his grand-daughter; then that of Dr. Hall, the husband of his daughter Susannah; and, lastly, Susannah’s own.  Shakspeare’s is the commonest-looking slab of all, being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem used to be paved with, when I was a boy.  Moreover, unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a crack across it, as if it had already undergone some such violence as the inscription deprecates.  Unlike the other monuments of the family, it bears no name, nor am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on which it is absolutely determined to be Shakspeare’s; although, being in a range with those of his wife and children, it might naturally be attributed to him.  But, then, why does his wife, who died afterwards, take precedence of him and occupy the place next his bust?  And where are the graves of another daughter and a son, who have a better right in the family-row than Thomas Nash, his grandson-in-law?  Might not one or both of them have been laid under the nameless stone?  But it is dangerous trifling with Shakspeare’s dust; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave, (though the prohibition makes it tempting,) and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in peace.  Yet I must needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to imply that Shakspeare’s grave was directly underneath it.

The poet’s bust is affixed to the northern wall of the church, the base of it being about a man’s height, or rather more, above the floor of the chancel.  The features of this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike any portrait of Shakspeare that I have ever seen, and compel me to take down the beautiful, lofty-browed, and noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental portrait-gallery.  The bust cannot be said to represent a beautiful face or an eminently noble head; but it clutches firmly hold of one’s sense of reality and insists upon your accepting it, if not as Shakspeare the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher of Stratford, the friend of John a’ Combe, who lies yonder in the corner.  I know not what the phrenologists say to the bust.  The forehead is but moderately developed, and retreats somewhat, the upper part of the skull rising pyramidally; the eyes are prominent almost beyond the penthouse of the brow; the upper lip is so long that it must have been almost a deformity, unless the sculptor artistically exaggerated its length, in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be foreshortened by being looked at from below.  On the whole, Shakspeare must have had a singular rather than a prepossessing face; and it is wonderful how, with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted in maintaining an erroneous notion of his appearance, allowing painters and sculptors to foist their idealized nonsense on us all, instead of the genuine man.  For my part, the Shakspeare of my mind’s eye is henceforth to be a personage of a ruddy English complexion, with a reasonably capacious brow, intelligent and quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly outward, a long, queer upper-lip, with the mouth a little unclosed beneath it, and cheeks considerably developed in the lower part and beneath the chin.  But when Shakspeare was himself, (for nine-tenths of the time, according to all appearances, he was but the burgher of Stratford,) he doubtless shone through this dull mask and transfigured it into the face of an angel.