parlour gentry" who frequent it, is more faithful in his resemblances than Sir Joshua Reynolds or Sir Thomas Lawrence. The artist idealises his subject and tones down its eccentricities; the amateur or the dauber who is "clever at a likeness" makes prominent, nay, even exaggerates, the peculiarities by which his setter is known to his associates. His touch may be as hard as a block of marble, his fleshcolour like brick dust, but his "likeness" is undeniable or he would not be able to earn a crust.

We may therefore, after weighing the evidence carefully, and taking into consideration the probabilities of the case, assume that the most authentic representation of the poet is that of the head attached to the first folio of 1623, and that we may take it, together with the bust at Stratford-on-Avon, as a test of the genuineness of the many other assumed portraits of the poet.

V.

THE FELTON HEAD.

THE little head which is inserted in our title-page has a curious history, and was at one time judged to be nearly, if not quite, the most authentic portrait existing. It bears a great resemblance to the Droeshout print, from which, assuming it to be a forgery, we should say it was concocted.

It is a very mild face, having a distant likeness to the Chandos portrait in the eyes, the thoughtful, rapt gaze of which is particularly good. The forehead resembles the Droeshout, but is perhaps built up even higher; the cheeks are rounded in the same way. The ears have no ear-rings, but the hair resembles rather that of the Chandos portrait than of the print.

The dress cannot well be distinguished; the ruff is the same flat linen or lawn ruff of which we have spoken in the Droeshout; the head is intended for somewhat more than a three-quarter face portrait, and yet not quite

a full face, and seems to have been shifted in its position on the ruff, possibly the result of ill drawing.

The print bears under it the words R. Burbage pinxt 1597; and in 1794 public opinion ran so very much in favour of this picture that Messrs. Boydell and Nicol put forward the assertion "they were so thoroughly convinced of its genuineness" that they determined to engrave it "instead of having recourse to the exploded picture belonging to the Chandos family."

The history of the Felton head is certainly, in our opinion, damnatory to the fact of its genuineness.

In the year 1794, Aug. 9, Mr. Richardson, a printseller of Castle Street, Leicester Square, informed Mr. Steevens that he had seen, at Mr. Felton's in Curzon Street, May Fair, an ancient head resembling the print of Shakspeare by Droeshout.

Steevens went, saw it, brought it away, and examined it. It was painted not like the Chandos head on wood, but on canvas. It was and is brighter in colour than the Chandos picture, and did not resemble that painting and its poor copy by Roubiliac in oil, which was said to be "so like a chimney sweeper in the jaundice." The panel on which it was painted had been split on one side to make it even, some picture-dealer had shaved off the other side, nay, even the remainder was curtailed and adapted to a small frame.

On the back of this treasure Mr. Steevens found written, in an "Elizabethan hand," "GUIL. SHAKSPEARE,* 1597,

"As the poet spelt it," says a commentator. So he did, but also in other ways; but after much consideration we have adopted this method.

R.N." and although the portrait had been exposed it was in very good preservation. On inquiry, it was found that Mr. Felton had bought it for five guineas at a sale which took place at the "European Museum" in King Street, St. James' Square, in 1792. In the catalogue it was marked and described as "No. 359-A curious portrait of Shakspeare painted in 1597."

Mr. Felton, upon making inquiries of the auctioneer or proprietor of the Museum, received a letter in which he stated that "the head of Shakspeare was purchased out of an old house, known by the sign of the Boar, in Eastcheap, London, where the poet and his friends used to resort; and report says the picture was painted by a player of that time, but whose name I have not been able to learn.Sept. 11, 1792."

Mr. Wilson evidently knew how to dress up a story. The Boar's Head had been burnt in 1666; but even had it not, pictures in taverns "where players resort," i. e. the parlour or smoking-room, are thoroughly well baked, browned, and discoloured. This one was, when at the European Museum, very fresh; and probably Steevens was struck by this freshness and ventured some remark, since, in 1794, Aug. II, not quite two years afterwards, the auctioneer Wilson, with many protestations, assured Mr. Steevens that

"That portrait was found between four and five years ago at a broker's shop in the Minories, by a man of fashion, whose name must be concealed: and that it afterwards came,' and here the Eastcheap story was again inserted, "into

"

that gentleman's sale at the European Museum, where it was exhibited and seen by Lord Leicester and Lord Orford, who both allowed it to be a genuine portrait of Shakspeare."

"My uncle's account," says Sir Benjamin Backbite, "is the more circumstantial, I will allow, but I believe mine to be the only true one for all that;" and it is in allusion to a "little bronze Shakspeare on the mantel-shelf," that he makes this apt reflection on his own lie. The ingenious Mr. Wilson, being an auctioneer, must have been singularly gifted with a faculty of much use in his profession; and we may suppose that not many spurious varieties came out of the European Museum unaccompanied by a good pedigree and a story to boot. Perhaps a rude portrait of Shakspeare might have adorned the Boar's Head, artfully called the Boar by Mr. Wilson, who knows the value of a little seeming ignorance as well as that of a lord's name. But this tavern Evelyn saw, or nearly saw, burning,* and he describes the consternation of the people to be such that they did not attempt to save anything, much less a portrait of a man not then esteemed.

The Felton head, however, grew in fashion, and in the proposals for engraving it, the publisher, William Richardson, begs the ladies and gentlemen "not to be disgusted

* I wente on foote to the same place, and saw ye whole southe parte of ye city burning, from Cheapside to the Thames, and all along Cornehill (for it kindl'd backe againste ye winde as well as forward), Tower Street, Fenchurch Street, Gracious Street, and so along to Bainard's Castle * the people so astonish'd like distracted creatures that they ranne about without at all attempting to save even their goods.-Evelyn's Memoirs.

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