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property. The Stratford records contain references to an amazing number of suits between prominent citizens, neighbours, and even friends. John Shakespeare has half a hundred to his own share. The townsmen were evidently wont to do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily but eat and drink as friends.'t We may expect, therefore, to find some more legal evidences relating to Shakespeare.

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There are other lines of search also that are waiting to be followed up. For instance, the inventory of Ben Jonson's goods is said to be in existence; and the late Dr Furnivall thought there was a good chance of the inventory of Lady Bernard's goods being found in one of the 28 boxes mentioned above. Documents of the greatest interest may still be in the possession of the heirs of Edward Bagley, the executor of Lady Bernard's will, or of descendants from her husband's children by his first wife. It has been supposed that some 'Shakespearean letters' were actually in the possession of Colonel Gardiner, one of these descendants.‡

The MS book of Dr Hall's, containing notes of 1000 medical cases, from which Dr Cooke in 1657 published about 180 in his 'Select Observations on English Bodies,' was known to Malone, who borrowed it from a Dr Wright. It has since disappeared, and every effort should be made to trace it. It would seem hopeless to recover the other MS, 'prepared for the press,' which Cooke took away with this one from Mrs Hall's house in 1644 (see above, p. 230).

Such discoveries as those of the Lamport Hall books, of the Plume MSS, which gave us the only glimpse of John Shakespeare at his home cracking jests with his famous son, and the recent find of fresh letters of Gabriel Harvey, Chapman, and Jonson, raise hopes that we may come upon still other caches of the same kind.

In Sir Sidney Lee's revised Biography of Shakespeare' we have an adequate presentment of all known

* Discovered by Dr Wallace.

Taming of the Shrew,' I, 2, 278.

Notes and Queries,' V Ser. vII, 287. Mr Belloc, in 1908, condescended to perpetrate a circumstantial hoax, tracing a certain Charlemagne K. Hopper from a daughter of Lady Bernard by her first husband Thomas Nash (but here called Hall).

facts bearing on his life and work. The editor 'loves the man and honours his memory on this side idolatry as much as any,' but he has the good sense and historic honesty not to burke unpleasant facts or try to archangelise the subject of his book. He is not afraid even to quote the Countess of Southampton's letter to her husband, with its veiled but possible allusion to Shakespeare as Sir John Falstaff. If the ascription is correct, Shakespeare must have had a liaison, while living apart from his wife in London about 1599. There is another but otherwise unsupported, and from the source whence it is derived unlikely, tradition, reported in 1727 by Theobald, that the Poet had a natural daughter, old enough, about 1613, to be presented with a new play of her father's. The Bohemian life of a player and the somewhat tainted atmosphere that surrounded a playhouse must have made it hard for a man of so passionate a nature, and so genial, not to say jovial, a character as was Shakespeare's, to live in such an environment a wholly moral life. We owe to Mrs Stopes the discovery that an Edward Shakespeare, player, had an illegitimate son baptised at St Giles, Cripplegate, on Aug. 12, 1607. This must refer to Shakespeare's brother Edmund, who was buried at St Saviour's, Southwark, on Dec. 31 of that year. The same authority gives us an entry from the register of St Clement Danes, which records the burial on Aug. 8, 1609, of Jane, daughter of William Shakspeer. But, as a John Shakespeer had a daughter Jane baptised on the 16th of July previous, she is inclined to consider William an error for John, a by no means certain conclusion.

We know, however, that many of the players of Shakespeare's company were communicants at St Mary Overy's, Southwark. Nat. Field, who was a Bishop's brother, made a vehement defence of himself and his fellows against the outrageous attack of a Mr Sutton, a preacher in Southwark, on their profession in the very year of Shakespeare's death.

With regard to the Davenant scandal, a careful consideration of the whole circumstances of the story

It is difficult to see how the play, if written for a company, was his to give.

† See Carew Hazlitt, p. 95.

makes it clear that there is no truth in it. It cannot, however, be denied that, like his patron Southampton and his 'favourer' Pembroke, Shakespeare anticipated the rights of marriage before wedlock; and it is mere special pleading to say, without any evidence, that there must have been a pre-contract in his case. Beyond question he was a man of strong passions and a recognised master in the art of love, as is proved by the curious poem, 'Willobie his Avisa.' Moreover, his portrait, with its full lips, whence his supposed nickname Labeo, tells the same tale to the physiognomist, despite his own words, 'There is no art To find the mind's construction in the face.'* This feature has been horribly exaggerated in the disagreeable Flower Portrait,' which is unaccountably prefixed to Sir Sidney Lee's new edition of the Life.

