The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-02

1 he had written Hamlet, Lear and the Tempest; would men profane his grave on that account? Would they cast out his bones because he had been the sub | limest poet in the history of letters | No. sir. It all looks like the precaution of the conscious guilt of a man who had posed as the writer of literature which he never wrote; and anticipating expo sure after death, he feared for his poor | bones. His guilty fears were useless.
 He died, and his death made no impress sion on the world. He left his "bones," but not a manuscript. not book-noth- | ing to suggest that ne had ever been | student or reader.
 Dr. Richardson tells of the wit com bats" as related by old Thomas Fuller, at the Mermaid" I fancy that he got this story from Clifford where I saw it | for the first time. That whole scene was witnessed by Fuller in his minds eye, | Horatio. Fuller was not born until 1908. Even Knight discredts the story. Fuller simply mistook the men at the "Mer-
 maid and also confused dates. He did
 not tell 1t until he was between 50 and 60 years old, and by that time every body connected with the Mermaid" of | Jonson's and Shakspere's time was gone.
 Dr. Richardson, referring to Shak-
 spere's handwriting, says: Prof Wal | lace declared that Shakspere's handwrit- | ing was clearer and more legibile than
 that of the average university grad
 uate.'' I do not know whether or not allusion is made to Prof. Alfred Russell
 Wallace. have just run hastily through
 the only volume of Wallace that have to learn in what connection he made the
 statement. It must have been written | in one of his books that I have not. As to Shakspere's handwriting, I beg to say
 that neither Prof. Wallace nor Dr. Rich
 ardson, nor I, nor any other living man | has ever seen 1t, except as 1t appears in
 the five signatures preserved to us. Three
 of these appear in his will. and the oth- CTS are connected with business matters. We have letters written by many lit
 erary men of Shaksperes time, but In
 all the world, SO far as anybody knows, there is not the smallest scrap of Shak-
 spere's handwriting. except those to which I have referred Further, the
 only letter in the world addressed to Shakspere of which we know Is one
 about, what do you suppose? About the plays, the sonnets. the grandeur of his genius, or any literary matter? No.
 It Is a note asking for the loan of ESQ. Great Caesar! And the only letters of those times written about him now pre-
 served are these: One written in 1885, | the other written in 1898, and both are about borrowing money from the money
 lender of Stratford and London. Shak- Spere wrote certainly, but he wrote
 ''duns," most likely. however, by the hand of the lawyer, Green, whom he
 kept in his house, perhaps, for this very purpose. So much for his handwriting. | Prof. Wallace knew no more about it than a child unborn, except as 1t was disclosed in the signatures. Of these the Quarterly Review says: of Shak- spere's handwriting was at all like his | signature 1t was by means easy to de- cipher" I personally have worked and puzzled over the five wretched auto 1 graphs of Gothic scrawl; then I have compared them with the signatures of | Jonson, Lyly, Bacon and of others of | those times. It has been like coming | out of a jungle into the plains. I'll ven l ture that no graduate of the University of Alabama could write so atrociously.
 It will be seen from the above number | of Shakspere's signature that I have
 given that I do not count that one in | Florio's Montagne, in the British mu-
 scum. It Is generally regarded now as | a forgery
 Dr. richardson asks, How many final mans final estimate of a man Is his final estimate. And I aver that Jonson's final
 estimate of Shakspere was that "he made | low shifts' "cribbed and "pilfered.' 2 Dr. Richardson categorically affirms | that the lines in the Poetaster do not describe Shakspere. doS But s'tthey don't and they do' mean. nothing In
 debate. Clifford cannot help us out in his Jonson memoirs I am very familiar with Clifford and have read his notes on the Poetaster many times in my life. He is an unsafe annotator. At the name of Malone, Stevens and Drummond he