Bust Of Shakespeare

"When Lincoln's Inn Fields was stlll a rural suburb, where aristocratie and svealthy people lived, says the St. James Budget, there stood on the southern side, or "on the hack side of Portugal Row," close by an old inn called the Grange, a famous tennis court, together with one of those great and stately ' inns of court" from which the name jf that locality was obtained. Early In the year 1660, or late in 1659, Sir William Davenant obtained possession of the tennis court - then called Gibson's - converted lt into a handsome and roomy theater, which a contemporary, Pepys, said was the "the flnest playhouse that ever was in England." Over lts two chief entrances recesses were made to accommodate busts, and these, apparently, were those of the manager's godfather, and his predecessor as poet lauréate, Ben Jonson. At that time many of Shakespeare's younger friends were still alive, and so were old actors who had been the poet's fellow players, and so was Shakespeare's youngest daughter, and his granddaughf"?r, and old playgoers who had seen the poel play. To all of these Shakespeare's bust would be attractive, and many of them doubtless often paused on their way past, into or out of the theater to look up at it. Presently came the reign of opera in the Italian style and comedies in the French style, and Shakes■ was again neglected. The men who remembered the mighty poet were bcomlng very few, the stories that were told of him were being fast forgotten, and the Dusts over the theaters were no longer, the objects of interest they had been. In 1668 Sir William Davenant (it d. Sir William had looked his last upon the beloved bust above the theater door, and after his death we gradually hear less and less of Shakespeare and his works and more of dancing and singlng and coarse buffoonery. If, then, Sbakespeare's plays were contemptuously neglected, what wonder is it to flnd his personal relies equaüy tUsregarded? When in 1714 the Puke's theater ceased to be a playhousti and became a barrack, the busts over the entrance remained. They were portraits of men unknown; and when (probably about that time) the entranees were bricked up, they were lost to sight altogether. When the building was deserted by the military it became an auction-room and warehouse, and afterward, in 1737, Messrs. Copeland and Spode converyted It into a pottery warehouse. In 1845 the old building was removed for the erection of the College of Surgeons, and in ISIS, when its last remains were also removed, the longforgotten terra cotta busts once more saw dayllght. Before their real valué and lmportance were discovered the woi limen had thrown down the bust of Jnnson and utterly destroyed it. From this fate the Shakespearean bust was preserved by TVIr. Clift, whose daughter afterward became the wife of the late Sir Richard Owen, to whom it was bequeathed, and from whom, thanks to' the kindnes's of his son, Rev. Mr. Owen ,f liichmond, and Sir Wllliam Flower, it has now become the most valuable of the many valuable Shakespearean relies in the library of the Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford-on-Avon. There we may hope its continued existence will never again be endangered by that Ignorance and careless indifferenee thiough wtalch we had so narrow an escape of losing It altogether.