Northumberland MS. This is hardly probable, but it is not impossible.

But that a person not named "William Shakspere" wrote that name, abbreviated, in a book with parts of which Shakspere was thoroughly familiar, and wrote that name there only once and in a likely place for an owner of a book to write his name, is an improbability so great that—especially in the absence of the customary evidences of forgery-a strong presumption is created that the signature is a genuine autograph of the poet.

A third and only remaining possibility-a most remote one-is that some other person named "William Shakspere," and spelling his surname in that way, and writing like the poet, happened to own this book and wrote his name in it as evidence of ownership. To remove any doubts as to " Montaigne" being a genuine autograph of the William Shakspere who wrote the other six signatures we shall proceed to a detailed comparison of it with those signatures and shall prove such an identity of writing habits in them as will preclude the possibility of their not having been written by the same person.13

In the first place, then, it will be noted that "Montaigne " presents the same simplicity, clearness, legibility, restraint in the use of ostentatious flourishes, ease, skill, assurance, directness, originality, abandon, disregard for the base line, upward tendency, and unconventionality, that characterise the unquestioned Shakspere autographs. The only evidences of a tendency to ostentatiousness, of a kind shown even by a most unostentatious person when writing his signature in a book as evidence of ownership, are to be seen in the bold, dashing, large W, the ornate flourish over the abbreviated baptismal name, and in the long down-stroke in the p. In freedom, speed, rhythm, simplicity, legibility, spelling of the surname, and firmness of execution, this signature bears unmistakable resemblances to "Guildhall." One has only to look at them in juxtaposition to see the relationship and to be convinced of the probability of their common origin.

The style or system of letters employed in the signature is that admixture of English and Italian alphabets which was characteristic of Shakspere's contemporaries and of Shakspere himself. The W

18 For a study of what constitutes evidence of forgery the reader is referred to the books by Mr. Osborn previously referred to.

is a composite English and Italian letter, and is that of "Deposition" in both we have the high final loop and the dot in the loop. The h too seems to be a mixture of English and Italian. The a and the e are wholly Italian, and the other letters wholly English.1

14

Not a single letter in this signature suggests that it is an imitation of the corresponding letter in the unquestioned signatures; on the contrary, one is struck with the number of unique features in "Montaigne," e. g., the double curved flourish over the m, the perpendicular h, the angular a, the tag at the end of the s, and the long p. In this connection we must not forget the important fact, often ignored by writers on Shakspere's signatures, that in the poet's day children were taught several varieties of almost every letter in the alphabet, and that it is not at all uncommon to find in Elizabethan manuscripts several forms of the same letter in single words.

A noteworthy feature of this signature is the writer's indifference to his soft and fine-pointed pen's failure to record his intentions at a number of points; he made no attempt to fill in or patch the incomplete down-stroke of the final W-loop, the base of the S, the ascending stroke of the first e, the connecting stroke between the e and the r, and the incomplete final e. He was content to let the signature go as it was,- -a kind of indifference one almost never finds in a forgery. This failure to repair imperfections and fill in gaps is also manifested in the unquestioned signatures.

Commenting on the fact that "the letters [in "Montaigne "] are in most instances written separately, without connecting links," Sir Edward M. Thompson 15 says (l. c., p. 201): "It might be suggested that more links were actually formed, but that the fine point of the pen failed to carry the ink and trace the connecting strokes; but close scrutiny with a magnifying glass does not detect the slightest indication of such links." In reply to this objection to the genuineness of "Montaigne" it is sufficient to point out that in the matter of connecting links or pen-lifts this signature is

14 The statement occasionally made that Shakspere used the old English script exclusively is erroneous.

15 Sir Edward's facsimile of this signature (l. c., p. 200) is extremely untrustworthy, especially as regards the capital & (which seems to have been retouched by the engraver).

in exact accordance with Shakspere's writing habits as these appear in his unquestioned signatures. As to the failure of the magnifying glass to discover traces of fine connecting links, the answer is obviously that if the writer raised his rapidly moving quill above the surface of the paper it is unreasonable to expect to discover traces of such air-drawn strokes. The fineness of the pen-point has nothing to do with it.

In general it may also be said that "Montaigne" agrees with the other signatures not only in the upward slant of the writing as a whole, but in the slant of the individual letters.

The ascending connecting strokes, as in the unquestioned autographs, are either fairly heavy, or so faint as to be almost invisible, or wholly absent. In the rapid writing of persons given to a kind of printing chirography, the absence of light connecting strokes is a characteristic feature. Such penmen are especially prone to omit or curtail connecting loops. Shakspere was one of these, and so we find that he did not in any undisputed signature connect the W with the i, the m with the S, or the S with the h; on the whole, he seems to have inclined not to connect the h with the a, the a with the k, the k with the s, or the s with the p, though these joinings are easy enough and not ungraceful.

