THE SHAKESPEARE MYSTERY.

In 1853 there went up a jubilant cry from many voices upon the

publication of Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations to the Text of

Shakespeare's Plays from Early Manuscript Corrections," etc. "Now," it

was said, "doubt and controversy are at an end. The text is settled by

the weight of authority, and in accordance with common sense. We shall

enjoy our Shakespeare in peace and quiet." Hopeless ignorance of

Shakespeare-loving nature! The shout of rejoicing had hardly been

uttered before there arose a counter cry of warning and defiance from

a few resolute lips, which, swelling, mouth by mouth, as attention was

aroused and conviction strengthened, has overwhelmed the other, now sunk

into a feeble apologetic plea. The dispute upon the marginal readings in

this notorious volume, as to their intrinsic value and their pretence to

authority upon internal evidence, has ended in the rejection of nearly

all of the few which are known to be peculiar to it, and the conclusion

against any semblance of such authority. The investigation of the

external evidence of their genuineness, though it has not been quite so

satisfactory upon all points, has brought to light so many suspicious

circumstances connected with Mr. Collier's production of them before the

public, that they must be regarded as unsupported by the moral weight of

good faith in the only person who is responsible for them.

Since our previous article upon this subject,[A] nothing has appeared

upon it in this country; but several important publications have

been made in London concerning it; and, in fact, this department of

Shakespearian literature threatens to usurp a special shelf in the

dramatic library. The British Museum has fairly entered the field, not

only in the persons of Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Maskelyne, but in that of

Sir Frederic Madden himself, the head of its Manuscript Department, and

one of the very first paleographers of the age; Mr. Collier has made a

formal reply; the Department of Public Records has spoken through Mr.

Duffus Hardy; the "Edinburgh Review" has taken up the controversy on one

side and "Fraser's Magazine" on the other; the London "Critic" has kept

up a galling fire on Mr. Collier, his folio, and his friends, to which

the "Athenaeum" has replied by an occasional shot, red-hot; the author

of "Literary Cookery," (said to be Mr. Arthur Edmund Brae,) a well-read,

ingenious, caustic, and remorseless writer, whose first book was

suppressed as libellous, has returned to the charge, and not less

effectively because more temperately; and finally an LL.D., Mansfield

Ingleby, of Trinity College, Cambridge, comes forward with a "Complete

View of the Controversy," which is manifestly meant for a complete

extinction of Mr. Collier. Dr. Ingleby's book is quite a good one of its

kind, and those who seek to know the history and see the grounds of this

famous and bitter controversy will find it very serviceable. It gives,

what it professes to give, a complete view of the whole subject from the

beginning, and treats most of the prominent points of it with care, and

generally with candor. Its view, however, is from the stand-point of

uncompromising hostility to Mr. Collier, and its spirit not unlike that

with which a man might set out to exterminate vermin.[B]

[Footnote A: October, 1859. No. XXIV.]

[Footnote B: We do not attribute the spirit of Dr. Ingleby's book to any

inherent malignity or deliberately malicious purpose of its author, but

rather to that relentless partisanship which this folio seems to have

excited among the British critics. So we regard his reference to

"almighty smash" and "catawampously chawed up" as specimens of the

language used in America, and his disparagement of the English in vogue

here, less as a manifestation of a desire to misrepresent, or even a

willingness to sneer, than as an amusing exhibition of utter ignorance.

In what part of America and from what lips did Dr. Ingleby ever hear

these phrases? We have never heard them; and in a somewhat varied

experience of American life have never been in any society, however

humble, in which they would not excite laughter, if not astonishment,

--astonishment even greater than that with which Americans of average

cultivation would read such phrases as these in a goodly octavo

published by a Doctor of the Laws of Cambridge University. "And one

ground upon which the hypothesis of Hamlet's insanity has been built is

'_swagged_.'" (_Complete View_, p. 82.) "The interests of literature

_jeopardized_, but not compromised." (_Ib_. p. 10.) "The rest of Mr.

Collier's remarks on the H.S. letter _relates_," etc. (_Ib_. p. 260.)

"_In_ the middle of this volume has been foisted." (_Ib_. p. 261.) We

shall not say that this is British English; but we willingly confess

that it is not American English. Such writing would not be tolerated in

the leading columns of any newspaper of reputation in this country; it

might creep in among the work of the second or third rate reporters.]

And here we pause a moment to consider the temper in which this question

has been discussed among the British critics and editors. From the very

beginning, eight years ago, there have been manifestations of personal

animosity, indications of an eagerness to seize the opportunity of

venting long secreted venom. This has appeared as well in books as in

more ephemeral publications, and upon both sides, and even between

writers on the same side. On every hand there has been a most deplorable

impeachment of motive, accompanied by a detraction of character by

imputation which is quite shocking. Petty personal slights have been

insinuated as the ultimate cause of an expression of opinion upon an

important literary question, and testimony has been impeached and

judgment disparaged by covert allegations of disgraceful antecedent

conduct on the part of witnesses or critics. Indeed, at times there has

seemed reason to believe the London "Literary Gazette" (we quote from

memory) right in attributing this whole controversy to a quarrel which

has long existed in London, and which, having its origin in the alleged

abstraction of manuscripts from a Cambridge library by a Shakespearian

scholar, has made most of the British students of this department

of English letters more or less partisans on one side or the other.

Certainly the "Saturday Review" is correct, (in all but its English,)

when it says that in this controversy "a mere literary question and a

grave question of personal character are being awkwardly mixed together,

and neither question is being conducted in a style at all satisfactory

or creditable to literary men."

