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 color. This certainly was not in the high classical taste; though we may learn from Pausanias that statues in Greece were sometimes colored 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 freestone; and as the chisel of the sculptor was most probably under the guidance of Dr. 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 moret; Olympus habet. On a tablet underneath are inscribed these lines: Stay, passenger; why dost thou go so fast? Read, if thou canst, whom envious death has placed and the flat stone, covering the grave, holds out, in very irregular characters, a supplication to the reader, with the promise of a blessing, and the menace of a curse :— Good friend! for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust inclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones; 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 attached. 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 preeminently intellectual mortal. But the cast, if taken, must have been taken immediately after his death; and we know neither at whose expense the monument was constructed, nor by whose hand it was executed, nor at what precise time it was erected. It may have been wrought by the artist, acting under the recollections of the Shakspeare family, into some likeness of the great townsman of Stratford; and, on this probability, we may contemplate it with no inconsiderable interest. I cannot, however, persuade myself that the likeness could have been strong. The forehead, indeed, is sufficiently spacious and intellectual; 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 incontestable 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 favorite 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 sat 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 favorite 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 Shakspeare'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 * An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Pictures and Prints offered as Portraits of Shakspeare, p. 67-80 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 his countenance. The head of the statue, executed by Scheemaker, and erected, in 1741, to the honor 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 original portrait by Zoust. But as this artist was not * 1 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. 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 authority of Aubrey, that our Poet "was a handsome, well-shaped man ;" and our imagination must supply the expansion of his forehead, the sparkle and flash of his eyes, the sense and good-temper playing round his mouth, the intellectuality and the benevolence mantling over his whole countenance. 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 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 honor 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 their 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 |