The last of Durer’s engravings on copper is a portrait of Melancthon, dated 1526, the year in which the meek and learned reformer visited Nuremberg. The following is a reduced copy of his own portrait, perhaps the last drawing that he made on wood. It is probably a good likeness of the artist; at any rate it bears a great resemblance to the portrait said to be intended for Durer’s own in his carving of the naming of St. John, of which some account is given at page 259. The size of the original is eleven inches and three-eighths high by ten inches wide. According to Bartsch, the earliest impressions have not the arms and mark, and are inscribed above the border at the top: “_Albrecht Durer’s Conterfeyt_”--Albert Durer’s portrait. It would seem that the block had been preserved for many years subsequent to the date, for I have now before me an impression, on comparatively modern paper, from which it is evident that at the time of its being taken, the block had been much corroded by worms. [Illustration] It is probable that between 1522 and 1528 the treatises of which Durer is the author were chiefly composed. Their Titles are An Essay on the Fortification of Towns and Villages; Instructions for Measuring with the Rule and Compass; and On the Proportions of the Human Body.[V-55] They were all published at Nuremberg with illustrative wood-cuts; the first in 1527, and the other two in 1528. It is to the latter work that Hogarth alludes, in his Analysis of Beauty, when he speaks of Albert Durer, Lamozzo, and others, having “puzzled mankind with a heap of minute unnecessary divisions” in their rules for correctly drawing the human figure. [Footnote V-55: Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloss, und Flecken; Underweysung der Messung mit der Zirckel und Richtscheyt; Bucher von Menschlicher Proportion. All in folio. Those treatises were subsequently translated into Latin and several times reprinted. The treatise on the Proportions of the Human Body was also translated into French and printed at Paris in 1557. A collection of Durer’s writings was published by J. Jansen, 1604.]