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land to a mere actor, of ten times the nominal and twice the effective value of this proud bounty of the great Earl of Southampton's to one of the master spirits of the human race? †

merit, and, with his influence, obtained its intro- | duction on the stage. To this story some specious objections have been raised; and there cannot be any necessity for contending for it, as no lucky accident can be required to account for the induceOf the degree of patronage and kindness extendment of amity between two men of high genius, each ed to Shakspeare by the Earls of Pembroke and treading the same broad path to fame and fortune, Montgomery, we are altogether ignorant: but we yet each with a character so peculiarly his own, know, from the dedication of his works to them by that he might attain his object without wounding the Heminge and Condell, that they had distinguished pride or invading the interests of the other. It has themselves as his admirers and friends. That he been generally believed that the intellectual superi- numbered many more of the nobility of his day ority of Shakspeare excited the envy and the con- among the homagers of his transcendent genius, sequent enmity of Jonson. It is well that of these we may consider as a specious probability. But asserted facts no evidences can be adduced. The we must not indulge in conjectures, when we can friendship of these great men seems to have been gratify ourselves with the reports of tradition, apunbroken during the life of Shakspeare; and, on proaching very nearly to certainties. Elizabeth, as his death, Jonson made an offering to his memory it is confidently said, honoured our illustrious draof high, just, and appropriate panegyric. He places matist with her especial notice and regard. She him above not only the modern but the Greek dra- was unquestionably fond of theatric exhibitions; matists; and he professes for him admiration short and, with her literary mind and her discriminating only of idolatry. They who can discover any pe- eye, it is impossible that she should overlook; and nuriousness of praise in the surviving poet must be that, not overlooking, she should not appreciate the gifted with a very peculiar vision of mind. With man, whose genius formed the prime glory of her the flowers, which he strewed upon the grave of reign. It is affirmed that, delighted with the chahis friend, there certainly was not blended one racter of Falstaff as drawn in the two parts of Henry poisonous or bitter leaf. If, therefore, he was, as IV., she expressed a wish to see the gross and dishe is represented to have been by an impartial and solute knight under the influence of love; and that able judge, (Drummond of Hawthornden,) "a great the result of our Poet's compliance, with the desire lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and of his royal mistress, was "The Merry Wives o scorner of others; jealous of every word and ac- Windsor." Favoured, however, as our Poet tion of those about him," &c. &c., how can we seems to have been by Elizabeth, and notwithotherwise account for the uninterrupted harmony of standing the fine incense which he offered to her his intercourse with our bard than by supposing vanity, it does not appear that he profited in any that the frailties of his nature were overruled by degree by her bounty. She could distinguish and that pre-eminence of mental power in his friend could smile upon genius: but unless it were immewhich precluded competition; and by his friend's diately serviceable to her personal or her political sweetness of temper and gentleness of manners, interests, she had not the soul to reward it. Howwhich repressed every feeling of hostility. Be-ever inferior to her in the arts of government and tween Shakspeare and Thomas Wriothesly, the in some of the great characters of mind might be munificent and the noble Earl of Southampton, dis- her Scottish successor, he resembled her in his love tinguished in history by his inviolable attachment of letters, and in his own cultivation of learning. to the rash and the unfortunate Essex, the friendship He was a scholar, and even a poet: his attachwas permanent and ardent. At its commencement, ment to the general cause of literature was strong; in 1593, when Shakspeare was twenty-nine years and his love of the drama and the theatre was par of age, Southampton was not more than nineteen; ticularly warm. Before his accession to the Engand, with the love of general literature, he was lish throne he had written, as we have before no particularly attached to the exhibitions of the thea- ticed, a letter, with his own hand, to Shakspeare, tre. His attention was first drawn to Shakspeare | by the poet's dedication to him of the "Venus and Adonis," that "first heir," as the dedicator calls it, "of his invention;" and the acquaintance, once begun between characters and hearts like theirs, would soon mature into intimacy and friendship, In the following year (1594) Shakspeare's second poem, "The Rape of Lucrece," was addressed by him to his noble patron in a strain of less distant timidity; and we may infer from it that the poet had then obtained a portion of the favour which he sought. That his fortunes were essentially promoted by the munificent patronage of Southampton cannot reasonably be doubted. We are told by Sir William Davenant, who surely possessed the means of knowing the fact, that the peer gave at one time to his favoured dramatist the magnificent present of a thousand pounds. This is rejected by Malone as an extravagant exaggeration; and because the donation is said to have been made for the purpose of enabling the poet to complete a pur-assistance of the crown. chase which he had then in contemplation; and The late Duke of Northumberland made a present because no purchase of an adequate magnitude seems to have been accomplished by him, the critic treats the whole story with contempt; and is desirous of substituting a dedication fee of one hundred pounds for the more princely liberality which is attested by Davenant. But surely a purchase might be within the view of Shakspeare, and eventually not be effected; and then of course the thousand pounds in question would be added to his personal property; where it would just complete the income on which he is reported to have retired from the stage. As to the incredibility of the gift in consequence of its value, have we not witnessed a gift, made in the present day, by a noble of the

