Bust Of Shakespeare

When Lincoln's Inn Fields was still a rural suburb, where aristocratie and wealtby people lived, says the St. James Budget, there stood on the southern side, or "on the back side of Portugal Row," close by an old inn called the Grange, a famous tennis court, togethír with one of those great and stately "inns of court" from which the name of 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 it into a handsome and roomy theater, which a contemporary, Pepys, said was the "the flnest playhouse that ever was in England." Over its two chief entrances recesses were made to accommoilate busts, and these, appaly, were those of the manager' s godfather, and hls predecessor as poet lauréate, Ben Jonson. At that time many of Shakespeare's younger friends were still allve, and so were old actors who had been the poet's ftllow players, and so was Shakespeare's youngest daug-hter, and hls granddaughter, and old playgoers who had seen the poet play. To all of these Shakespeare's iust would be attractive, and many of them doubtless often paused on thelr way past, into or out of the theater to ook up at it. Presently carne the reiprn oí opera in the Italian style and comedies in the French style, and Shakespeare was again neglected. The men who remembered the mighty poet were bcoming very few, the stories that wero told of him were being fast forgotten, ind the busts over the theaters were no longer the objects of interest they had been. In 1668 Sir William Davenant died. 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 siniing and coarse buffoonery. If, then, Shakespeare's plays were contemptuously neglected, what wonder Is it to flnd his personal relies equally disregarded? When in 1714 the Duke's theater ceased to be a playhouse and became a barrack, the busts over the entrance remained. They were portraits of men unknown; and when (probably about that time) the entrances 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 üpode converytod it into a pottery warehouse. In 1845 the old building was removed for the erection of the College of Surgeons, and in 1848, when lts last remains were also removed, the longforgotten terra cotta busts once more saw daylight. Before their rea! valué and importance were discovered the workmen had thrown down the bust of Jonson and utterly destroyed it. From this fate the Shakespearean bust was preserved by Mr. Clift, whose daughter afterward became the wife of the late Sir Richard Owen, to whom lt was bequeathed, and from whom, thanks to the klndneas of hls son, Rev. Mr. Owen of Rlchmond, and Sir Wllllam 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 ijjnorance and careless indifference through which we had so narrow au ;scape of losing it altogether.