trait of
Shakespeare to his great gallery in his house in St. James's. Mention is
made of it in a letter from the diarist John Evelyn to his friend Samuel
Pepys in 1689, but Clarendon's collection was dispersed at the end of the
seventeenth century and the picture has not been traced. {291b}

Later portraits.

Of the numerous extant paintings which have been described as portraits
of Shakespeare, only the 'Droeshout' portrait and the Ely House portrait,
both of which are at Stratford, bear any definable resemblance to the
folio engraving or the bust in the church. {291c} In spite of their
admitted imperfections, those presentments can alone be held indisputably
to have been honestly designed to depict the poet's features. They must
be treated as the standards of authenticity in judging of the genuineness
of other portraits claiming to be of an early date.

The 'Chandos' portrait.

Of other alleged portraits which are extant, the most famous and
interesting is the 'Chandos' portrait, now in the National Portrait
Gallery. Its pedigree suggests that it was intended to represent the
poet, but numerous and conspicuous divergences from the authenticated
likenesses show that it was painted from fanciful descriptions of him
some years after his death. The face is bearded, and rings adorn the
ears. Oldys reported that it was from the brush of Burbage,
Shakespeare's fellow-actor, who had some reputation as a limner, {292}
and that it had belonged to Joseph Taylor, an actor contemporary with
Shakespeare. These rumours are not corroborated; but there is no doubt
that it was at one time the property of D'Avenant, and that it
subsequently belonged successively to the actor Betterton and to Mrs.
Barry the actress. In 1693 Sir Godfrey Kneller made a copy as a gift for
Dryden. After Mrs Barry's death in 1713 it was purchased for forty
guineas by Robert Keck, a barrister of the Inner Temple. At length it
reached the hands of one John Nichols, whose daughter married James
Brydges, third duke of Chandos. In due time the Duke became the owner of
the picture, and it subsequently passed, through Chandos's daughter, to
her husband, the first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, whose son, the
second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, sold it with the rest of his
effects at Stowe in 1848, when it was purchased by the Earl of Ellesmere.
The latter presented it to the nation. Edward Capell many years before
presented a copy by