of the Hardiknutian tablet had been trying his ingenuity upon a more important scale.'

I too have heard various tales of the wanton pleasantries of the ingenious Commentator, in some of which he was decidedly aspersed ; and I am assuredly unwilling to believe, that one who took so much interest in the detection of the forged PAPERS of the poet, could at the very time be guilty of counterfeiting his resemblance. But if still such a thing be possible, then I should think the matter capable of some extenuation. I should consider it done, not for the barren object of laughing at credulity, but to afford a reasonable gratification to himself and others; and in this way-Mr. Steevens might have thought, with every body else, that Droeshout's print coarsely exhibited the genuine Shakspeare: that it was in vain longer to expect the picture to emerge from any seat in the country. If therefore any old head could be so worked upon, as to give somewhat a more refined style to the exhibition of our poet, it might be replacing the truth by the aid of fiction, and at all events present to the public what was certainly like Shakspeare. It is not incurious, that Mr. Steevens should have allowed my friend Mr. G. Nicol to purchase the head from Mr. Felton at FORTY guineas, rather than secure it at ANY price for himself. He was not much in the habit of weighing money against peculiar gratifications; but, in this instance, he chose to retain merely a copy of it, made for him by the late Josiah Boydell, Esq. a man whom to name is praise enough. That artist worked upon it until no discoverable difference remained; and the fac simile was before Mr. Steevens constantly till he died. Mr. Stee

vens drew a little himself, and was much conversant in pictures; but in such a fabrication as is here spoken of, if he conceived it, and directed the execution, he must have had the aid of some painter in oil. Mr. Fuseli, it appears, pronounced the picture to have been the work of some Flemish hand.

There is however something of strange coincidence in what I have before stated. Mr. Wilson receives in 1792 from a man of fashion, who must not be named, a head of the poet, dated in 1597, and endorsed Guil. Shakspeare. About the same time, were received sundry deeds, letters, and plays of Shakspeare from a gentleman, who in like manner was not to be named. And they abounded in the hand-writing of Elizabeth's reign, and also exhibited the poet's name with the recent orthography of the Commentators. I do not know that this picture might not have been intended to appear among the infinite possessions of the nameless gentleman. When I first saw this head at Richardson's, I found that it had been a good deal rubbed under the eyes; but that there were no circular cracks upon the surface, which time is sure to produce. There was a splitting of the crust of the picture down the nose, which seemed the operation of heat, rather than age. I remember the difficult task Mr. Boydell described, when he afterwards, by softening the paint, and pressing with the pallet-knife, succeeded in fixing these warped and dissevered parts to the oak pannel, on which they origi nally reposed. If it ever originated in the quarter alluded to, it might have been considered as spoiled in the Egyptian operation of the oven, and so have been condemned to the Minories or the Museum.

The most careful examination satisfied Mr. Malone, that the Felton picture was a fabrication. The same research proved to him the perfect authenticity of that called the Chandos. He used smilingly to repeat a truism stated by Mr. Steevens in the year 1793: "Much respect is due to the authority of portraits that descend in families from heir to heir; but little reliance can be placed on them when they are produced for sale (as in the present instance) by alien hands, almost a century after the death of the person supposed to be represented."

Would not one imagine, that Steevens had written this passage to establish rather than refute the Chandos picture, and to predict and expose his own fallacy of the following year? It was absolutely in October 1794, that he ventured to write, as to the Felton head, in the following strain: "How far the report on which Mr. Wilson's narratives (respecting the place where this picture was met with, &c.) were built, can be verified by evidence at present within reach, is quite immaterial, as our great dramatic author's portrait displays indubitable marks of its own authenticity. Yet by those who allow to possibilities the influence of facts, it may be said that this picture was probably the ornament of a club-room in Eastcheap, round which, other resemblances of contemporary poets and players might have been arranged;—that the Boar's Head, the scene of Falstaff's jollity, might also have been the favourite tavern of Shakspeare;-that when our author returned over London-bridge from the Globe Theatre, this was a convenient house of entertainment; and that for many years afterwards, (as the tradition of the neighbourhood reports),

it was understood to have been a place where the wits and wags of a former age were assembled, and their portraits reposited."

A club so constituted, would probably have been of the description named by the Spectator everlasting. Who shall say that at the fire of London the president might not have been sitting, surrounded by the gallery of portraits here so easily assembled? Taylor, the water poet, to be sure, was in his grave; but some other ingenious sculler upon the Thames might have recollected the symposium at the Boar's Head, and have rushed in to save the devoted, not to say besotted admirers of Shakspeare. Like another Æneas, he might have recommended the precious portraits to the hands of the venerable president, and then borne him triumphantly on his shoulders, through the horrid glare of the conflagration, and the clouds of smoke and dust from the falling ruins, till he reached the purifying waters of the Thames.

Tu, genitor, cape sacra manu, patriosque Penates.

Me, bello è tanto digressum et cæde recenti,

Attrectare nefas; donec me flumine vivo

Abluero.

VIRGIL, 2 ENEID, v. 717, &c.

But it is time to be serious. To Mr. Steevens it could not but occur, that this gentle speculation had no other tendency than to countenance a fraud, which he had himself sufficiently exposed ; for the Eastcheap legend it seems accompanied by far the greater number of these genuine pictures, produced from time to time!

But let us a little examine the PROBABILITIES, which are allowed by some, it seems, the influence of facts. 1st, "This picture was probably the ornament of a club-room in Eastcheap." This first probability depends so much upon the second, namely, that "the Boar's Head might have been the favourite tavern of Shakspeare," that they must be considered together.

Now that there was any tavern with the sign of the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, in Shakspeare's time, is itself exceedingly doubtful; for though the old play of Henry Vth told him that there was a tavern in Eastcheap that sold good wine, it said nothing about the sign of it; and our poet, when he hung up a sign there in his own play, hung up one, with which he was familiar in another place, namely, near the playhouse in Blackfriers. There was a further propriety in the ascription of this sign to a house frequented by Falstaff, namely, that the Boar's Head in Southwark was part of the benefaction of Sir John Fastolf to Magdalen College, Oxford; . and this is mentioned by Mr. Steevens himself, in his note upon the passage in 1st Part of Henry IV. But the third probability is personal to the poet, and requires some little examination before it can be allowed the influence of fact. "When our author returned over London-bridge from the Globe Theatre, this was a convenient house of entertainment." Now all this is gratuitous assumption. How is he warranted to assign the poet a residence so removed from the scene of his business? His connexion with the Blackfriers house did not commence till the year 1604: besides, when he did act at the Blackfriers, the Globe was shut; it was a summer theatre. That he

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