Mr. Bathoe has got the two volumes for you, and will send them by the conveyance you prescribe.  You will find in them much, I fear, that will want your indulgence; and not only dryness, trifles, and, I conclude, many mistakes, but perhaps opinions different from your own.  I can only plead my natural and constant frankness, which always speaks indifferently, as it thinks, on all sides and subjects.  I am bigoted to none:  Charles or Cromwell, Whigs or Tories, are all alike to me, but in what I think they deserve, applause or censure; and therefore, if’ I sometimes commend, sometimes blame them, it is not for being inconsistent, but from considering them in the single light in which I then speak of them:  at the same time meaning to give only my private opinion, and not at all expecting to have it adopted by any other man.  Thus much, perhaps, it was necessary for @ne to say, and I will trouble you no further about myself.

Single portraits by Vandyck I shall avoid particularizing any farther, and also separate pieces by other masters, for a reason I may trust you with.  Many persons possess pictures which they believe or call originals, without their being so, and have wished to have them inserted in my lists.  This I certainly do not care to do, nor, on the other hand, to assume the impertinence of deciding from my own judgment.  I shall, therefore, stop where I have stopped.  The portraits which you mention, of the Earl of Warwick, Sir, is very famous and indubitable; but I believe you will assent to my prudence, which does not trouble me too often.  I have heard as much fame of the Earl of Denbigh.

You will see in my next edition, that I have been so lucky as to find and purchase both the drawings that were at Buckingham-house, of the Triumphs of Riches and Poverty.  They have raised even my ideas of Holbein.  Could I afford it, and we had engravers equal to the task, the public should be acquainted with their merit; but I am disgusted with paying great sums for wretched performances.  I am ashamed of the prints in my books, which were extravagantly paid for, and are wretchedly executed.

Your zeal for reviving the publication of Illustrious Heads accords, Sir, extremely with my own sentiments; but I own I despair of that, and every work.  Our artists get so much money by hasty, slovenly performances, that they will undertake nothing that requires labour and time.  I have never been able to persuade any one of them to engrave the beauties at Windsor, which are daily perishing for want of fires in that palace.  Most of them entered into a plan I had undertaken, of an edition of Grammont with portraits.  I had three executed; but after the first, which was well done, the others were so wretchedly performed, though even the best was much too dear, that I was forced to drop the design.  Walker, who has done much the best heads in my new volumes, told me, when I pressed him to consider his reputation, that , “he had got fame enough!”