club, but it was not held at the Boar's Head, nor was it in or near Eastcheap. This was the splendid association of wits and scholars and poets, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, and held at the Mermaid in Friday-street. Now Fridaystreet was exactly opposite to Maiden-lane, in which stood the Globe Theatre, on the Southwark side of the river, and a sculler most probably would appear to Shakspeare infinitely more convenient than the crowded perambulation down the Bank-side to the eastward, the passage over the bridge, and an equally tiresome progress through the City westward to Friday

street.

Again, if our poet did ever delight himself and others at this Boar's Head, how did it happen, that no Fuller, no Beaumont ever commemorated the wit combats, if he met with any rival; or the abundant stream of humour, which could not but flow from one, who had Falstaff in his heart, and excellent sack before him; not only witty in himself, but the cause of wit in other men? Any hypothesis more destitute of probability cannot be found; we must there

fore by no means allow it to usurp the influence of fact. If the Mermaid, the Apollo, and the Devil, have had their respective shares of literary celebration, we may rest assured, that the Boar's Head would have found the same kind of fame, had it ever received a similar honour.

The really decent probability is, that the daubing of the Gad's-hill robbery was coeval with the club, about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Some merry fellow, with his head full of Falstaff, thought that locality would improve the flavour of wine; and so assembled his friends and neighbours at a house, which he might himself christen the Boar's Head, after Shakspeare's play, and where money might be spent without alarm, that had never been destined to the King's Exchequer. In the mean time, the sport at Gad's-hill hung before them, and stimulated any son of mimicry to adopt the action and the voice of Falstaff. drawer too, we may be sure, was without consent of sponsors, eternally called FRANCIS"ANON, ANON, SIR!" was the formulary of his

The

reply; and after the capon and the sack, of the bill, a host, who knew his interest, would take especial care, that the charge for bread should be not unfrequently-one HALFPENNY.

I have thus, I trust, sufficiently shewn, that neither fact nor probability calls upon us to allow this picture to be a genuine portrait of Shakspeare: that Droeshout has been guilty of no "volunteer infidelities," since his engraving is confirmed in every reasonable degree by Marshall's. It is therefore obvious that, differing essentially from them both in every feature, it can never be the original from which either of them was engraved. The consequence must be, that it was a fabrication, which might be sportive in its conception, but would be delusive in its success. Happily, in nearly all cases of this nature, the ingenuity is never so complete as to baffle the inquiry of criticism; and the gentle progress of time conducts to the triumph of

TRUTH.