“Sir Robert, before he quitted the king, persuaded his Majesty to insist, as a preliminary to the change, that Mr. Pulteney should go into the House of Lords, his great credit lying in the other House:  and I remember my father’s action when he returned from Court, and told me what he had done; ’I have turned the key of the closet upon him,’ making that motion with his hand.”

Braybrooke.

Audley End, March 18. 1850.

* * * * *

PORTRAITS OF ULRICH OF HUTTEN.

It is pleasant to see that an answer to a query can sometimes do more than satisfy a doubt, by accidentally touching an accordant note which awakens a responsive feeling.  I am much pleased that my scanty information was acceptable to “R.G.”; and wish it was in my power to give him more certain information respecting the portraits of Hutten, who is one of my heroes, although I am no “hero-worshipper.”

The earliest woodcut portrait of him with which I am acquainted, is to be found in the very elegant volume containing the pieces relating to the murder of his cousin John, by Ulrich of Wirtemberg (the title too long for these pages), which, from the inscription at the end, appears to have been printed in the Castle of Stakelberg, in 1519.  It is a half length, in a hat, under a kind of portico, with two shields at the upper corners:  the inscription beneath is in white letters on a black ground.  It occurs near the end of the volume; in which is another spirited woodcut, representing the murder.

The other two cotemporary portraits occur in the “Expostulatio,” before noticed.  The largest of these, at the end of the volume, is in armour, crowned with laurel, and holding a sword, looking toward the left.  This is but indifferently copied, or rather followed, in Tobias Stimmer’s rare and elegant little volume, Imagines Viror.  Liter.  Illust., published by Reusner and Jobinus, Argent. 1587, 12mo.

I have never seen a good modern representation of this remarkable man, who devoted the whole energies of his soul to the sacred cause of the truth and freedom, and the liberation of his country and mankind from the trammels of a corrupt and dissolute Church; and, be it remembered, that he and Reuchlin were precursors of Luther in the noble work, which entitles them to at least a share in our gratitude for the unspeakable benefit conferred by this glorious emancipation.

Ebernburg, the fortress of his friend, the noble and heroic Franz von Sickingen, Hutten called the Bulwark of Righteousness.  I had long sought for a representation of Sickingen, and at length found a medal represented in the Sylloge Numismatum Elegantiorum of Luckius, fol.  Argent, 1620, bearing the date 1522.

Hutten’s life is full of romantic incident:  it was one of toil and pain, for the most part; and he may well have compared his wanderings to those of Ulysses, as he seems to have done in the following verses, which accompany the portrait first above mentioned: