* Queen Elizabeth issued an edict commanding every artist who should paint the royal portrait to place her “in a garden with a full light upon her, and the painter to put any shadow in her face at his peril!” Oliver Cromwell's injunctions to Sir Peter Lely were somewhat different. The knight was desired to transfer to his canvass all the blotches and carbuncles that blossomed in the Protector's rocky physiognomy. Sir Joshua Reynolds, ( -------- with fingers so lissom, Girls start from his canvass, and ask us to kiss 'em!) having taken the liberty of mitigating the utter stupidity of one of his “Pot-boilers,” i. e. stupid faces, and receiving from the sitter's family the reverse of approbation, exclaimed, “I have thrown a glimpse of meaning into this fool's phiz, and now none of his friends know him!” At another time, having painted too true a likeness, it was threatened to be thrown upon his hands, when a polite note from the artist, stating that, with the additional appendage of a tail, it would do admirably for a monkey, for which he had a commission, and requesting to know if the portrait was to be sent home or not, produced the desired effect. The picture was paid for, and put into the fire! “Unsheath me, mine host, thy Toledo so bright. Delicious Sir Loin! I do dub thee a knight. Be thine at our banquets of honour the post; While the Queen rules the realm, let _Sir Loin_ rule the roast! And'tis, my Lord Keeper, our royal belief, The Spaniard had beat, had it not been for _beef_! Let him come if he dare! he shall sink! he shall quake! With a duck-ing, Sir Francis shall give him a Drake. Thus, Don Whiskerandos, I throw thee my glove! And now, merry minstrel, strike up 'highly Love,' Come, pursey Sir Nicholas, caper thy best-- Dick Tarlton shall finish our sports with a jest.” The virginals sounded, Sir Nicholas puff'd, And led forth her Highness, high-heel'd and be-ruff'd-- Automaton dancers to musical chimes! O the days of Queen Bess, they were merry old times! “And now, leaving Nestor Nightingale to propitiate Uncle Timothy for this interpolation to his Merrie Mysteries, let us return and pay our respects, not to the dignified Count Haynes, the learned Doctor Haynes, but to plain Joe Haynes, the practical-joking Droll-Player of Bartholomew Fair: * * Antony, vulgo Tony Aston, a famous player, and one of Joe's contemporaries. The only portrait (a sorry one) of Tony extant, is a small oval in the frontispiece to the Fool's Opera, to which his comical harum-scarum autobiography is prefixed.