had to be most careful, since a recent visitor had the misfortune to be very near-sighted and had actually rubbed his nose against this rare portrait, to the confusion and consternation of its owner, he showed me, in a large folio album, the two engravings, side by side-this early proof and the familiar Droeshout portrait-and one could not fail to be impressed with the additional force and character of the early impression which had evidently been lost in the effort to retouch and tone down the plate.

These are only a few of the great collection which I remember as having impressed me most. In its entirety it represents the vigilant researches of years, in which neither energy, patience nor wealth has been spared. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps told me he had still agents employed all over the country, men who spent all their time peering into waste-paper baskets, old town records and musty garrets where they sometimes made great discoveries.

In glancing around at the appointments of this pleasant study, for I think I was quite as much interested in its owner as in the great poet whose relics it sheltered, I was taught, by a forcible object lesson, that very old truth that it is the man of method and order who accomplishes great things in the world. Here must lie one secret of the success of this man's life and the vast research and accumulation of knowledge which he has contributed to literature. An entire side of one room was lined with small manuscript drawers, each bearing a number, corresponding to a key which contained a full table of their contents, and every reference, I was assured, was in its proper place. This systematic arrangement extended to the minutest details; in a little ante-room were other tiers of drawers labeled respectively tape, twine, tacks, pins, pens, or sealing-wax, and perhaps fifty other articles of the kind one always wants to find in easy reach. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps had evidently planned his life with a view to accomplishing much, but with a different phase of energy from that which most Americans excel in. I remember his extreme amazement upon hearing of the amount of travel I had mapped out for the summer, he who never made the little journey from Stratford to London without stoping over night at Oxford, just as Shakespeare was accustomed to do three hundred years ago, while the trip to America, he declared, much as he should love to see that country, was an undertaking quite beyond his powers.-ROSE EWELL REYNOLDS in The Tribune.

HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS'S LAST MANUSCRIPT-THE

LETTER TO DR. ELZE.

HE" died in harness." Up to the last he was actively engaged in superintending a little work through the press, entitled: "A Letter to Professer Karl Elze, respecting certain Views that are advocated in the recently published English version of his Literary Biography of Shakespeare ; " with the object of "challenging a few of its views, sometimes a little in self-defense, at others for that two or three of them, unsupported by sufficient evidence, unnecessarily tend, in my conviction, to disturb beliefs that those who have a true and affectionate reverence for the memory of the Poet should desire to cherish."

"By Monday morning I hope to send you a greatly altered revise." This was the last line ever written by Halliwell-Phillipps, and he wrote it to his printer at Brighton, from his death-bed.

I have before me the first drafts, the original manuscript, the proof sheets, first revise and two copies of the second revise in covers in dainty 32mo of this letter to Dr. Elze (who, by a strange coincidence, was to follow Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps to the Beyond-almost before his fellow-scholar's funeral bell had ceased to toll), and it is because these all together illustrate so vividly the minute, intense and laborious care which distinguished all that their author ever did, that I beg leave to describe them here.

In preparing his books, it appears to have been Mr. HalliwellPhillipps's custom to take a blank book for his first drafts, writing on the alternate right-hand pages, as matter occurred to him, in ink, and then making corrections, erasures, additions, references, etc., or such memoranda for his re-writing as occurred to him, on the opposite or blank pages. When this book contained enough to get into shape, he took sheets of paper, and wrote carefully, getting the whole into form for the printer, writing printer's directions always in red ink. The first proof was pretty black, and very badly "overrun," indeed, when the printer got it back again. The next proof, or revise, was not quite so black, and not overrun in so many places: that is, the overrunnings were limited to two or three places, but were often considerable, from two to ten pages in extent, at least.

