Note 77 — EPISTLE THE SIXTEENTH.

Mr Walpole says, that "where Sir Godfrey offered one picture to fame, he sacrificed twenty to lucre; and he met with customers of so little judgment, that they were fond of being painted by a man who would gladly have disowned his works the moment they were paid for." The same author gives us Sir Godfrey's apology for preferring the lucrative, though less honourable, line of portrait painting. "Painters of history," said he, "make the dead live, and do not begin to live themselves till they are dead. I paint the living, and they make me live."—Lord Orford's Lives of the Painters. See his Works, Vol. III. p. 359. Dryden seems to allude to this expression in the above lines.