MARTIN DROESHOUT'S

PRINT OF SHAKSPEARE.

IN the year 1623, Heminge and Condell, two friends and fellows of our poet, published the first complete edition of his plays. On the title-page of their folio is impressed a head of Shakspeare, to which Martin Droeshout the éngraver has put his name. It should be looked at in a clear and good impression, in this genuine book; for as the same plate was used in the succeeding folios, the wear of it during sixty-two years may be supposed to have done injury to the skill, mean as it was, of the engraver; and in also affecting the likeness, time may be said to have done, however extraordinary, a solitary injury to Shakspeare. In other words, Droeshout's original copper-plate is made to furnish out a portrait of the poet in the edition of 1623; in that of 1632, in which

it continued very tolerable; and in the two latter folios of 1664 and 1685, when I confess it to have become, what it has frequently been called, "an abominable libel upon humanity."

It will readily be granted that, as a work of art, it is by no means skilful, even for that time. They certainly had better artists. Seven years earlier, CHAPMAN'S Homer had been published, with an engraved head of that translator, of the very finest character. It is too well known to our collectors, to demand any particular praise in this place. I can only regret, that the portrait of Shakspeare was not equally fortunate. Chapman's engraver would have left nothing to desire, unless indeed the vain wish that Vandyke could have painted ONE destined to a kindred immortality.

We all know that mere likeness does not rest upon excellence in art. A great painter in his work has many other points that attract him, He is to compose a picture. He may aim at the expression of the general character, and slight the detail. He may consider too attentively grace of position, and turn out of hand