to. The apotheosis of a poet, or a saint, for the nonce, converted into one, may be received on its own merits, and find a welcome, as a designed tribute of affection or reverence for Shakspeare; but nobody surely can be so ignorant of his character, as to suppose he would himself concur in so vain a mode of delivering his likeness to posterity. After all, our poet in the claws of this allegorical eagle, too ludicrously reminded the spectator, of Gulliver in his cabinet, when the same bird, enlarged to the scale of Brobdingnag, bore him in triumph away from the tender care of Glumdalclitch. To this high flight of the great fabricator, to whom I have formerly alluded, were appended verses such as the occasion demanded, but which trusted entirely to their orthography for success, the writer of them having no knowledge whatever of our ancient diction.

Among the pitiable absurdities which have dishonoured the cause of Shakspeare, the most ridiculous is clearly his exhibition upon the oaken or mahogany lid of a pair of bellows. I presume to call this the "brightest invention" as to him who possessed a MUSE of fire. "To what base uses may we return." However, some little apology is included in the anecdote which attended the picture, namely, that this utensil had decorated the chamber of Queen Elizabeth, and, under a hasty impatience for warmth, the effigy of the poet might have sometimes been pressed by her royal hands. This speculation is said to have been once detected by a picture cleaner of

Paris, who removed the high forehead and mustaches, which denoted the poet, and discovered the more appropriate mobled head of an old lady. However, the fair decoration of the bellows soon became, as before, a femme couverte; and the restored head of Shakspeare is now in the possession of Mr. Talma, who has bestowed a splendid case upon this unique picture of the Bard, which after all may have a stronger resemblance to Shakspeare, than the Hamlet, the Macbeth, and the Lear of Ducis, bear to the original plays so denominated. I cannot stoop to the insertion of the legends and epistles with which these spurious mummeries are usually attended: they are impudently signed Ben Jonson, or Poins, or Pystolle; for the knowledge of these fabricators is very slender indeed as to the cotemporaries who might have been expected to honour him.

But it may not be improper here to remind the dealers in such things, that there is very slender proof of any distinguished attention shewn by the great Queen to her dramatic poet. The whole of it is reduced to a tradition, that she was greatly delighted with the character of Falstaff in the two parts of Henry the Fourth, and commanded the poet to exhibit the Fat Knight in love, which produced the comedy of the Merry Wives of Windsor: but this event occurred late indeed in the life of the Queen: a time of disaffection and treachery, of loneliness and sorrow, had arrived, and she had neither health nor spirits to devote to even refined amusements.

The MIGHTY SPIRIT of the NORTH, whom I mention to honour, must be read with some caution by the rising generation. In his

perhaps greatest work, Kenilworth, he has committed grievous anachronisms, which must have proceeded solely from his wish to make the present court of the Queen rich in all the talents of her reign. She is made to address Lord Southampton as the patron of Shakspeare, when that nobleman was a child in arms, and the poet himself acquiring his "small Latin and less Greek" in the grammarschool of Stratford. She alludes to his Tempest, which was not produced till ten years after her decease, and recites at length from some of his latest productions, which were reserved for the subjects of her successor. Perhaps I may wish, that on such an occasion the liberty had not been taken. Romance may fitly supply the private or domestic incidents to which History cannot stoop; but the less invasion she makes upon established chronology the better, because no grounds being afforded for detection, her whole creation then passes upon the fancy, uncorrected by the memory. "Rien n'est beau que le

vrai."

After the frankness of the preceding remark, I hope I may be allowed to add my feeble tribute of admiration to a genius not equalled since the days of Shakspeare. In the novel to which I have referred, the character of Elizabeth is exhibited in so bold and masterly a manner, that even the Queen Katherine of Shakspeare is not superior, at her trial, to the daughter of her rival, when overwhelming the perfidy of Leicester by her "lion port" and indignant reproaches. I rejoice certainly, that so great and fertile a source of instruction and delight is reserved for my own times: but

I can yet regret, that such a novelist did not exist in the days of Shakspeare; who, from tales which he could so easily have converted to the purposes of the stage, might have added even new features to his own vast range of dramatic excellence.

P

THE POETIC CHARACTER

OF

SHAKSPEARE.

HAVING thus laid before my readers the evidence for the authenticity of certain portraits of our great Bard, and by the most perfect engravings made them acquainted with his person, it seems to be only completing the picture, to add the truest portrait that exists, of his power as a poet. The verses which follow, have been hitherto but slightly noticed by the critics upon Shakspeare, with the exception of Dr. Drake, who quotes from them incidentally, when describing the peculiar influence of his mind upon our national drama.

They first appeared in the folio 1632, and are subscribed "The friendly Admirer of his Endowments," I. M. S. It should seem that they were not composed when the collection of Shakspeare's plays first appeared in 1623, and they may have been written in noble competition with the splendid tribute of Ben Jonson in that volume. The line taken by the latter poet, is essentially different from that of the former. Jonson's is a rich and affectionate tribute of praise. The "friendly admirer" gives a graphic delineation of his genius, so