for me to conceive a work which ought to be more interesting to the present age than that which exhibits before our eyes ‘ our fathers as they lived/ accompanied with such memorials of their lives and characters as enable us to compare their persons and countenances with their sentiments and actions.

“I pretend to offer no opinion upon the value of the Work in respect to art—my opinion on that subject is literally worth nothing in addition to that of the numerous judges of paramount authority which have already admitted its high merits. But I may presume to say that this valuable and extended Series of the Portraits of the Illustrious Dead affords to every private gentleman, at a moderate expense, the interest attached to a large Gallery of British Portraits, on a plan more .extensive than any collection which exists, and at the same time the essence of a curious library of historical, bibliographical, and antiquarian works. It is a work which, in regard to England, might deserve the noble motto rendered with such dignity by Dryden:

‘From hence the line of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.’

“I will enlarge no more on the topic, because I am certain that it requires not the voice of an obscure individual to point out to the British public the merits of a Collection which at once satisfies the imagination and the understanding, showing us by the pencil how the most distinguished of our ancestors looked, moved and dressed ; and informs us by the pen how they thought, acted, lived and died. I should in any other case have declined expressing an opinion in this public, and almost intrusive manner ; but I feel that, when called upon to bear evidence in such a cause, it would be unmanly to decline appearing in Court, although expressing an opinion to which, however just, my name can add but little weight.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient Servant,

WALTER SCOTT.”

Mr, Harding, Bookseller,
Abbotsford, 26th March, 1828.
London.

To the highly gifted and accomplished Author of the Memoirs by which the Portraits are so richly illustrated, thus eloquently eulogised by Sir Walter Scott, the conductor of the Work begs to offer his best acknowledgments, for directing the talents with which he is thus powerfully endowed, so forcibly to bear upon that part of the undertaking which was confided to his taste and execution. “The short pieces of biography which accompany the Portraits from the pen of Mr. Lodge, are,” as a contemporary writer happily designates them, “as characteristic as the Portraits themselves. Such a union of various talents, such a Gallery of Illustrious Dead, was never before presented to the Public.” Perhaps the strongest possible evidence of the high ground which this work originally assumed and which has been invariably maintained, is to be found in the numerous Piracies of its Plan which have attended the course of its publication during a period of more than twenty years. The herd of anonymous and servile imitators who have followed at a respectful distance in the train of this Work, watching the development of its plan and copying its principal features, have given rise to numerous Portrait Galleries and other publications in avowed admission of its excellence and in imitation of its design. These imitators, by substituting cheapness of manufacture for sterling worth of execution, have endeavoured to thrust their spurious ware upon public notice, and have sought an ephemeral existence by fixing them upon the high reputation which has been awarded to this great work from the commencement to the close of its progress.

JOSEPH HARDING.
London, August 1, 1835.

Contents of All 12 Volumes
(Extracted from Volume 1)
Volume 1  |  Volume 2  |  Volume 3  |  Volume 4  |  Volume 5
Volume 6  |  Volume 7  |  Volume 8  |  Volume 9  |  Volume 10
Volume 11  |  Volume 12