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Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912

"Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown"

"
Indeed the designer is so inaccurate that he gives the first word of
the Latin inscription as "Judicyo," just as Oudry blunders in the
Latin inscription of a portrait of Mary Stuart which he copied badly.
Mr. Greenwood proceeds: "In his Outlines Halliwell simply ignores
Dugdale. His engraving was doubtless too inconvenient to be brought
to public notice!" Here Halliwell is accused of suppressing the
truth; if he invented his minute details about the repeated
reparation of the writing hand,--not represented in Dugdale's
design,--he also lied with circumstance. But he certainly quoted a
genuine "contemporary account" of the orders for repairing and
beautifying the original monument in 1748, and I presume that he also
had records for what he says about reparations of the hand and pen.
He speaks, too, of substitutions for decayed alabaster parts of the
monument, though not in his Outlines; and I observe that, in Mrs.
Stopes's papers, there is record of a meeting on December 20, 1748,
at which mention was made of "the materials" which Hall was to use
for repairs.
To me the evidence of the style as to the date of both monument and
bust speaks so loudly for their accepted date (1616-23) and against
the Georgian date of 1748, that I need no other evidence; nor do I
suppose that any one familiar with the monumental style of 1590-1620
can be of a different opinion.


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