As the patron and the friend of Shakspeare, Thomas Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, is entitled to our es pecial attention and respect. But I cannot admit his eventful history into the text, without breaking the uniwithin the compass of a note will be only to inform my ty of my biographical narrative; and to speak of hin readers, that he was born on the 6th of October, 1573: that he was engaged in the mad attempts of his friend, the Earl of Essex, against the government of Eliza beth: that, in consequence, he was confined during her life by that Queen, who was so lenient as to be satisfied with the blood of one of the friends: that, immediately disposed to adopt the enmities of the murderess of his on her death, he was liberated by her successor, not, mother: that he was promoted to honours by the new sovereign; and that, finally, being sent with a military command to the Low Countries, he caught a fever from his son, Lord Wriothesly; and, surviving him only five days, concluded his active and honourable career of life at Bergen-op-zoom, on the 10th of November, 1624. It left his widow in such circumstances as to call for the may be added, that, impoverished by his liberalities, he

to John Kemble of 10,000.

Animated as this comedy is with much distinct de lineation of character, it cannot be pronounced to be unworthy of its great author. But it evinces the diffi ing with effect under the control of another mind. As culty of writing upon a prescribed subject, and of work he sported in the scenes of Henry IV., Falstaff was insusceptible of love: and the egregious dupe of Windsor, ducked and cudgelled as he was, cannot be the wit of Eastcheap, or the guest of Shallow, or the military commander on the field of Shrewsbury. But even the He did what he could to revive his own Falstaff: but genius of Shakspeare could not effect impossibilities. the life which he reinfused into his creature was not the vigorous vitality of Nature; and he placed him in a scene where he could not subsia

acknowledging, as it is supposed, the compliment paid to him in the noble scenes of Macbeth; and scarcely had the crown of England fallen upon his head, when he granted his royal patent to our Poet and his company of the Globe; and thus raised them from being the Lord Chamberlain's servants to be the servants of the King. The patent is dated on the 19th of May, 1603, and the name of William Shakspeare stands second on the list of the patentees. As the demise of Elizabeth had occurred on the 24th of the preceding March, this early attention of James to the company of the Globe may be regarded as highly complimentary to Shakspeare's theatre, and as strongly demonstrative of the new sovereign's partiality for the drama. But James' patronage of our Poet was not in any other way beneficial to his fortunes. If Elizabeth were too parsimonious for an effective patron, by his profusion on his pleasures and his favourites, James soon became too needy to possess the means of bounty for the reward of talents and of learning. Honour, in short, was all that Shakspeare gained by the favour of two successive sovereigns, each of them versed in literature, each of them fond of the drama, and each of them capable of appreciating the transcendency of his genius.

