He must have been, therefore, three years old when Shakspere died: and the information he gave Dowdall was consequently rather the testimony of a contemporary than the repetition of a vague tradition.

Halliwell-Phillips, (page 172, of The Outlines), after quoting the words of the inscription, (“Good Friend," etc.), refers to them as "lines which a well supported tradition assigns to the pen of Shakspere himself."

CHAPTER IV.

What Was the Inscription?

Having, as I trust, established that there was a gravestone anterior to the present one; that it dated back to the time of Shakspere's burial; that the inscription upon it was believed to have been written by Shakspere himself; and that it was bi-literal in its character, and "an uncouth mixture of large and small letters;" let us next ascertain what was the precise form of the inscription, for upon that the cipher, if there is one, must depend.

And here again we are fortunate enough to have the testimony of those reliable antiquarians, and commentators on Shakspere, Edmond Malone and George Steev

ens.

Both having agreed, as they tell us, that the inscription contained an "uncouth mixture of large and small letters," it followed, as a matter of course, that their attention, being thus attracted to that fact, they would give the details of that admixture with reasonable accuracy. And that they had every opportunity to examine the original stone, long before it was removed, there can be no doubt. George Steevens was born at Stepney, May 10th, 1736,-one hundred and twenty years after

Shakspere's death--and Edmond Malone was born at Dublin five years later. Steevens published part of the Shakspere plays in 1766, and died in 1800. Malone began his study of the plays in 1778; published his Supplement to Johnson and Steevens' edition of Shakespeare in 1780; and died in 1812.

I quote their version of the bi-literal inscription from editions published prior to the removal of the original

stone.

Malone gives it, in the edition of 1821, already referred to, (vol. II, p. 506), as follows:

"Good Frend for Iesus SAKE forbeare

To digg T-E Dust EncloAsed HE.Re.

T

Blese be T-E Man Y spares T-Es Stones

Τ

And curst be He Y moves my bones."

Mr. Steevens, in the edition, in nine volumes, published in 1811, by J. Nichols and Son, (the first edition of the same work was in 1773,) in volume I, p. xix, gives precisely the same arrangement of the words as to the large and small letters:—the only difference is that he spells the second word "Friend," instead of "Frend." There is no doubt that on the original stone it was "Frend." One would more naturally err by spelling a word correctly where it was spelled incorrectly, than he would fall into the opposite error, of misspelling a word already properly spelled.

We turn to Charles Knight's Biography of Shakspere, (he so spells the name,―copying it from the poet's sig

natures), and we find the inscription (page 542), given as follows:

"Good Frend for Jesus SAKE forbea e

To diGG T-E Dust Enclo-Ased HERe

T

Blese be T-E Man Y spares T-Es Stones

T

And curst be He Y moves my bones.”

Knight was born in 1791, and his Biography of Shakspere was first published in 1842, shortly after the original grave-stone had been removed; but as he had been engaged for many years in collecting materials for that work, there is no doubt that his version of the inscription. was copied, by himself directly from the original stone.

It will be observed that he gives the word "friend" in the same form that Malone did,-"Frend." It will be seen hereafter that this spelling is necessary to the cipher

sentence.

He differs, however, in some particulars, from both Steevens and Malone.

In the first place, they give the word "digg" in the second line as composed of capitals of two sizes, thus "diGG:" while Knight prints it in letters of the same size throughout, thus:-"digg." In the version of Malone and Steevens there are in the inscription letters of three different sizes: (1) the body of the text represents one size; (2) the two letters "GG," in "digg," a second size; (3) while the initial letters of words like "Jesus," "EncloAsed," etc., and the words "SAKE" and the first three letters of "HERe," and the compound

T

symbols "T-E" and "Y," appear in still larger-sized letters.

Knight failed to perceive that the letters "GG" in "digg," were larger than the letters composing the body of the inscription; but as they were not as large as the "T-E's," etc., he set them down as belonging to the same size as the bulk of the inscription. He, of course, had no suspicion that there was such a thing as a cipher in the inscription:-if he had he would have noticed the fact that while the two "GG's" were smaller than the largest letters, they were larger than the smallest. But I think the reader will agree with me that Malone and Steevens could not have given these two “GG's" as larger than the body of the text, if they had not been so. To do this they would have had to invent something; while Knight simply overlooked something. To invent implies design, a purpose;-none of these copyists of the inscription suspected a cipher; therefore they had no reason to misrepresent it. But to fail to see or note a difference between three sizes of letters is perfectly compatible with intentional accuracy. And the reader will find that this distinction, this rendering of the two GG's, in "digg," as larger letters, is necessary to the working out of the cipher. And it was probably because Mr. Black followed Knight, instead of the older copyists, that he failed to elaborate the cipher sentence contained in the inscription.

But there is another particular wherein Knight's copy differs from that of Malone or Steevens. All three agree that the last word of the second line stood upon the original grave-stone thus: