At the beginning of January, a sale was held in London by Messrs.
Sotheby and Wilkinson, of the stock of the late Mr. William Henry
Elkins, a bookseller, of 41, Lombard Street. At this sale, the Library
was the fortunate purchaser of what appears to be a genuine _Shakespeare
Autograph_. The book is Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, printed by Aldus, at
Venice, in October, 1502, in octavo; and on the title is the signature
'W^m. Sh^r.' in a hand bearing no resemblance whatever to that of
the Ireland forgeries, but not unlike that of the signature attached to
Shakespeare's will. Opposite to the title, on a leaf pasted down on the
original binding of the book, is the note, most certainly a genuine
memorandum of the date to which it professedly belongs, of which a
faithful facsimile is given with that of the autograph itself, in the
accompanying lithograph[362]. That the note itself is no forgery is
admitted by all who have examined it; the volume, therefore, is
certainly, by tradition, one which belonged to the poet. The only
question is, whether the name may not have been forged in consequence of
the existence of this note. To this, which is the opinion of some, it
may fairly be replied, that, seeing no contracted form of Shakespeare's
signature is known to exist, a forger would hardly have invented one for
the occasion, but would have given the name in full; while, on the other
hand, if the signature be real, what more natural than that a subsequent
owner should record the tradition that the indefinite 'Sh^r.' of this
unimportant title-page was no other than the very definite 'Shakspere'
himself? The names mentioned in the note are names, as every one knows,
connected with the poet's history. _Hall_ was the marriage name of his
daughter Susannah, to whom he left his house in Henley Street; and one
William Hall, a glover, appears from the Stratford Records printed by
Mr. Halliwell, to have had a house in that street in 1660. He,
doubtless, was the donor of the volume. Susannah Hall's daughter,
Elizabeth, was married to a Thomas Nash, who died in 1647; but though he
died without issue, the initials 'T. N.' may well stand for some member
of the family who bore the same names. That, therefore, a Hall should
possess the book, and subsequently give it to (most probably) a Nash,
goes far to establish its genuineness as a Shakespeare relic. In a full
account of the volume, supporting its pretensions, which appeared in the
_Athenæum_ for Jan. 28, 1865 (p. 126), it was pointed out that the two
references to the story of Baucis and Philemon, which are found in
Shakespeare's Plays, show that he was not unacquainted with the
_Metamorphoses_. To this may be added a better proof of his knowledge of
Ovid's writings in the fact that two lines from the _Amores_ (I. xv.
35, 36) form the motto to the _Venus and Adonis_. As the volume is
somewhat dirty, and has a well-worn air, it may possibly have been used
by Shakespeare during those school-keeping experiences of which Aubrey
tells us; possibly, however, the wear and tear may be due to an older
owner, who has plentifully interspersed his MS. notes in, apparently, a
foreign hand, on many of the pages. Owing to a generally-entertained
suspicion throughout the auction-room on the occasion of the sale of the
volume, that the autograph must be a forgery, the Library became its
possessor for the small sum of £9[363]!
[Illustration:
OVIDII METAMORPHOSEΩN
LIBRI QVINDECIM.
W^m Sh^r.