It would be especially gratifying to us to exhibit to our readers some portion at least of the personal history of this illustrious man during his long residence in the capital; -to announce the names and characters of his associates, a few of which only we can obtain from Fuller; to delineate his habits of life; to record his convivial wit; to commemorate the books which he read; and to number his compositions as they dropped in succession from his pen. But no power of this nature is indulged to us. All that active and efficient portion of his mortal existence, which constituted considerably more than a third part of it, is an unknown region, not to be penetrated by our most zealous and intelligent researches. It may be regarded by us as a kind of central Africa, which our reason assures us to be glowing with fertility and alive with population; but which is abandoned in our maps, from the ignorance of our geographers, to the death of barrenness, and the silence of sandy desolation. By the Stratford register we can ascertain that his only son, Hamnet, was buried, in the twelfth year of his age, on the 11th of August, 1596; and that, after an interval of nearly eleven years, his eldest daughter, Susanna, was married to John Hall, a physician, on the 5th of June, 1607. With the exception of two or three purchases made by him at Stratford, one of them being that of New Place, which he repaired and ornamented for his future residence, the two entries which we have now extracted from the register, are positively all that we can relate with confidence of our great poet and his family, during the long term of his connection with the theatre and the metropolis. We may fairly conclude, indeed, that he was present at each of the domestic events, recorded by the register: that he attended his son to the grave, and his daughter to the altar. We may believe also, from its great probability, even to the testimony of Aubrey, that he paid an annual visit to his native town; whence his family were never removed, and which he seems always to have contemplated as the resting place of his declining age. He probably had nothing more than a lodging in London, and this he might occasionally change: but in 1596 he is said to have lived somewhere near to the Bear-Garden, in South

wark.

In 1606, James procured from the continent a large importation of mulberry trees, with a view το the establishment of the silk manufactory in his dominions; and, either in this year or in the following, Shakspeare enriched his garden at New Place with one of these exotic, and at that time, very rare trees. This plant of his hand took root, and flourished till the year 1752, when it was destroved by the barbarous axe of one Francis Gast

rell, a clergyman, into whose worse than Gothic hands New Place had most unfortunately fallen.

As we are not told the precise time, when Shakspeare retired from the stage and the metropolis to enjoy the tranquillity of life in his native town, we cannot pretend to determine it. As he is said, however, to have passed some years in his establishment at New Place, we may conclude thist his removal took place either in 1612 or in 1613, when he was yet in the vigour of life, being not more than forty-eight or forty-nine years old. He had ceased, as it is probable, to tread the stage as an actor at an earlier period; for in the list of actors, prefixed to the Volpone of B. Jonson, performed at the Globe theatre, and published in 1605, the name of William Shakspeare is not to be found. However versed he might be in the science of acting, (and that he was versed in it we are assured by his directions to the players in Hamlet,) and, however well he might acquit himself in some of the subordinate characters of the drama, it does not appear that he ever rose to the higher honours of his profession. But if they were above his attainment, they seem not to have been the objects of his ambition; for by one of his sonnets* we find that he lamented the fortune which had devoted him to the stage, and that he considered himself as degraded by such a public exhibition. The time was not yet come when actors were to be the companions of princes: when their lives, as of illustrious men, were to be written; and when statues were to be erected to them by public contribution!

