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bone generally unite by ligament? No argument can ever settle the question; it is to be decided only by observation.

"Is it a fact, or is it not, that fractures of the neck of the bone, external to the capsule, and into the cancelli of the trochanter, and the other species of fracture at this part, viz. that through the trochanter major, unite by bone? Dissection and experiment only can prove or disprove it." Cooper, p. 5.

"To conclude; the remarks of our author have led me to think better of my work than I had previously been disposed to do; for, although it is quite clear he felt no disposition to conceal my faults, he has not succeeded in detecting a single error. If, by observation, by dissection, or by experiment, he had shewed me to be wrong, I would be the first to acknowledge it; for I hold it to be the strongest evidence of a feeble mind to refuse the confession of error. I was much pleased with Mr. John Hunter, when attending his lectures, for the following remark to a pupil who observed to him, that he had given a different opinion upon a subject in that evening's lecture, from that of the preceding year.- Well, and what then,' said Mr. Hunter, God forbid that I should not be better informed this year than I was the last, for I hope every year to improve.'

"If from my pen even some substantial errors had fallen, they ought to have been excused by those who know that the work was written by one whose time was variously and almost constantly employed in lectures, in hospital and in private practice; and, instead of endeavouring to blazon them abroad, as his object, he says, was to benefit the profession,-it would have manifested a better mode of thinking to have pointed them out in private, that they might have been corrected in another edition.

"When forty-five cases of united fracture of the neck of the os femoris are shewn against my forty-four of non-union, I will give up my general principle of non-union; and when five cases * of fractures decidedly into the capsule are produced, of union by bone of this fracture (by surgical treatment), without lameness or shortening of the limb, and the person walks better than he now does by the ligamentous union, I shall say that he who effected it deserves well of his country; but, until that period arrives, I shall continue of my present opinion.

"It is a reproach to some few of our English surgeons that the French, who formerly thought these cases admitted of ossific union, are now advertising a large reward for the best account of the cause that they do not unite by bone." Cooper, p. 42.

We know not how Mr. Earle can invalidate the force of this reasoning. In our own case we confess it has changed the opinion which we formed upon the first perusal of the Prac

"One case of union would not suffice, if one could be produced as the effect of surgical treatment; because, we know that a fractured patella will, in a very rare case, unite by bone, and so will a fracture of the olecranon."

tical Observations. And admitting, therefore, with Mr. Earle, that it is not yet expedient to give up the cure as hopeless, and highly admiring the ingenious machinery by which he proposes to facilitate it, we cannot see that he has disproved Sir Astley Cooper's assertions.

On the whole, the question rests just where it ought to do. It is not a little to the credit of the profession which these gentlemen adorn, that a point of this nature should be discussed with so much zeal and ability, and a few occasional sallies of rival hospitalship may be easily overlooked or forgiven. The more experienced, and of course, therefore, the more cautious of the two, does not anticipate any good effect from experiments which have not hitherto proved successful. The younger and more sanguine applies himself vigorously to the task, and leaves nothing undone which ingenuity and talent can suggest towards remedying a deficiency which they alike deplore. Bystanders look calmly on, confident that the issue can be dishonourable to neither party, and may be highly advantageous to the public.

ART. XII. An Inquiry into the Authenticity of various Pictures and Prints, which, from the decease of the Poet to our own Times, have been offered to the Public as Portraits of Shakspeare: containing a careful Examination of the Evidence on which they claim to be received; by which the pretended Portraits have been rejected, the genuine confirmed and established. Illustrated by accurate and finished Engravings, by the ablest Artists, from such originals as were of indisputable Authority. By James Boaden, Esq. 206pp. 8vo. 15s. Triphook. 1824.

YEARS have now elapsed without any serious disputes respecting Shakspeare. We have been allowed to read him in peace and quietness, without having our attention called off by the jingling of his commentators' bells. Mr. Boaden seems to grieve over this general pacification, and to sigh for a return of the sprightly days of a Steevens and a Malone. He enters into the departed quarrels of these mighty rivals with the true spirit of a a partizan, and mentions them even now in terms of like or dislike which were sufficiently absurd thirty years ago.

In spite however of this vexatious propensity, by which his labours are much disfigured, we have to thank Mr. Boaden for an amusing dissertation. He is too much in earnest to

be tiresome, and if we smile at hearing how he turns from the poetry to the picture, and from the picture back again to the poetry, we are still compelled to assign him an honourable place among the most devout idolaters of the bard of Avon.

There are, it seems, four representations of Shakspeare which Mr. Boaden considers authentic-Martin Droeshout's print on the title page of the first folio edition; the Bust in the Church at Stratford, a picture by Cornelius Jansen in the collection of the Duke of Somerset, and the Chandos Head, from which many engravings have been taken. There are many other pretenders, but Mr. Boaden is a curious investigator of pedigrees, and his researches have not terminated fortunately for any but the abovementioned works. Of these he presents us with very beautiful engravings by Turner, Scriven, and Swaine; and without soaring to the height of our author's enthusiasm, we must admit that Turner's mezzotinto from the picture by Jansen conveys the idea of a very extraordinary and highly gifted man. As a specimen of Mr. Boaden's manner, we extract the principal parts of his account of the Felton head; a picture which Mr. Stevens patronized, and our author not undeservedly denounces.

"We find it to have been purchased out of an old house, where Shakspeare and his friends used to resort-The Boar's Head, which he had immortalized by the presumed resort of Falstaff and Hal; but which there is no syllable on record to prove was ever frequented by Shakspeare and his friends.