The second revise Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps usually put into covers, with a title page, with his well-known "Privately printed," and the date at the bottom. The little books then were circulated among his scholarly friends (fifteen was the usual number) upon whom he relied for penciled suggestions, corrections, if any, and references to any additions they might think best to recommend. It was in this way that the noble Eighth Edition of the Outlines grew under the masterly hand of its author to what it is to-day, and thus that monumental

work may be said to be the sum of all those "privately printed" brochures with which the names of Halliwell, and Halliwell-Phillipps, are so inseparably associated.

The history of this letter to Dr. Elze, (which, by this process, would undoubtedly have supplied a large chapter to a ninth edition of the Outlines, or possibly formed a new work had death not interrupted all) and of which its author had just seen the second revises when he breathed his last, appears to be as follows: When Dr. Elze's "Literary Biography of Shakespeare" first appeared in English translation Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps thought to reply to certain statements therein by preparing a pamphlet entitled "New Evidences in Confirmation of the Traditional Recognition of Shakespeare's BirthRoom, A. D. 1769,1777; Brighton. For Private Circulation Only, 1888," which in its preface should be specially addressed "To Professor Karl Elze, the leading Shakespearian critic of Germany, in the hope that its perusal may induce him to modify the views he has expressed in his recent work against the reception of the Birth-place traditions ;' Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's conclusion as to these traditions being, "There is certainly not the shadow of a known fact that is inconsistent with their truth."

And so, indeed, the dainty little book was issued. But scarcely had its author opened the first copy, hardly a fortnight before his death, when he determined to make it larger; call it "A Letter to Professor Elze" (as indeed it was), and his shears soon demolished the book: and he had pasted its pages on great sheets of paper for elaboration. (No man was Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's equal for cutting up bound books, throwing away the books and saving a scrap, to be mounted and written to, until morsels became portly quartos and folios.) Accordingly the Brighton printers, accustomed to drop all other work when "copy" from Hollingbury Copse arrived, had hardly distributed the type of the "New Evidences" before they were again at work upon the "Letter to Professor Elze." Halliwell-Phillipps always found it the hardest task of his long life to satisfy Halliwell-Phillipps, and it is doubtful if he ever saw any of his own work in print without longing to cut it to pieces, to rearrange and rewrite it.

It was thus that the successive editions of the Outlines were prepared. Readers will notice that there are not only great additions but copious expungings in each; its author never considered his work of verification, any more than his work of accumulation, finished. Few men have been as arbitrary with themselves as he was. Few men, too, have been so complete in their accomplishments: and yet, the moral of his death must come plainly to us all-namely, that no matter how we strive, our life-work will be left unfinished at the last! I remember writing him (as to either the fourth or fifth edition of the "Outlines"), "Why can't we have an Index?" and his replying, "Why don't you read the book? How can you have an Index of an un

finished book?" I remember writing back: "But over here there are many railways. We don't have time to read, we only consult," and then he wrote me: "In the next edition you shall have your Index." And so, what with first drafts, printer's copy, printer's proofs, revises and MS. riders pasted to the pages, it is no simple task to give to SHAKESPEARIANA'S readers the Elze letter as complete as its author left it on paper. But I believe myself, by careful collation of all these, to have done so very nearly. One thing I will add before giving the work itself. The last sentence of the original draft was as follows: "The result cannot be doubtful. Violent theories have violent ends,' and in their triumph die." This sentence, a fine one to my thinking, it will be seen, Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps entirely sponged out.

A. M.

[The following is marked in the author's hand, "15 copies to press. Will give instructions after Christmas."]

A LETTER TO PROFESSOR KARL ELZE,

RESPECTING CERTAIN VIEWS THAT ARE ADVOCATED IN THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED ENGLISH VERSION OF HIS LITERARY BIOGRAPHY OF SHAKESPEARE.

