It is with Mr. Elton’s opinion, not with my ignorance, that Mr. Greenwood must argue in proof of the view that “goods” are necessarily exclusive of books, for Mr. Elton takes it as a quite natural fact that Shakespeare’s books passed, with his other goods, to Mr. Hall, and thence to a Mr. Nash, to whom Mr. Hall left “my study of books” {175a} (library).  I only give this as a lawyer’s opinion.

There is in the Bodleian an Aldine Ovid, “with Shakespeare’s” signature (merely Wm. She.), and a note, “This little volume of Ovid was given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will Shakespeare’s.”  I do not know that the signature (like that on Florio’s Montaigne, in the British Museum) has been detected as a forgery; nor do I know that Shakespeare’s not specially mentioning his books proves that he had none.  Lawyers appear to differ as to this inference:  both Mr. Elton and Mr. Greenwood seem equally confident. {175b} But if it were perfectly natural that the actor, Shakspere, should have no books, then he certainly made no effort, by the local colour of owning a few volumes, to persuade mankind that he was the author.  Yet they believed that he was—­really there is no wriggling out of it.  As regards any of his own MSS. which Shakespeare may have had (one would expect them to be at his theatre), and their monetary value, if they were not, as usual, the property of his company, and of him as a member thereof, we can discuss that question in the section headed “The First Folio.”

It appears that Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, could write no more than her grandfather. {176a} Nor, I repeat, could the Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of the great Earl of Huntly, when she was married to the Earl of Bothwell in 1566.  At all events, Lady Jane “made her mark.”  It may be feared that Judith, brought up in that very illiterate town of Stratford, under an illiterate mother, was neglected in her education.  Sad, but very common in women of her rank, and scarcely a proof that her father did not write the plays.

As “nothing is known of the disposition and character” {176b} of Shakespeare’s grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, who died in 1670, it is not so paralysingly strange that nothing is known of any relics or anecdotes of Shakespeare which she may have possessed.  Mr. Greenwood “would have supposed that she would have had much to say about the great poet,” exhibited his books (if any), and so forth.  Perhaps she did,—­but how, if we “know nothing about her disposition and character,” can we tell?  No interviewers rushed to her house (Abington Hall, Northampton-shire) with pencils and notebooks to record her utterances; no reporter interviewed her for the press.  It is surprising, is it not?

The inference might be drawn, in the Baconian manner, that, during the Commonwealth and Restoration, “the friends of the Muses” knew that the actor was not the author, and therefore did not interview his granddaughter in the country.