, of Birmingham.
Of these III, VI, and VIII have not been satisfactorily traced back
even into the last century.
Beyond question, after the Bust and the Droeshout engraving, the
Janssen portrait has the greatest value. Unfortunately the Chandos,
even if its history be as stated, is of very little real value: for
it has been so often repaired or "restored," and is at present in
such a dilapidated condition, that it cannot be relied upon as a
portrait. Moreover it bears but little resemblance to the admirable
drawing from it in its former state, made by Ozias Humphreys in the
year 1783. This drawing is an exceedingly fine work of art, to
which even Scriven's print, good as it is, scarcely does justice.
To compare Humphreys' drawing, which hangs in the Birthplace, and is
its most valuable portrait, with Samuel Cousin's fine mezzotint of
the Chandos, engraved forty years ago, is to be convinced that the
existing picture no longer represents the man--whosoever he may have
been--from whom it was painted. How many questions, affecting the
Bust, the Death-Mask, and these portraits, would be set at rest by
the production of Shakespeare's skull!
The late Mr. William Page, the American sculptor, whose interest in
testing the identity of the Kesselstadt Death-Mask, by comparing it
with Shakespeare's skull, was in 1874-5 incomparably greater than
that of any other interested person, comes VERY NEAR the expression
of a wish for the exhumation of the skull.
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