Dear Professor Elze-Giving all the welcome of an earnest student to the recently-published English edition of your admirable Literary Biography of Shakespeare,-believing also that it is destined to occupy a permanent and high position in the library of the Shakespeare student, my very appreciation of its excellence makes me desirous of challenging a few of its views, sometimes a little in self-defence, at others for that two or three of them, unsupported by sufficient evidence, unnecessarily tend, in my conviction, to disturb beliefs that those who have a true and affectionate reverence for the memory of the Poet should desire to cherish. This, I need scarcely add, is in the hope that I may be able to induce you to modify some of your conclusions in a second edition. Thus, to begin with: a note on your opening prelude, there is a natural wish on my part to set myself right in a matter which you have introduced into nearly the most prominent part of your work, in the first page of which there are the following observations:

Even Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps (Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 6th edition, i. p. xix.), who professes merely "to furnish the reader with an authentic collection of all the known facts," has nevertheless to admit that he has given his own interpretation of various testimonies," nor can he get on without hypotheses, and it is these very hypotheses more especially that want a proper foundation, as, for instance, his supposition that Shakespeare's wife was afflicted in mind. (i. 240).—Literary Biography, p. 1.

But I never anywhere said, nor anywhere intended to say, that Shakespeare's wife was mentally afflicted, and the paragraph, moreover, is calculated to convey an erroneous idea of the system under which I have attempted to work, a system set out in the following

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words, subtle and gratuitous assumptions of unsupported possibilities will be rigidly excluded, and no conjectures admitted that are not practically removed out of that category by being in themselves reasonable inferences from concurrent facts ;-guided by this system, it follows, as a matter of course, that precedence will be always given to early testimonies over the discretionary views of later theorists, no matter how plausible or how ably sustained those views may be."

What I did say, speaking of the Poet and his wife, was this,

It is curious that the only real ground for a belief in any kind of estrangement between them should not hitherto have been noticed, but something to favour that impression may be fancied to be visible in Shakespeare's neglect to give his widow a life-interest either in their own residence at New Place or in its furniture. However liberally she may have been provided for, that circumstance would hardly reconcile us to the somewhat ungracious divorce of a wife from the control of her own household. It is clear that there must have been some valid reason for this arrangement, for the grant of such interest would not have affected the testator's evident desire to perpetuate a family. estate, and there appears to be no other obvious design with which a limited gift of the mansion could have interfered. Perhaps the only theory that would be consistent with the terms of the will, and with the deep affection which she is traditionally recorded to have entertained for him to the end of her life, is the possibility of her having been afflicted with some chronic infirmity of a nature that precluded all hope of recovery. In such a case, to relieve her from household anxieties and select a comfortable apartment at New Place, where she would be under the care of an affectionate daughter and an experienced physician, would have been the wisest and kindest measure that could have been adopted.—Outlines, ed. 1887, i. 260.

By the expression,-"some chronic infirmity, of a nature that precluded all hope of recovery,"-I meant any one of the two or three. dozen maladies that could be named which altogether prevent a sufferer from attending to her household duties. That it could not have been a mental affliction is clear from the tradition recorded by Dowdall in 1693, and to which I have referred in the above quotation,-"not one for feare of the curse dare touch his grave-stone, tho' his wife and daughters did earnestly desire to be layd in the same grave with him." Such a wish could hardly have been uttered at any period antecedent to the appearance of the lines on the stone.

Although I do not follow those who consider it necessary to represent the great dramatist as a saint, as one exempted from a share in the numerous frailties that beset mankind, I cannot believe that the "gentle Shakespeare" of his contemporaries, could have been unamiable in his domestic relations, could have allowed himself to live on unfriendly terms with a wife whose qualities enabled her to retain to the last the cherished affection of their daughter. It is true that her name was not even mentioned in the draft of his will, but, apart from her dormant legal claims, family arrangements are so rarely disclosed in testamentary documents that it is unfair to draw adverse conclusions from such a circumstance. And when you pointedly still consider that there is an indication of neglect in the legacy of the second-best bed, you have no doubt overlooked (and indeed, you practically admit this in a note at p. 513), the decisive parallel mentioned in the following extract,

The expression second-best has, however, been so repeatedly and