HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

S3

real or fictitious, of some ship built in the reign of king Henry the Eighth, orprior to it, the painter himself having died in the year 1554, not long afterthe decease of that monarch. As to the objection made to the introduction ofthe unicorn, why may not that unicorn at last turn out to have been originallyintended for a dragon, the supporter always used by the House of Tudor inthat place ? This circumstance is at any rate of little weight towards establishingthe picture as the representation of the Prince Royal, for it may, on the otherhand, be argued, with equal propriety, that if the picture were what it is insistedto be, the Scottish lion would have been quartered in the standard, and the pen-dants would not have been decorated with the rose, the use of which, on suchoccasions, was discontinued long before the extinction of the race of Tudor.

Could the state of the case be ascertained with any certainty, it probablymight turn out, that the picture in question was not in truth the representa-tion of any ship that really existed. Why may it not be the fanciful attempt ofHolbein *, to improve the general uncouth appearance of vessels of war built inhis time ; which having been repaired or altered in a few trivial particulars,by some more modern artist, the anachronism which has occasioned such doubtand dispute was unguardedly introduced.

The appearance of the vessel in question, which is far superior to that in thedrawing belonging to the Pepysian collection, is a circumstance which has been,with much vehemence, insisted on, by many critical enquirers, as an incontrovert-ible proof of its being the production of some more modern builder. But it willlose a considerable degree of its force, when it is recollected, that Holbein, as apainter, was the most eminent man of his time, that he understood perspective,and the art which was then known to very few, of causing his picture to be, ina great measure, a true representation of the object he intended to preserve theremembrance of. It is very evident, that the artist, who executed the drawing,was totally unskilled in both. The print affixed to Heywood’s description ofthe Royal Sovereign, built in 1637, is the work of an artist also labouringunder nearly the same difficulty, and is equally absurd. An opinion founded

* This idea appears not by any means vague and ill founded, for certainly no one can deny, that theship called the Great Harry makes a much more sightly figure on canvass than is given in any otherwell authenticated draught of a ship built previous to the accession of king Charles the First, or, itmight be added, for some time after it. Those represented in the tapestry of the House of Lords, asforming the navy of queen Elizabeth, are certainly less uncouth than Heywood’s draught of the Sove-reign in Charles the First’s reign. Here we again meet the same point, die pourtraiers were notmere shipwrights.

on