"On the 11th August, 1794, nearly two years afterwards, Mr. Wilson becomes more communicative to Mr. Steevens, than he had been to the purchaser, and adds to his account of the picture, that it was found between four and five year ago, at a broker's shop in the Minories, by a man of fashion, whose name must be concealed,' with a part of whose collection of pictures it came for sale to the Museum, attended with the story of the broker. There it was exhibited for about three months, seen by Lord Leicester and Lord Orford, but being mutilated, (not however as to the features, remark), those discerning noblemen would not purchase it, though they both, we are told, allowed its authenticity.

"The first story seems unaccountably to have forgotten the fire of London in 1666, when a strong east wind in a few hours left the whole of Eastcheap a mass of smoaking ruins, and the wretched inhabitants could think of saving nothing but their lives. If therefore such a picture hung in the club-room, to out stare the puritanical wretches of the rebellion, there it must have perished, unless, as Mr. Steevens suggests, it had been alienated before the fire. But it seems it was purchased out of some Boar's Head, ancient or modern; it might have been snatched away prophetically before

the fire alluded to, to be replaced in a succeeding house on the same spot. If the old Boar can bear no testimony in its favour, the Commentator is desirous to whet the tusks of his modern representative.

"Accordingly, though such a miracle were to be expected, or at least not disdained, knowing that any original house where Shakspeare used to meet his cotemporary wits, could not possibly exist, and thinking himself, the picture to be alienated before the fire, he absolutely seems to have imagined it possible, that the Flemish painting might have been brought back to a new house erected on the old site, and sets out on the most forlorn of all expeditions, to hunt after the effects of any modern landlords of the new Boar's Head in Eastcheap.

"A Mr. Sloman had quitted this celebrated public-house in 1767, when all its furniture, which devolved to him from the two immediate predecessors, was sold off. He, however, declared his utter ignorance of any picture on the premises, except a coarse daubing of the Gadshill robbery. Philip Jones of Barnard's Inn, the auctioneer, who had sold off Sloman's effects, was next sought for; but, as a common lot, he had himself been knocked down a few years ago by Death, and the catalogues of his achievements had vanished with him; otherwise, something like a small or obscure painting, which had escaped Mr. Sloman's recollection, (an obscure picture of Shakspeare too, who had bestowed the very sign upon his house!), might have been found, lotted with other garret lumber, in one comprehensive, but neglected heap of rubbish. "But the learned authenticator did not stop here. Mr. Brinn, Sloman's predecessor, had left a widow. After her husband's decease, she had quitted the Cheap, and went into Crooked-lane, commencing business there as a wire-worker. One, who had been her apprentice, (no youth), upon an attempt to wire-draw something from him upon the subject, very ingenuously told them, that his mistress was so particular in her stories, and told them so often, that he could not possibly forget any article that she had communicated as to the Boar's Head-that she often spoke of the painting that represented the robbery at Gad's-hill, but never so much as hinted at any other picture in the house; and if there had been any, he is sure she would not have failed to describe it in her accounts of her former business and place of abode, which supplied her with materials for conversation to the very end of a long life.

"So much for Mr. Wilson's report as to this picture's having been purchased out of the Boar's Head. Our able refuter of his own evidence, here triumphantly remarks- A gentleman, who for several years past has collected as many pictures of Shakspeare as he could hear of, (in the hope that he might at last procure a genuine one), declares, that the Eastcheap legend has accompanied the majority of them, from whatever quarter they were transmitted. It is therefore high time that picture.dealers should avail them

selves of another story, this being completely worn out, and no longer fit for service." P. 83.

We are treated with twenty more pages of disquisition upon this subject. Steevens is unmercifully assailed throughout the whole of them; and the following whimsical arguments are adduced in order to disprove the authenticity of the picture.

"But it is time to be serious. To Mr. Steevens it could not but occur, that this gentle speculation had no other tendency than to countenance a fraud, which he had himself sufficiently exposed; for the Eastcheap legend it seems accompanied by far the greater number of these genuine pictures, produced from time to time! But let us a little examine the PROBABILITIES, which are allowed by some, it seems, the influence of facts. 1st. This picture was probably the ornament of a club-room in Eastcheap." This first probability depends so much upon the second, namely, that the Boar's Head might have been the favourite tavern of Shakspeare,' that they must be considered together.

"Now that there was any tavern with the sign of the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, in Shakspeare's time, is itself exceedingly doubtful; for though the old play of Henry V. told him that there was a tavern in Eastcheap that sold good wine, it said nothing about the sign of it; and our poet, when he hung up a sign there in his own play, hung up one, with which he was familiar in another place, namely, near the playhouse in Blackfriars. There was a further propriety in the ascription of this sign to a house frequented by Falstaff, namely, that the Boar's Head in Southwark was part of the benefaction of Sir John Fastolf to Magdalen College, Oxford; and this is mentioned by Mr. Steevens himself, and his note upon the passage in the 1st Part of Henry IV. But the third probability is personal to the poet, and requires some little examination before it can be allowed the influence of fact. When our author returned over London-bridge from the Globe Theatre, this was a convenient house of entertainment.' Now all this is gratuitous assumption. How is he warranted to assign the poet a residence so removed from the scene of his business? His connexion with the Blackfriars house did not commence till the year 1604: besides, when he did act at the Blackfriars, the Globe was shut; it was a summer theatre. That he had often visited the Blackfriars, is indeed highly probable. He has satirized the children who acted there, furiously, in his Hamlet; but there is no proof that he ever resided within the City, while he acted at the Globe. Mr. Malone had the means of proving that Shakspeare's house stood near to the adjacent Bear Garden, and that he always dwelt there when in London,

"But I have something still to say as to this Boar's Head, and its convenience to Shakspeare. We do know that Shakspeare was member of a club, but it was not held at the Boar's Head, nor was

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