The minuscules of the baptismal name in "Montaigne Montaigne" were written with one continuous movement of the pen, exactly as in the unquestioned signatures; this is also true of the letters pere in his surname, notwithstanding the failure of the connecting strokes to register on the paper. In other words, the name "Willm" was written with three uplifts of the pen (one to make the W-dot, one to write illm, and one to make the flourish over the m), exactly as in "T3" and in "Deposition." The pen-lifts in the surname were six, one for the h, one for the a, one for the k-stem, one for the k-bow, one for the s, and one for the pere, thus differing from "Guildhall" by one (because there the a is linked to the k), if we leave the pen-lift for the flourish over the e out of consideration. "Montaigne" differs from the other signatures in the matter of pen-lifts as they differ among themselves, but is, on the whole, in striking agreement with them.

"Montaigne" also agrees with the unquestioned autographs in the matters of pen position, combined finger and wrist movement, and location of shadings. These are particularly noticeable in the

final loop of the W, the downstrokes in the minuscules illm, in the two curves of the S, the curved body and the base of the h, the bow of the k, the tag at the end of the s, the curved head of the p, the basic curves of the e, and the head and stem of the r. There is an absence of shading on ascending strokes throughout.

The minuscules in the surname are spread out more than in the baptismal name, owing to the relative absence of connecting strokes in the former,-two facts which again repeat a characteristic feature of "Guildhall.”

The W in "Montaigne" is much larger and freer and bolder than in the signatures we have so far studied, but it agrees with them in several important respects: it is a W, it is neither wholly English nor wholly Italian, is dotted in the final loop, its second stem does not go down to the level of the first one, and the final loop goes up high above the two vertical stems (as in "Deposition," "Guildhall," and "T3"). It agrees with the others even in the acute angle which the initial ascending stroke makes with the first vertical stem, and yet it differs from the others in so many respects, such as the angular loops below, that it can by no possibility be considered an imitation of any one of them. It should be needless to say that all penmen, even the most skilful and artistic, sometimes make a loop by not fusing or overlapping a descending and an ascending stroke, and sometimes fail to make a required loop by overlapping such strokes.

Sir Edward (1. c., p. 211) enjoins the student to note that "the loop of the second limb [of the W] is not completed, but breaks off abruptly, leaving a blank space between the point of rupture and the commencement of the final curve above, as if this portion of the letter were being built up in sections instead of being written currente calamo. However, he goes on to admit (p. 202), "the blank may be merely an accidental failure of the pen to mark." It is a pity that Sir Edward did not use his magnifying-glass at this point; had he done so, he would have seen, as our enlargement (facs. No. 13) shows, that in this instance the rapidly moving and fine-pointed quill did leave a trace of ink in its wake, exactly as in the initial upstroke of the W, and that this third ascending stroke joined the second descending stroke 5/32 of an inch before departing from it to make the final loop.

The English i is like Shakspere's unquestioned i's in being undotted and in being almost perpendicular.

The English 's that follow are almost perpendicular, slightly bowed in the descending stem, acute-angled at the base, large looped at the top, and thus strongly reminiscent of the l's in "T2" and in "T3,” though without the exaggerated hump or angle in the downstroke. For almost exact duplicates of these l's one must go to de Beau Chesne's A Booke Containing Divers Sortes of hands,— a book with which Shakspere had ample opportunity to be acquainted, and which may have influenced his penmanship— inasmuch as it was "Imprinted at London by Thomas Vautrouillier" whose house, we may remind the reader, also printed the poet's Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. (See also pp. 151 and 160 of my essay on Shakspere's Unquestioned Signatures and the Addition in "Sir Thomas Moore.")

The m is decidedly Italian, perfectly formed and artistically written, tends to run upward, and is characterised by a graceful double curve in the first and third (heavily shaded) minims, which is very suggestive of Shakspere's tendency to wave the vertical stems of his W's (in "T3"), his 's and m's (in "T1," "T2" and "T3"). This waviness in heavy downstrokes is a hitherto unnoticed peculiarity in many Elizabethan writers and is a mannerism which seems to have been taught by English writing masters especially during the latter half of the 16th century. (See facss. 14 and 15.)

Sir Edward (1. c., p. 203) points out that this m, "though it joins the second 1, was not written continuously with it, as the 7 finishes with a club-foot, and the m begins with a hair-stroke.” But Sir Edward is clearly in error in the inference he would have us draw from this observation. Examination of numerous documents shows that the phenomenon to which he calls attention is due to a defect in the writing surface which causes the ink to flow back partly instead of following the pen. Curiously enough, we find the same combination of club-foot and hair-stroke at three points in "Guildhall," between the i and the 7, between the 7 and the i, and about the middle of the final curve of the h.16

10 That the paper on which " Montaigne” was written did not take that particular ink well is convincingly shown by the freakish gap about the middle of the vertical stem of the k.