The amount of the fortune, on which Shakspeare retired from the busy world, has been the subject of some discussion. By Gildon, who forbears to state his authority, this fortune is valued at 300l. a year; and by Malone, who, calculating our Poet's real property from authentic documents, assigns a random value to his personal, it is reduced to 200%. of these two valuations of Shakspeare's property, we conceive that Gildon's approaches the more nearly to the truth: for if to Malone's conjectural estimate of the personal property, of which he professes to be wholly ignorant, be added the thousand pounds, given by Southampton, (an act of munificence of which we entertain not a doubt,) the precise total, as money then bore an interest of 10/. per cent., of the three hundred pounds a year will be made up. On the smallest of these incomes, however, when money was at least five times its present value, might our Poet possess the comforts and the liberalities of life: and in the society of his family, and of the neighbouring gentry, conciliated by the amiableness of his manners and the pleasantness of his conversation, he seems to have passed his few remaining days in the enjoyment of tranquillity and respect. So exquisite, indeed, appears to have been his relish of the quiet, which was his portion within the walls of New Place, that it induced a complete oblivion of all that had engaged his attention, and had aggrandized his name in the preceding scenes of his life. Without any regard to his literary fame, either present or to come, he saw with perfect unconcern some of his immortal works brought, mutilated and deformed, in surreptitious copies, before the world; and others of them, with an equal indifference to their fate, he permitted to remain in their unrevised or inter polated MSS. in the hands of the theatric prompter. There is not, probably, in the whole compass of literary history, such another instance of a proud superiority to what has been called by a rival genius,

"The last infirmity of noble minds,"

as that which was now exhibited by our illustrious dramatist and poet. He seemed

"As if he could not or he would not find,

How much his worth transcended all his kind."

See Sonnet cxi.

† Epitaph on a Fair Maiden Lady, by Dryden

With a privilege, rarely indulged even to the sons make them worse, are said to have been written of genius, he had produced his admirable works after Combe's death. Steevens and Malone diswithout any throes or labour of the mind: they had credit the whole tale. The two first lines, as given obtained for him all that he had asked from them, to us by Rowe, are unquestionably not Shak-the patronage of the great, the applause of the speare's; and that any lasting enmity subsisted witty, and a competency of fortune adequate to between these two burghers of Stratford is disprothe moderation of his desires. Having fulfilled, or, ved by the respective wills of the parties, John possibly, exceeded his expectations, they had dis- Combe bequeathing five pounds to our Poet, and charged their duty; and he threw them altogether our Poet leaving his sword to John Combe's nefrom his thought; and whether it were their des- phew and residuary legatee, John Combe himself tiny to emerge into renown, or to perish in the being at that time deceased. With the two comdrawer of a manager; to be brought to light in a mentators above mentioned, I am inclined, therefore, state of integrity, or to revisit the glimpses of the on the whole, to reject the story as a fabrication; moon with a thousand mortal murders on their head, though I cannot, with Steevens, convict the lines of engaged no part of his solicitude or interest. They malignity; or think, with him and with Malone, that had given to him the means of easy life, and he the character of Shakspeare, on the supposition of sought from them nothing more. This insensi- his being their author, could require any laboured bility in our Author to the offspring of his brain vindication to clear it from stain. In the anecdote, may be the subject of our wonder or admira- as related by Rowe, I can see nothing but a whimtion: but its consequences have been calamitous sical sally, breaking from the mind of one friend, to those who in after times have hung with delight and of a nature to excite a good-humoured smile on over his pages. On the intellect and the temper of the cheek of the other. In Aubrey's hands, the these ill-fated mortals it has inflicted a heavy load transaction assumes a somewhat darker com

of punishment in the dullness and the arrogance of commentators and illustrators in the conceit and petulance of Theobald; the imbecility of Capell; the pert and tasteless dogmatism of Steevens; the ponderous littleness of Malone and of Drake. Some superior men, it is true, have enlisted themselves in the cause of Shakspeare. Rowe, Pope, Warburton, Hanmer, and Johnson have successively been his editors; and have professed to give his

plexion; and the worse verses, as written after the death of their subject, may justly be branded as malevolent, and as discovering enmity in the heart of their writer. But I have dwelt too long upon a topic which, in truth, is undeserving of a syllable; and if I were to linger on it any longer, for the purpose of exhibiting Malone's reasons for his preference of Aubrey's copy of the epitaph to Rowe's, and his discovery of the propriety and beauty of the single

ers would have just cause to complain of me, as sporting with their time and their patience.

