LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 491 



impossible, therefore, tliat the dramatist may have caught up the 

 word from the language of Babington, when consulting him during 

 the creation of his Merchant of Venice, in the little quarto of his 

 Comfortable Notes which he possessed. Should it be suggested that 

 the coincidence arose in a reverse way — that Babington may have 

 been reading the Merchant of Venice ; then let us imagine Warner, 

 when visited as an invalid by Shakspeare, pointing out to his friend 

 the complimentary fact, and at the same time asking Shakspeare to 

 accept of the book, albeit somewhat the worse for wear. 



In regard to the general question of Shakspeare autographs, it will 

 be of interest to note here that there are six signatures extant, which 

 are held to be undoubtedly genuine. Three are attached to the poet's 

 Will ; one appears on a Mortgage of a piece of property purchased 

 by Shakspeare of Henry Walker, of Blackfriars ; another is on the 

 counterpart of the deed of bargain and sale of the same property ; 

 the sixth is in a copy of Florio's translation of Montaigne, now in 

 the British Museum. (This Montaigne was from the library of the 

 Rev. Edward Patteson, of Smethwick, near Birmingham. Previous 

 to 1780, Mr. Patteson used to show the volume to his friends as a 

 curiosity on account of the autograph.) Two later discoveries have 

 been made of signatures which seem to be authentic. One is in an 

 Aldine copy of the Metamorphoses, now preserved in the Bodleian ; 

 the other is in a translation of a portion of Ovid, which contains also 

 the autograph of Dryden. In signatures of Shakspeare held to be 

 genuine, a tendency to abbreviate is observable. Thus — W. Sh's, in 

 the Bodleian book. In the Jeans autograph, so to designate the 

 obscure characters in Gervaise Babington's C omfortahle Notes, the 

 contraction appears to consist in the lea-vTng out of several letters of 

 the first syllable of the name, with a kind of circumflex placed above 

 to mark the omission. 



Ah ! if some of those loose sheets had survived on wliich the early 

 sonnets to Southampton were written! or the paper book in which 

 the later sonnets composed at the suggestion of the same nobleman 

 were transcribed ! Ah ! if William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the 

 subsequent possessor of that volume, had only demanded it back from 

 Thomas Thorpe the printer, after its contents had been committed to 

 type, and then deposited it in some safe place for the gratification of 

 Shakspeare scholars in after times ! — As one who findeth great 

 spoils, would not the man rejoice who should light upon the original 



