an exaggeration, successfully exposed by Mr. Friswell. My own
opinion, telle quelle, has been already printed. {34} Allowing the
bust to have been a recognisable, if not a staring likeness of the
poet, I said and still say--"How awkward is the ensemble of the
face! What a painful stare, with its goggle eyes and gaping mouth!
The expression of this face has been credited with humour, bonhommie
and jollity. To me it is decidedly clownish; and is suggestive of a
man crunching a sour apple, or struck with amazement at some
unpleasant spectacle. Yet there is force in the lineaments of this
muscular face." The large photograph of the Monument lately issued
by the New Shakspere Society, as well as those more successful
issues of Mr. Thrupp's studio, fully bears out this judgment. But
the HEAD, as Landor said, is noble. Without accepting the
suggestion that the sculptor had met with an accident to the nose,
and had, in consequence, to lengthen the upper lip, I think it self-
evident that there is some little derangement of natural proportions
in those features; the nose, especially, being ill-formed and
undersized for the rest of the face. If we had but Shakespeare's
skull before us, most of these questions would be set at rest for
ever.

Among the relics once religiously preserved in the Kesselstadt
collection at Mayence was a plaster mask, having at the back the
year of Shakespeare's death. This relic had been in that collection
time out of mind, and seems always to have been received as a cast
from the "flying-mould" of Shakespeare's dead face. With this was a
small oil-painting of a man crowned with bays, lying on a state
bier; of which, by the kindness of Mr. J. Parker Norris of
Philadelphia, I am able to give the admirable engraving which forms
the frontispiece to this little volume. On the death of Count and