scenes in their original purity to the world. But Ho in the last line of Aubrey's, as Ho is the abbrefrom some cause or other, which it is not our pre- viation of Hobgoblin, one of the names of Robin sent business to explore, each of these editors, in Good-fellow, the fairy servant of Oberon, my readhis turn, has disappointed the just expectations of the public; and, with an inversion of Nature's general rule, the little men have finally prevailed against the great. The blockheads have hooted the wits from the field; and, attaching themselves to the mighty body of Shakspeare, like barnacles to the hull of a proud man of war, they are prepared to plough with him the vast ocean of time; and thus, by the only means in their power, to snatch themselves from that oblivion to which Nature had devoted them. It would be unjust, however, to defraud

On the 9th of July, 1614, Stratford was ravaged by a fire, which destroyed fifty-four dwelling-houses besides barns and out-offices. It abstained, however, from the property of Shakspeare; and he had only to commiserate the losses of his neighbours. With his various powers of pleasing; his wit and his humour; the gentleness of his manners; the flow of his spirits and his fancy; the variety of anecdote with which his mind must have been stored; these gentlemen of their proper praise. They have his knowledge of the world, and his intimacy read for men of talents; and, by their gross labour with man, in every gradation of the society, from in the mine, they have accumulated materials to the prompter of a playhouse to the peer and the be arranged and polished by the hand of the finer sovereign, Shakspeare must have been a delightful artist. Some apology may be necessary for this -nay, a fascinating companion; and his acquainshort digression from the more immediate subject tance must necessarily have been courted by all

of my biography. But the three or four years, which were passed by Shakspeare in the peaceful retirement of New Place are not distinguished by any traditionary anecdote deserving of our record; and the chasm may not improperly be supplied with whatever stands in contiguity with it. I should pass in silence, as too trifling for notice, the story of our Poet's extempore and jocular epitaph on John Combe, a rich townsman of Stratford, and a noted money-lender, if my readers would not object to me that I had omitted an anecdote which had been honoured with a place in every preceding biography of my author. As the circumstance is related by Rowe, "In a pleasant conversation among their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakspeare, in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph if he happened to outlive him: and, since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately: upon which Shakspeare gave him

these four verses:

Ten in the hundred lies here ingraved:
'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved.
If any man ask, who lies in this tomb:

Ho! Ho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John a Combe.

But the sharpness of the satire is said to have stung the man so severely that he never forgave it." By ubrey the story is differently told; and the lines question, with some alterations, which evidently

the prime inhabitants of Stratford and its vicinity. But over this, as over the preceding periods of his life, brood silence and oblivion; and in our total ignorance of his intimacies and friendships, we must apply to our imagination to furnish out his convivial board where intellect presided, and delight, with admiration, gave the applause.

On the 2d of February, 1615-16, he married his youngest daughter, Judith, then in the thirtyfirst year of her age, to Thomas Quiney, a vintner in Stratford; and on the 25th of the succeeding month he executed his will. He was then, as it would appear, in the full vigour and enjoyment of life; and we are not informed that his constitution had been previously weakened by the attack of any malady. But his days, or rather his hours, were now all numbered; for he breathed his last on the 23d ot the ensuing April, on that anniversary of his birth which completed his fifty-second year. It would be gratifying to our curiosity to know something of the disease, which thus prematurely terminated the life of this illustrious man: but the secret is withheld from us; and it would be idle to endeavour to obtain it. We may be certain that Dr. Hall, who was a physician of considerable eminence, attended his father-in-law in his last illness; and Dr. Hall kept a register of all the remarkable cases, with their symptoms and treatment, which in the course of his practice had fallen under his observation. This curious MS., which had escaped the enmity of time, was obtained by Malone: but the recorded cases in

1

it most unfortunately began with the year 1617; whose expense the monument was constructed, and the preceding part of the register, which most nor by whose hand it was executed; nor at what probably had been in existence, could no where be precise time it was erected. It may have been found. The mortal complaint, therefore, of William wrought by the artist, acting under the recollections Shakspeare is likely to remain for ever unknown; of the Shakspeare family into some likeness of the and as darkness had closed upon his path through great townsman of Stratford; and on this probalife, so darkness now gathered round his bed of bility, we may contemplate it with no inconsidedeath, awfully to cover it from the eyes of succeed-rable interest. I cannot, however, persuade mying generations.

