with equal justice will withhold from him the poet's bays.-To his pretensions of descent from Shakspeare, one might almost be induced to apply a ludicrous passage uttered by Fielding's Phaeton in the Suds:

by all the parish boys I'm flamm'd: "You the SUN's son, you rascal! you be d-d."

8

About the time when this picture found its way into Mr. Keck's hands, the verification of portraits was so little attended to, that both the Earl of Oxford, and Mr. Pope, admitted a juvenile one of King James I. as that of Shakspeare. Among the heads of illustrious persons engraved by Houbraken, are several imaginary ones, beside Ben Jonson's and Otway's; and old Mr. Langford positively asserted that, in the same collection, the grandfather of Cock the auctioneer had the honour to personate the great and amiable Thurloe, secretary of state to Oliver Cromwell.

From the price of forty guineas paid for the supposed portrait of our author to Mrs. Barry, the real value of it should not be inferred. The possession of somewhat more animated than canvas, might

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; and then, (as Edmund says in King Lear)" come pat, like the catastrophe of the old comedy." Shakspeare was buried in 1616; and in 1708 the first notice of this picture occurs. Where there is such a chasm in evidence, the validity of it may be not unfairly questioned, and especially by those who remember a species of fraudulence recorded in Mr. Foote's Taste: " Clap Lord Dupe's arms on that half-length of Erasmus; I have sold it him as his great grandfather's third bro ther, for fifty guineas."

have been included, though not specified, in a bargain with an actress of acknowledged gallantry.

Yet allowing this to be a mere fanciful insinuation, a rich man does not easily miss what he is ambitious to find. At least he may be persuaded he has found it, a circumstance which, as far as it affects his own content, will answer, for a while, the same purpose. Thus the late Mr. Jennens, of Gopsal in Leicestershire, for many years congratulated himself as owner of another genuine portrait of Shakspeare, and by Cornelius Jansen; nor was disposed to forgive the writer who observed that, being dated in 1610, it could not have been the work of an artist who never saw England till 1618, above a year after our author's death.

So ready, however, are interested people in assisting credulous ones to impose on themselves, that we will venture to predict,-if some opulent dupe to the flimsy artifice of Chatterton should advertise a considerable sum of money for a portrait of the Pseudo-Rowley, such a desideratum would soon emerge from the tutelary crypts of St. Mary Redcliff at Bristol, or a hitherto unheard of repository in the tomb of Syr Thybbot Gorges at Wraxall. It would also come attested as a strong

1 A kindred trick had actually been passed off by Chatterton on the late Mr. Barrett of Bristol, in whose back parlour was a pretended head of Canynge, most contemptibly scratched with a pen on a small square piece of yellow parchment, and framed and glazed as an authentick icon by the "curyous poyntill" of Rowley. But this same drawing very soon ceased to be stationary, was alternately exhibited and concealed, as the wavering faith of its possessor shifted about, and was prudently withheld at last from the publick eye. Why it was not inserted in the late History of Bristol, as well as Rowley's plan and elevation of its ancient castle, (which all the rules of all the ages of architecture pronounce to be spurious) let the Rowleian advocates inform us.

likeness of our archæological bard, on the faith of a parchment exhibiting the hand and seal of the dygne Mayster Wyllyam Canynge, setting forth that Mayster Thomas Rowlie was so entyrely and passynge wele belovyd of himself, or our poetick knight, that one or the other causyd hys semblaunce to be ryght conynglye depeyncten on a marvellouse fayre table of wood, and ensevelyd wyth hym, that deth mote theym not clene departyn and putte asunder.-A similar imposition, however, would in vain be attempted on the editors of Shakspeare, who, with all the zeal of Rowleians, are happily exempt from their credulity.

A former plate of our author, which was copied from Martin Droeshout's in the title-page to the folio 1623, is worn out; nor does so "abominable an imitation of humanity" deserve to be restored. The smaller head, prefixed to the Poems in 1640, is merely a reduced and reversed copy by Marshall from its predecessor, with a few slight changes in attitude and dress.-We boast therefore of no exterior ornaments,2 except those of better print and paper than have hitherto been allotted to any octavo edition of Shakspeare.

Justice nevertheless requires us to subjoin, that

We are happy at least to have recollected a single imposition that was too gross for even these gentlemen to swallow.-Mr. Barrett, however, in the year 1776, assured Mr. Tyrwhitt and Mr. Steevens, that he received the aforesaid scrawl of Canynge from Chatterton, who described it as having been found in the prolifick chest, secured by six, or six-and-twenty keys, no matter which.

• They who wish for decorations adapted to this edition of Shakspeare, will find them in Silvester Harding's Portraits and Views, &c. &c. (appropriated to the whole suite of our author's Historical Dramas, &c..) published in thirty numbers.

See Gent. Mag. June 1759, p. 257.

had an undoubted picture of our author been at. tainable, the Booksellers would most readily have paid for the best engraving from it that could have been produced by the most skilful of our modern artists; but it is idle to be at the charge of perpetuating illusions: and who shall offer to point out, among the numerous prints of Shakspeare, any one that is more like him than the rest ?5

The play of Pericles has been added to this collection, by the advice of Dr. Farmer. To make room for it, Titus Andronicus might have been omitted; but our proprietors are of opinion that some ancient prejudices in its favour may still exist, and for that reason only it is preserved.

We have not reprinted the Sonnets, &c. of Shakspeare, because the strongest act of parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service; notwithstanding these miscellaneous poems have derived every possible advantage from the literature and judgment of their only intelligent editor, Mr. Malone, whose implements of criticism, like the ivory rake and golden spade in

• List of the different engravings from the Chandosan Shakspeare:

By Vandergucht, to Rowe's edit.

1709.

No two of these Portraits are alike; nor does any one of them

bear the slightest resemblance to its wretched original.

G. S.

Prudentius, are on this occasion disgraced by the objects of their culture.-Had Shakspeare produced no other works than these, his name would have reached us with as little celebrity as time has conferred on that of Thomas Watson, an older and much more elegant sonnetteer."

What remains to be added concerning this republication is, that a considerable number of fresh remarks are both adopted and supplied by the present editors. They have persisted in their former track of reading for the illustration of their author, and cannot help observing that those who receive the benefit of explanatory extracts from ancient writers, little know at what expence of time and labour such atoms of intelligence have been col lected. That the foregoing information, however, may communicate no alarm, or induce the reader to suppose we have "bestowed our whole tediousness" on him, we should add, that many notes have likewise been withdrawn. A few, manifestly erroneous, are indeed retained, to show how much the tone of Shakspearian criticism is changed, or on account of the skill displayed in their confutation; for surely every editor in his turn is occa- .

• His Sonnets, though printed without date, were entered in the year 1581, on the books of the Stationers' Company, under the title of "Watson's Passions, manifesting the true Frenzy of Love."

Shakspeare appears to have been among the number of his readers, having in the following passage of Venus and Adonis,— "Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain,"

borrowed an idea from his 83d Sonnet:

"The Muses not long since intrapping love
"In chaines of roses," &c.

Watson, however, declares on this occasion that he imitated Ronsard; and it must be confessed, with equal truth, that in the present instance Ronsard had been a borrower from Anacreon.