BANKS.

BEFORE I commence giving some account of this gentleman, I beg leave to introduce a few remarks upon the early state of Sculpture in England; which may not, perhaps, be considered irrelevant to our subject, as they will tend to prove, that, however respectable were the talents of the two artists, whose works I have just mentioned, England had no great Sculptor of mind until the appearance of Thomas Banks.

Perhaps there are few classes of biography for which it is more difficult to obtain materials, than that of the early English Sculptors; particularly those who flourished under the first Henrys and Edwards, prior to whose reigns England can boast of little sculptural skill. In the time of the above splendid monarchs, numerous sacred images and monumental effigies were executed; and nearly all our cathedrals and churches, even to the remotest parts of our land, were adorned and enriched by the sculptor's as well as by the painter's art. I am willing to agree with many of my friends, in believing that the greater number of works of that description, produced in the reign of Henry the Third, were the productions of foreigners;

we must, in those early days, have derived our knowledge from them; but, at the same time, I cannot help stating, that many of our exquisite works were from the hands of Englishmen, particularly in the reigns of Edward III., Henry IV., and Richard II. Indeed I was enabled to prove that to be the case, during my inquiries for the materials for the Antiquities of Westminster, as I met with an astonishing series of particulars, not only as to the stone and the various articles used in painting and glass-staining in those days, but also with the names of the master-mason and others engaged, as well as the subjects of their proposed designs; and the true Englishman will feel pleasure, when he is assured that every artist employed upon the decorations of the Palace of Westminster, was a native of this country.

For instance, in the reign of Edward III. Master Thomas, of Canterbury, was Mastermason in the rebuilding of St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster; and John, of Coventry, and Henry, of St. Alban's, were his assistants: Master Richard, of Reading, made two images of Saint Edward and Saint John, for which he received the sum of three pounds six shillings and eight-pence: Hugh de St. Alban's was master of the painters, and John de Chester was master of the glaziers. These names, however,

are not mentioned by Lord Orford, nor his labouring-oar Vertue; and perhaps they neither knew where to look, nor had the power of obtaining such valuable information; but it is much to be regretted that our early historians, Camden, Stow, Speed, &c. have not, like Vasari, handed down to us the names of the artists their contemporaries. The biographer of such persons finds, in that valuable and most interesting of all books upon the arts, not only the names of hundreds of artists, but in some instances an accurate description of their works. We certainly read of our Odos, as the proposed constructors of sacred images and decorators of tombs, but we have no proof of their being actually the artists; and my opinion is, that as they are named as the King's Goldsmiths, they were similar to our present goldsmiths, Messrs. Rundell and Bridge, and, like them, employed their Flaxmans and their Stothards in the production of works in art. We ought not to suppose that our Odos were positively carvers in stone and ivory; nor indeed that they were the actual lapidaries or inlayers of the precious stones, or even setters of their splendid works of jewellery but how delighted should we be, if the Keepers of our Public Records were to give us an account of our ancient English Cavallinis, our Torregianos, and our Benvenuti

Cellinis! They know well where to search for treasures; and if they are allowed to derive profit by the publication of certain documents, I do most earnestly entreat of them, for the honour of our country, to produce and publish such accounts as they may discover of the early English artists. I am quite certain, that such materials of rare and valuable information, which wait only to be drawn from their concealment, would, in a great measure, set aside the wretched repetitions of the miserably poor mass of materials which our presses at present are so often employed to produce.

So shamefully negligent, however, were the older English writers as to inquiries after the history, or even the names of the greater part of the Sculptors whose works they had seen, and possibly admired, that they have handed very little or nothing to us concerning them. As to the names of Cavallini and Torregiano, which are the first mentioned without the appellation of Goldsmith, I firmly believe more works are attributed to those great men, than they could have executed had they lived to the present time; but they were foreigners, and though they practised in this country, are distant from my present purpose.

Nicholas Stone, born at Woodbury, near Exeter, in 1586, is, I believe, according to print

ed authority, the first to be mentioned with any certainty; and he has, among numerous truly praiseworthy productions, distributed in various places, enabled us to judge of his abilities, or of those he employed, more particularly by the best of his monuments, which he erected in November, 1615, in the Chapel of the CharterHouse, to perpetuate the memory of its benevolent founder, "Good Old Thomas Sutton." If we could discover the names of the Sculptors who executed the monument to the memory of Shakspeare, at Stratford-upon-Avon, and of that put up to Camden, in Westminster Abbey, as well as many others which I could name, probably they might take precedence of Stone in talent, as well as in date, as I strongly conjecture them to have been Englishmen also.

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Francis Bird, born in Piccadilly in 1667, was second; but though tolerable in some respects, especially in the monument to the memory of the noted Dr. Busby, erected in Westminster Abbey, yet he ought not in any way to be compared with his predecessor, or the artists employed by him. His Conversion of Saint Paul, and the style of the other figures, particularly that of the statue of Queen Anne,* raised as ornaments to our Metropolitan church, are so despicable, that I am inclined to believe, that Lately repaired by John Henning Jun.

*