On the 25th of April, 1616, two days after his decease, he was buried in the chancel of the church of Stratford; and at some period within the seven subsequent years, (for in 1623 it is noticed in the verses of Leonard Digges,) a monument was raised to his memory either by the respect of his townsmen, or by the piety of his relations. It represents the Poet with a countenance of thought, resting on a cushion and in the act of writing. It is placed under an arch, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, the capitals and bases of which are gilt. The face is said, but, as far as I can find, not on any adequate authority, to have been modelled from the face of the deceased; and the whole was painted, to bring the imitation nearer to nature. The face and the hands wore the carnation of life: the eyes were light hazel: the hair and beard were auburn: a black gown, without sleeves, hung loosely over a scarlet doublet. The cushion in its upper part was green: in its lower, crimson; and the tassels were of gold colour. This certainly was not in the high classical taste; though we may learn from Pausanias that statues in Greece were sometimes coloured after life; but as it was the work of contemporary hands, and was intended, by those who knew the Poet, to convey to posterity some resemblance of his lineaments and dress, it was a monument of rare value; and the tastelessness of Malone, who caused all its tints to be obliterated with a daubing of white lead, cannot be sufficiently ridiculed and condemned. Its material is a species of free-stone; and as the chisel of the sculptor was most probably under the guidance of Doctor Hall, it bore some promise of likeness to the mighty dead. Immediately below the cushion is the following distich :

Judicio Pylium; genio Socratem; arte Maronem
Terra tegit; populus mœret; Olympus habet.

On a tablet underneath are inscribed these lines:

[blocks in formation]

Good Friend! for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust inclosed here.

Blest be the man that spares these stones;
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

The last of these inscriptions may have been written by Shakspeare himself under the apprehension of his bones being tumbled, with those of many of his townsmen, into the charnel-house of the parish. But his dust has continued unviolated, and is likely to remain in its holy repose till the last awful scene of our perishable globe. It were to be wished that the two preceding inscriptions were more worthy, than they are, of the tomb to which they are at tached. It would be gratifying if we could give any faith to the tradition, which asserts that the bust of this monument was sculptured from a cast moulded on the face of the departed poet; for then we might assure ourselves that we possess one authentic resemblance of this pre-eminently intellectual mortal. But the cast, if taken, must have been taken immediately after his death; and we know neither at

