"Indeed," he continues, "I never saw any thing that resembled it." He also says (pages 41-42) that "the copies by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Humphrey were not only unlike the original, but were unlike each other, one being smiling and the other grave." That is to say, that not only have the romancers constructed "biographies," but the artists have kept up with them; and we may, every one of us, select our own Shakespeare to-day--poet or potman, scholar or clown, tall or short, fair or dark; we may each suit our own tastes with a Shakespeare to our liking. Mr. Boaden continues (page 49): "It" (the Chandos) "was very probably painted by Burbage," {100}the great tragedian, who is known to have handled the pencil; it is said to have been the property of Joseph Taylor, our poet's Hamlet, who, dying about 1653, at the advanced age of seventy, left the picture by will to Davenant. At the death of Davenant in 1663, it was bought by Betterton, the actor, and when he died Mr. Robert Keck, of the Inner Temple, gave Mrs. Barry, the actress, forty guineas for it. From Mr. Keck it passed to Mr. Nichol, of Southgate, whose daughter married the Marquis of Caernarvon. Steevens, whom Boaden quotes (page 43), declined to be convinced by this genealogy, and said, "Gossip rumor had given out that Davenant was more than Shakespeare's godson. * What folly, therefore, to suppose that he should possess a genuine portrait of the poet, when his lawful daughters had not one! Mrs. Barry was an actress of acknowledged gallantry; as she received forty guineas for the picture, something more animated might have been included though not specified in the bargain," etc., etc. Steevens was fond of calling this picture "the Davenantico Bet{101}tertono-Barryan-Keckian-Hicolsian-Chandosian portrait." * There is a story that once, on the occasion of one of Shakespeare's visits to Stratford, a villager, meeting young Davenant in the street, asked him where he was going. "To the inn, to see my godfather Shakespeare," said the lad. "Beware how you take the name of God in vain, my lad," said the other. The allusions to William's gallantries are numerous. On the Stratford parish records there is entry of the birth of one "Thomas Green, _alias_ Shakespeare." The tale of the interrupted amour, at the theater, of "Richard the Third" and "William the Conqueror," as is apt to be the case, is about the most widely familiar of the Shakespearean stories, and unnecessary to be repeated here. But Davenant was proud to claim the dishonor of his mother, and Shakespeare for his father, to his dying day.