passed to Mr. Nicoll of Southgate, whose only daughter married the Marquis of Caernarvon.

So much for the transmission of the picture, which is painted on canvass; and a man must be little conversant with the portraits of 1607, to start an objection, because it was not painted upon wood. I know very well, that some of the smooth painters, about this time, and long after, preferred pannel, for subjects that were to be very highly finished, and seen near. The wood allowed of a thinner and more transparent system. You frequently, in these pictures, see the absolute grain of the wood through a tinted gelatinous substance, merely vehicle, but amazingly brilliant. The absorbent ground of the canvass took the oil entirely from the surface, and left their colours heavy and opaque. Here therefore they were compelled to use great body of colour, and to paint with deeper shadows. The pannel pictures generally have the features little relieved by shadow. To end the question in a word, our palaces and ancient country seats are crowded with portraits painted upon canvass, about this period.

The earliest engraving from this picture, of decided excellence, is one by Duchange, from a drawing by B. Arlaud. The latter was, I imagine, the son of Jaques Antoine Arlaud, a delightful artist, who came over to this country in 1721, aged 53, and might therefore have a son, who with his name could bring to any work much of his talent. The father was an enthusiast in his art, and I should consider his son to have had a kindred impulse, when he made his drawing from the picture, then in Mr. Keck's possession, in the year 1725. But

finding the original not painted by a great artist, and looking upon himself as perhaps most faithful to the poet when he departed from the painter's drawing, he has considerably altered the features, but preserved the expression of the countenance, with perhaps some heightening. As to the dress, he has considered himself perfectly at liberty. Instead of the original doublet, he has exhibited the poet in a slight summer waistcoat, open to the seventh button; and thrown negligently about his shoulders a sort of camblet cloak with a lining of a lighter colour, and, as it seems to me, of a different material. But the expression of his head atones for all; it is giving to genius a local habitation and a name. Duchange engraved it extremely well in the line manner, and it is, in my judgment, by far the best engraving hitherto from the picture. He reverses the head, as all the engravers did, even as low down as Houbraken in 1747; but he has not troubled us with any emblematical additions, in the style of the illustrious heads; there are neither daggers and masks, nor everlasting oil, nor eagles full-summed, nor crowns of laurel or of bays; but upon a sarcophagus, which on the corners of its slab bears the names in small of the two artists, we read, in the fine handwriting of that period, the expressive and yet simple inscription"Mr. William Shakespeare."

As every thing that relates to Shakspeare is interesting, the reader may desire to hear something about the engraver of his portrait. Gasper Duchange was a native of France, and a member of the Royal Academy of Arts at Paris. He was a contemporary of the

F 2

celebrated John Audran, and received his academic honours in the very year that the latter was appointed engraver to the King of France. Mr. Strutt thinks that he was rather a neater engraver than his competitor, and that the etching is not so predominant. As I cannot learn that Duchange was ever in this country, there is this circumstance singular in his print, that Arlaud's drawing was sent over to Paris; and thus the best engraving of the great poet of England was executed in France.

Mr. Theobald, with his usual good sense, gave this print as the sole embellishment of his octavo edition of our poet's works in 1733: if indeed the list of his subscribers, adorned with all the rank and talent of the country, be not deemed itself a curious and refined embellishment.

There are still a few circumstances relating to the picture, of which some notice should be taken in this examination. There is it seems a tradition, that no original painting of Shakspeare existing, Sir Thomas Clarges caused a portrait to be painted from a young man, who had the good fortune to resemble him. Mr. Malone found this tale to exist upon the assertion of a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1759; he observes, that this gentleman never produced his authority for pronouncing this to be an absolute fact, though repeatedly called upon to do so. Still, however, he has himself told us, that most reports of this kind are an adumbration of some fact; an indication of something in kind or degree similar or analagous.

Perhaps the truth may be, that the anecdote is not entirely groundless. Sir Thomas Clarges might wish himself to possess a picture of Shakspeare; and not being able to discover one, resort to the contrivance mentioned above, placing the folio print, and the living likeness, together before the artist-for it should be remarked, that no tradition mentions Sir Thomas as having been one of the possessors of the Chandos head. That the writer in the magazine never replied to the queries which were put to him, is by no means conclusive, or even presumptive evidence of imposition; and I think Mr. Malone was too hasty in this inference. The writer of the anecdote might never see the queries. It does not necessarily follow that he took in the magazine. I am quite sure that many curious facts are sent to such repositories, by persons who do not constantly read the miscellanies in question. Is it a probable thing, that the writer of the article should invent a story, consistent enough in its data, embracing the name of him who ordered the picture, the manner of its production also, (so likely a resort), and this too for no object but mischief? I therefore, at all events, more charitably conceive, that the tradition had fairly reached him; that he gave it, as he received it, to the respectable periodical work of the time; and perhaps at most looked to see that his communication was correctly printed.

The writer of our anecdote added, that Cornelius Jansen was the artist who painted this picture for Sir Thomas Clarges. But as there is abundant proof that Jansen painted the poet in his life-time,

we arrive at the certainty of one mistake in the tradition. To which may be added, that the Chandos canvass has not the smallest look of Jansen's manner. He in general painted his heads upon board, and in truth, was an artist only inferior to Vandyke: whereas the reader will have found the Chandos picture to have been painted by an ordinary hand, but to possess unquestioned resemblance to the poet, and to have been very carefully transmitted through the hands of authenticated possessors.

Davenant, as we learn from his biographers, was born in the year 1606; Shakspeare died when this his god-son was ten years old. The boy, as we are told, was fond of running out to meet him, when he passed through Oxford. There is therefore a high probability that he remembered his person, and was sure of the verisimilitude of Taylor's picture. He would no doubt frequently express this to both Betterton and Dryden. Betterton accordingly bought the original, and Dryden was made happy by Kneller's copy from it. I regret, not for Kneller's sake but ours, that Dryden did not let out more of his mighty spirit, in the verses by which he repaid the painter's kindness. He might have rendered them the vehicle of a discriminated character of Shakspeare, such as should rival that written by himself in such admirable prose; but I gave, above, all that was of real moment. The other passages are a common-place of panegyric, such as he might know Kneller's outrageous vanity demanded; which no painter ever yet merited; and which, notwithstanding, the fashionable artist of every age has certainly received.