self that the likeness could have been strong. The forehead, indeed, is sufficiently spacious and intel lectual: but there is a disproportionate length in the under part of the face: the mouth is weak; and the whole countenance is heavy and inert. Not having seen the monument itself, I can speak of it only from its numerous copies by the graver; and by these it is possible that I may be deceived. But if we cannot rely on the Stratford bust for a resemblance of our immortal dramatist, where are we to look with any hope of finding a trace of his features? It is highly probable that no portrait of him was painted during his life; and it is certain that no portrait of him, with an incontestible claim to genuineness, is at present in existence. The fairest title to authenticity seems to be assignable to that which is called the Chandos portrait; and is now in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham, at Stowe. The possession of this picture can be distinctly traced up to Betterton and Davenant. Through the hands of successive purchasers, it became the property of Mr. Robert Keck. On the marriage of the heiress of the Keck family, it passed to Mr. Nicholl, of Colney-Hatch, in Middlesex: on the union of this gentleman's daughter with the Duke of Chandos, it found a place in that nobleman's collection; and, finally, by the marriage of the present Duke of Buckingham with the Lady Anne Elizabeth Brydges, the heiress of the house of Chandos, it has settled in the gallery of Stowe. This was pronounced by the late Earl of Orford, (Horace Walpole,) as we are informed by Mr. Granger, to be the only original picture of Shakspeare. But two others, if not more, contend with it for the palm of originality; one, which in consequence of its having been in the possession of Mr. Felton, of Drayton, in the county of Salop, from whom it was purchased by the Boydells, has been called the Felton Shakspeare; and one, a miniature, which, by some connection, as I believe, with the family of its proprietors, found its way into the cabinet of the late Sir James Lamb, more generally, perhaps, known by his original name of James Bland Burgess. The first of these pictures was reported to have been found at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, one of the favourite haunts, as it was erroneously called, of Shakspeare and his companions; and the second by a tradition, in the family of Somervile the poet, is affirmed to have been drawn from Shakspeare, who sate for it at the pressing instance of a Somervile, one of his most intimate friends. But the genuineness of neither of these pictures can be supported under a rigid investigation; and their pretensions must yield to those of another rival portrait of our Poet, which was once in the possession of Mr. Jennens, of Gopsal in Leicestershire, and is now the property of that liberal and literary nobleman, the Duke of Somerset. For the authenticity of this portrait, attributed to the pencil of Cornelius Jansenn, Mr. Boaden* contends with much zeal and ingenuity. Knowing that some of the family of Lord Southampton, Shakspeare's especial friend and patron, had been painted by Jansenn, Mr. Boaden speciously infers that, at the Earl's request, his favourite dramatist had, likewise, allowed his face to this painter's imitation; and that the Gopsal portrait, the result of the artist's skill on this occasion, had obtained a distinguished place in the picture-gallery of the noble Earl. This, however, is only unsupported assertion, and the mere idleness of conjecture. It is not pretended to be ascertained that the Gopsal portrait was ever in the possession of Shak

* An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Pictures and Prints offered as Portraits of Shakspeare, p. 67-50

poetic palm. I have already cited Chettle: let me now cite Jonson, from whose pages much more of a similar nature might be adduced. "I loved," he says in his 'Discoveries, "I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions and gentle expressions," &c. &c. When Jonson apostrophizes his deceased friend, he calls him, "My gentle Shakspeare," and the title of "the sweet swan of Avon," so generally given to him, after the example of Jonson, by his contemporaries, seems to have been given with reference as much to the suavity of his temper as to the harmony of his verse. In their dedication of his works to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, his fellows, Heminge and Condell, profess that their great object in their publication was "only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakspeare:" and their preface to the public appears evidently to have been dictated by their personal and affectionate attachment to ther departed friend. If we wish for any further evidence in the support of the moral character of Shakspeare, we may find it in the friendship of Southampton; we may extract it from the pages of his immortal works. Dr. Johnson, in his much overpraised Preface, seems to have taken a view, very different from ours, of the morality of our author's scenes. He says, "His (Shakspeare's) first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience; and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, a system of moral duty may be selected," (indeed!) "but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him:" (Would the preface-writer have wished the dramatist to give a connected treatise on ethics like the offices of Cicero?) " he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked: he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong; and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate

