proportioned, broad-chested, and upright. His hair was a warm brown, his beard lighter than the hair of his head; his chin round and full (Bust, Droeshout Print, and Print by Marshall); the jaw strong and powerful (Droeshout, Print, and Bust); the forehead ample, broad, and high, the supra-orbital ridges oval, and well marked (Felton Head, Bust, and Droeshout); the hair, at an early period, thin, and well off the forehead-at the close of his life he was bald, and the forehead seemed very much higher; his complexion was fair, and the tint of a warm, healthy hue, with probably a full colour in the cheeks; the mouth not very small, the lips full and red; the eyes hazel, and, we may presume, instinct with life and intelligence.

This is as near an approach to a correct description of Shakspeare as we can well form, There can be no reason. why he should not have had many portraits painted, but we must remember that we have no direct proof that he ever sat to any artist of the highest excellence. He was of a retiring nature, since he did not, like Ben Jonson, place his plays before the public, and call them his "works." We may presume that although he must have been aware of the excellence of his poetry, and the value of his productions as works of Art, yet that he looked upon that Art with distaste, almost with disgust, and was careless about preserving any records of it. It is possible that, meeting with friends in his retirement whose religious opinions were severely Puritanic, he either destroyed his own papers, or left directions for their destruction. We know that Cowper lamented and

apologised for writing "John Gilpin ;" under the same pressure-that of the expressed opinions of religious friends-Shakspeare might not have been unwilling to condemn his "Venus and Adonis," "Love's Labour's Lost," the "Merry Wives of Windsor," and other works devoted to a corrupt stage, and evidencing an acquaintance with, and an attachment to, the abhorrence of Puritanism, the World. Under such a conviction-which we are at liberty to presume he indulged in, for he led a most quiet and retired life, and the story of his drunkenness and merrymaking with Drayton is at the best apocryphal—we may presume that Shakspeare took that step which has for ever deprived us of a relic of his manuscripts or letters.

We have indicated in the body of the text the paintings and pictures which agree in all the particulars of the fanciful portrait given above, and it is by the agreement with them in the main details, no less than by age and documentary evidence, that we must judge of the value of any newly-discovered portrait of the greatest dramatist of any country and of all ages.

XII.

ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE,

TRADITION, always valuable when it is not opposed to evidence, has associated for many years the cottage of the Hathaways at Shottery with the wife of Shakspeare. Garrick purchased relics out of it at the time of the Garrick jubilee; Samuel Ireland afterwards carried off what was called Shakspeare's courting chair; and there is still in the house a very ancient carved bedstead, which has been handed down from descendant to descendant as an heirloom.*

The last of the Hathaways who shows it now is a quaint old woman, by marriage a Taylor, but not the less endued with a love of the old house and the name. In addition to the bedstead, which might have been the "second best bedstead" left by Shakspeare in his will to his wife, she exhibits one or two relics, and some old bed-linen and pillow-cases beautifully hand-made, and of the finest linen, with open worked seams, which, she

*Charles Knight. William Shakspeare, a Biography, p. 265.