nd conventional, without character or expression; but this
is superb. The broad imperial brow, the firm, aquiline, and sensitive
nose, the mouth proud, humorous, and passionate, the full orbits of
the eyes, and the resolute, massive jaw, all indicate a temperament
and brain of which the greatest deeds in letters, arts, or arms, might
be confidently predicted.

A few weeks before his death Shakespeare made a will, bequeathing all
his landed property in strict entail to his eldest daughter. This
document is preserved at Somerset House, a vast government building in
London, adjoining Waterloo Bridge, between the Strand and the Victoria
Embankment, where the probate records of the kingdom are deposited. It
is locked in a buff leather case with an engraved inscription on a
brass disk on the lid. It is written on three large square separate
sheets of heavy paper, discolored by time. Each sheet is laid flat and
sealed between two plates of clear glass, so that both sides can be
inspected. The handwriting of the scrivener in the body of the
instrument is quite distinct and legible, considering its antiquity.
The signature of Shakespeare appears at the bottom of each sheet. The
chirography of men of genius is proverbially bad, generally from its
fluent facility, but the autographs of Shakespeare are clumsy,
uncouth, and awkward, their disconnected and sprawling letters seeming
to have been formed with difficulty by fingers unfamiliar with the use
of the pen. They may perhaps have been written in an unaccustomed
position, or when the testator was enfeebled by disease. It could not
have been the infirmity of age, for he was but fifty-two when he died.
It is impossible to look at these signatures without receiving the
impression that they were written by an illiterate man. It is not
merely their illegibility, but they have the scrawly curves and
uncertain terminations of the penman who is not certain about the
spelling of his own name. The great collections of London contain many
manuscripts of celebrated authors, ancient and modern, and some that
are hard to decipher, but there is no chirography more hopelessly and
irreclaimably unlettered and unscholarly than that of William
Shakespeare.

At the shrine by the placid Avon, which the centuries have invested
with their pensive and resistless charm, and over which genius has
cast its enchanting spell, an impassable gulf seems fixed between the
Shakespeare of Stratford and the Shake