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similar bequest of William Herbert, first Earl of Pembroke, to 
Queen Elizabeth, to have conveyed, not ‘a bitter sarcasm,” 
but the tender memorial of a love and attachment surviving 
the grave. 
The calumnies derived from the will being thus disposed 
of, Mr. Halpin next adverts to the poet's alleged neglect of the 
duty of a father in the education of his children. Drake as- 
serts that neither of his daughters had been taught to write ; 
and sustains his assertion on the evidence of a legal document 
still existing, attested, as he thinks, by the mark of his daugh- 
ter Judith. 
This calumny the author treats as a superfetation of the 
similar degrading ignorance ascribed to the father of the poet, 
but without the shadow of evidence in the document on which 
it is founded. A fac-simile of the signatures to the entry on 
the books of the corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon (pub- 
lished by Mr. Knight), amongst which John Shakspere 
is said to have figured as a marksman, exhibits the name 
of that worthy corporator without any mark ; proves that 
the mark assigned to him belongs, in reality, to George 
Whately, the high bailiff for the current year; and leads to 
the juster inference that, so far from not being able to write 
at all, John Shakspere probably wrote the best hand of any 
man in the corporation. 
With reference to the daughters, the assertion as to both 
is disproved by the production of a fuc-simile of the signature 
of the elder (Susanna) affixed, with her seal, to a legal instru- 
ment still existing ; and with reference to the younger, it is 
shewn to rest on an ignorant or wilful mistranslation of the 
word signum into mark, instead of seal, &c. 
The paper goes on to argue, from the nearness of their 
births, that both daughters were educated together; that 
whatever instructions or accomplishments the one had re- 
ceived, the other had at least the same opportunities of 
acquiring ; and that, as Susanna is recorded to have been a 
