Canon Francis von Kesselstadt, at Mayence, in 1843, the family
museum was broken up, and its contents dispersed. No more was seen
or heard of either of the two relics described, till 1847, when the
painting was purchased by an artist named Ludwig Becker; and after
some months of unremitting search he discovered the Death-Mask in a
broker's shop, and this he bought in 1849. The purchaser is dead:
but both these relics are in the Grand Ducal Museum at Darmstadt,
and belong to its curator, Dr. Ernst Becker, Ludwig's brother. I
have inspected both with the keenest interest; and I am of opinion
that the painting is not after the mask. The date, 1637, which it
bears, led Dr. Schaafhausen to think that it was intended for Ben
Jonson; a view to some extent borne out by the portrait of Ben in
the Dulwich Gallery. {35} By others, however, it is believed to be
a fancy portrait of Shakespeare, based upon the Death-Mask. Now the
Bust was believed to have been sculptured after a death-mask. Is
the Becker Mask that from which Gerard Johnson worked? If so, there
must have been a fatal accident indeed to the nose; for the nose of
the mask is a long and finely arched one: the upper lip is shorter
than that of the bust, and the forehead is more receding.

Of the many alleged portraits of Shakespeare there are but two whose
pedigree stretches back into the seventeenth century, and is lost in
obscurity there. The origin of the vast majority of the claimants
is only too well known, or shrewdly suspected: these are (1)
copies, more or less unfaithful, of older pictures; (2) idealised
portraits, based upon such older ones, or upon the Bust; (3) genuine
portraits of unknown persons, valued for some slight or imaginary
resemblance to the Bust, or to such older portraits, or for having
passed as Shakespeare's, and thus offering the means of selling dear
what had been bought cheap; (4) impostures. As I am not writing an