The suspension of a portrait is a mode of erecting a monument to a person in his life time, which has been long prevalent. In no single College will the expectation of finding a resemblance to the person of the Founder be disappointed: and such is the peculiar interest attaching to the idea, that in time past a collection of the portraits of the several Founders, engraved in mezzotint, was made and published under the title of Faber's Founders ;— a thin folio volume for Oxford in 1712, and one for Cambridge in 1714.

The eagerness to obtain a portrait of a Founder or Benefactor, might impede the exercise of due caution in receiving it: and hence in a few instances the authenticity of the portrait is not well established. But this is not the case with the instance now presented: every circumstance of warranty is clear on the face of it; except the name of the artist, which, in spite of the merely fashionable compliment to him in the last line of the inscription, has been kept back without any injury to his reputation.

The painting is, like many of its date, on panel, 2ft. 8in. by 2ft. 3in. It is the original of Faber's engraving in which the figure is reversed and the expression not well preserved. This may be said also of the latest copy, probably taken from Faber, in Pettigrew's Medical Portraits.