235 



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 dL fac-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 