speare's illustrious friend; and its transfers, during the hundred and thirty-seven years, which interposed between the death of Southampton, in 1624, and the time of its emerging from darkness at Gopsal, in 1761, are not made the subjects even of a random guess. On such evidence, therefore, if evidence it can be called, it is impossible for us to receive, with Mr. Boaden, the Gopsal picture as a genuine portrait of Shakspeare. We are now assured that it was from the Chandos portrait Sir Godfrey Kneller copied the painting which he presented to Dryden, a poet inferior only to him whose portrait constituted the gift. The beautiful verses, with which the poet requited the kind attention of the painter, are very generally known: but many may require to be informed that the present, made on this occasion by the great master of the pencil to the greater master of the pen, is still in existence, preserved no doubt by the respect felt to be due to the united names of Kneller, Dryden, and Shakspeare; and is now in the collection of Earl Fitzwilliam at Wentworth Castle. The original painting, from which Droeshout drew the copy for his engraving, prefixed to the first folio edition of our Poet's dramas, has not yet been discovered; and I feel persuaded that no original painting ever existed for his imitation; but that the artist worked in this instance from his own recollection, assisted probably by the suggestions of the Poet's theatric friends. We are, indeed, strongly of opinion that Shakspeare, remarkable, as he seems to have been, for a lowly estimate of himself, and for a carelessness of all personal distinction, would not readily submit his face to be a painter's study, to the loss of hours, which he might more usefully or more pleasurably assign to reading, to composition, or to conviviality. If any sketch of his features was made during his life, it was most probably taken by some rapid and unprofessional pencil, when the Poet was unaware of it; or, taken by surprise, and exposed by it to no inconvenience, was not disposed to resist it. We are convinced that no authentic portrait of this great man has yet been produced, or is likely to be discovered; and that we must not therefore hope to be gratified with any thing which we can contemplate with confidence as a faithful representation of by chance. This fault the barbarity of the age canhis countenance. The head of the statue, executed not extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to

make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place." Why this commonplace on justice should be compelled into the station in which we here most strangely find it, I cannot for my life conjecture. But absurd as it is made by its association in this place, it may not form an im proper conclusion to a paragraph which means little, and which, intending censure, confers dramatic praise on a dramatic writer. It is evident, however, that Dr. Johnson, though he says that a system of moral duty may be selected from Shakspeare's writings, wished to inculcate that his scenes were not of a moral tendency. On this topic, the first and the greater Jonson seems to have entertained very different sentiments

by Scheemaker, and erected, in 1741, to the honour
of our poet in Westminster Abbey, was sculptured
after a mezzotinto, scraped by Simon nearly twenty
years before, and said to be copied from an origi-
nal portrait, by Zoust. But as this artist was not
known by any of his productions in England till
the year 1657, no original portrait of Shakspeare
could be drawn by his pencil; and, consequently,
the marble chiselled by Scheemaker, under the
direction of Lord Burlington, Pope, and Mead,
cannot lay any claim to an authorized resemblance
to the man, for whom it was wrought. We must
be satisfied, therefore, with knowing, on the au-
thority of Aubrey, that our Poet "was a handsome,
well-shaped man;" and our imagination must sup-
ply the expansion of his forehead, the sparkle and
flash of his eyes, the sense and good-temper play-
ing round his mouth; the intellectuality and the
benevolence mantling over his whole countenance. (says this great man)

It is well that we are better acquainted with the rectitude of his morals, than with the symmetry of his features. To the integrity of his heart; the gentleness and benignity of his manners, we have the positive testimony of Chettle and Ben Jonson; the former of whom seems to have been drawn, by our Poet's good and amiable qualities, from the faction of his dramatic enemies; and the latter, in his love and admiration of the man, to have lost all his natural jealousy of the successful competitor for the

• I derive my knowledge on this topic from Malone; for till I saw the fact asserted in his page, I was not

aware that the picture in question had been preserved amid the wreck of poor Dryden's property. On the authority also of Malone and of Mr. Boaden, I speak of Sir Godfrey's present to Dryden as of a copy from the Chandos portrait.

"Look, how the father's face

Lives in his issue; even so the race

Of Shakspeare's mind and manners, brightly shines
In his well-torned and truefiled lines."

We think, indeed, that his scenes are rich in ster
ling morality, and that they must have been the effu-
sions of a moral mind. The only criminatior. of his
morals must be drawn from a few of his sonnets;
and from a story first suggested by Anthony Wood,
and afterwards told by Oldys on the authority of
Betterton and Pope. From the Sonnets* we can
collect nothing more than that their writer was
blindly attached to an unprincipled woman, who
preferred a young and beautiful friend of his to him
self. But the story told by Oldys presents some

* See Son 141, 144, 147, 151, 152

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