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But, after going down, like Dante, into Hell, Shakespeare, through the essential nobility of his nature, 'mastered this little mansion of himself,' † and, purged of the stains and errors of his London life,‡ came back to his wife and home in Stratford. There he busied himself with his orchards and his farming, and with furthering local interests through his influence among 'persons of quality' in London. He died a patriotic citizen and a good man, possibly at the last, as Archdeacon Davies seems to have heard, a papist. But his burial in Stratford church-though possibly accounted for by the fact that he was a part-owner of the tithes-is against this supposition, no less than the stereotyped Protestant exordium to his will. In his Stratford bust we see the firm serene face of one who has emerged a triumphant victor over all evil inclinations. Like the mariner of philosophy spoken of by Marcus Aurelius, he has turned the headland and finds all at set-fair and a halcyon sea.' § Such a man, who has passed through the valley of humiliation, is to us more human and more lovable than if he had been as faultless as King Arthur.

C. R. HAINES.

'Macbeth,' 1, 4, 12.

Edward III,' II, 2, 97.

Dr Wallace says that it is becoming doubtful whether he ever did settle down at Stratford; but is it?

§ Shakespeare almost certainly imitated in his Sonnet 55 a passage of Meres' book, 'Palladis Tamia.'

Art. 2.-HOW THE 'ADORATION OF THE LAMB' WAS SAVED.

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THE great war has left us more than enough of sad memories, so that it may be refreshing to turn from these to read the amusing account which tells how the town of Ghent saved its famous picture by Van Eyck, known to us as The Adoration of the Lamb,' from the rapacity of the Germans. Every art-lover has admired this picture in the Cathedral of St Bavon. It was commissioned by the rich Burgomaster, Jodocus Vydt, from Hubert Van Eyck for a small chapel in the church where he and his wife hoped to be buried. Hubert Van Eyck died in 1426, and the work was finished by his brother Jan, perhaps also with the help of the third brother, Lambert Van Eyck. In 1432 it was placed in the chapel, where it has since been the wonder and admiration of the world. But, during the five hundred years since the picture was painted, it has had many vicissitudes; portions of it have been separated from the rest; and it is only since 1920 that the whole can be seen together again.

'The Adoration of the Lamb' was in 1578 very nearly given by the Calvinists to Queen Elizabeth as a bribe for her help; but a Flemish noble fortunately interposed, and it was kept safely in the Town Hall and replaced in its chapel in 1584. Next it was nearly burnt by accident in 1641; and in 1781 the Emperor Joseph II of Austria, when paying a visit to St Bavon, objected to the nudity of Adam and Eve, with the result that the offending figures were put away in a garret and clothed copies took their place, though Albert Dürer had especially singled out the figure of Eve for admiration. In 1794 the central portion was stolen by the French and exhibited in the Louvre; but Wellington, in 1814, insisted on the return of the treasure. A law was then made that the picture should never again be alienated; and yet the same year, in December 1816, De Surre, the Vicar-General and administrator of the Diocese of Ghent, when his Bishop was away, actually sold the folding doors of the priceless polyptych to a Dutch dealer at Brussels, saying that he considered them of small value, 'being very ancient and very ugly.' A thousand francs for each of the six panels were offered by this dealer on the condition that they

should be delivered within twenty-four hours. He received the shutters within the specified time, and parted with them immediately to Mr Solly, an Englishman living in Germany. Of course there was a great outcry; but it was too late; the traitor in the camp had sold what it has taken more than a hundred years to recover. Mr Solly resold the shutters at a high profit, for 500,000 thalers, to the King of Prussia; and thus Berlin, before the great war, owned these famous paintings.*

This introduction will show why the Germans were so very anxious in the year 1914 not only to retain the shutters of the Van Eyck, but to obtain the rest of the great picture, and it brings us to the story of the hiding. One official of St Bavon long ago had betrayed his trust; but it was left to another to wipe away that disgrace. M. Van der Gheyn is a Canon of the Cathedral, President of the Historical and Archæological Society of Ghent, and a warm lover of his country and of its ancient art. He will go down to posterity as the man who, by his courage and his great resource, saved 'The Adoration of the Lamb' from being carried off by the Germans, or worse-for the burning of the irreplaceable Library of Louvain was at this moment before the eyes of the Belgians, helping Canon Van der Gheyn to draw his own conclusions. It is from a pamphlet by him, published by Van Doosselaere of Ghent, that the following account is drawn.

As soon as the invasion of Belgium began, the Canon realised that the picture was in danger, and that something should be done to save it from being destroyed or carried off to Berlin. He consulted the Dean and Chapter of St Bavon and several of his friends. The question with the Cathedral Chapter was-'If the Germans conquer Belgium, who can prevent them from carrying off our picture?' 'Even if you hide it,' said the Canon's friends, 'the Huns will make you reveal the

*The six Berlin shutters were specially mentioned in the Treaty of Versailles as to be restored to Ghent, the value to be deducted from the total sum due for reparations. The price now set upon them was fixed by the Germans at 75,000,000 francs. In 1916 (see below) they estimated it as from ten to twenty millions. But it was not till November 1920 that the shutters were restored.

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