Mr. Collier is told by Mr. Duffus Hardy that "he has no one to blame but

himself" for "the tone which has been adopted by those who differ from

him upon this matter," because he, (Mr. Collier,) by his answer in the

"Times" to Mr. Hamilton, made it "a personal, rather than a literary

question." But, we may ask, how is it possible for a man accused

of palming off a forgery upon the public to regard the question as

impersonal, even although it may not be alleged in specific terms that

he is the forger? Mr. Collier is like the frog in the fable. This

pelting with imputations of forgery may be very fine fun to the pelters,

but it is death to him. To them, indeed, it may be a mere question of

evidence and criticism; but to him it must, in any case, be one of vital

personal concern. Yet we cannot find any sufficient excuse for the

manner in which Mr. Collier has behaved in this affair from the very

beginning. His cause is damaged almost as much by his own conduct, and

by the tone of his defence, as by the attacks of his accusers. A very

strong argument against his complicity in any fraudulent proceeding

in relation to his folio might have been founded upon an untarnished

reputation, and a frank and manly attitude on his part; but, on the

contrary, his course has been such as to cast suspicion upon every

transaction with which he has been connected.

First he says[C] that he bought this folio in 1849 to "complete another

poor copy of the seconde folio"; and in the next paragraph he adds, "As

it turned out, I at first repented my bargain, because when I took it

home, it appeared that two leaves which I wanted were unfit for my

purpose, not merely by being too short, but damaged and defaced."

And finally he says that it was not until the spring of 1850 that he

"observed some marks in the margin of this folio." Now did Mr. Collier,

by some mysterious instinct, light directly, first upon one of the

leaves, and then upon the other, which he wished to find, in a folio of

nine hundred pages? It is almost incredible that he did so once; that he

did so twice is quite beyond belief. It is equally incredible, that if

the textual changes were then upon the margins in the profusion in which

they now exist, he could have looked for the two leaves which he needed

without noticing and examining such a striking peculiarity. Clearly

those marginal readings must have been seen by Mr. Collier in his search

for the two leaves he needed, or they have been written since. Either

case is fatal to his reputation. His various accounts of his interviews

with Mr. Parry, who, it was thought, once owned the book, are

inconsistent with each other, and at variance with Mr. Parry's own

testimony, and the probabilities, not to say the possibilities, of the

case. He says, for instance, that he showed the folio to Mr. Parry; and

that Mr. Parry took it into his hand, examined it, and pronounced it the

volume he had once owned. But, on the contrary, Mr. Parry says that Mr.

Collier showed him no book; that he exhibited only fac-similes; that he

(Mr. Parry) was, on the occasion in question, unable to hold a book, as

his hands were occupied with two sticks, by the assistance of which he

was limping along the road. And on being shown Mr. Collier's folio at

the British Museum, Mr. Parry said that he never saw that volume before,

although he distinctly remembered the size and appearance of his own

folio; and the accuracy of his memory has been since entirely confirmed

by the discovery of a fly-leaf lost from his folio which conforms to

his description, and is of a notably different size and shape from the

leaves of the Collier folio.[D]--Mr. Collier has declared, in the most

positive and explicit manner, that he has "often gone over the thousands

of marks of all kinds" on the margins of his folio; and again, that he

has "reëxamined every fine and letter"; and finally, that, to enable

"those interested in such matters" to "see _the entire body _in the

shortest form," he "appended them to the present volume [_Seven

Lectures_, etc.] in one column," etc. This column he calls, too, "A

List of _Every Manuscript Note and Emendation_ in Mr. Collier's Copy of

Shakespeare's Works, folio, 1632." Now Mr. Hamilton, having gone over

the margins of "Hamlet" in the folio, finds that Mr. Collier's published

list "_does not contain one-half_ of the corrections, many of the most

significant being among those omitted." He sustains his allegation by

publishing the results of the collation of "Hamlet," to which we shall

hereafter refer more particularly, when we shall see that the reason of

Mr. Collier's suppression of so large a portion of these alterations and

additions was, that their publication would have made the condemnation

of his folio swift and certain. We have here a distinct statement of

the thing that is not, and a manifest and sufficient motive for the

deception.

[Footnote C: Notes and Emendations, p. vii.]

[Footnote D: This volume is universally spoken of as the Perkins folio

by the British critics. But we preserve the designation under which it

is so widely known in America.]

It has also been discovered that Mr. Collier has misrepresented the

contents of the postscript of a letter from Mistress Alleyn to her

husband, Edward Alleyn, the eminent actor of Shakespeare's day. This

letter was first published by Mr. Collier in his "Memoirs of Edward

Alleyn" in 1841, where he represents the following broken passage as

part of it:--

"Aboute a weeke a goe there came a youthe who said he was Mr Frauncis

Chaloner who would have borrowed X'li. to have bought things for ... and

_said he was known unto you and Mr Shakespeare of the globe, who came

... said he knewe hym not, onely he herde of hym that he was a roge...

so he was glade we did not lend him the monney ... Richard Johnes [went]

to seeke_ and inquire after the fellow," etc.

The paper on which this postscript is written is very much decayed,

and has been broken and torn away by the accidents of time; but enough

remains to show that the passage in question stands thus,--the letters

in brackets being obliterated:--

"Aboute a weeke agoe ther[e] [cam]e a youthe who said he was || Mr.

Frauncis Chalo[ner]s man [& wou]ld have borrow[e]d x's.--to || have

bought things for [hi]s Mri[s]..... [tru]st hym || Cominge wthout...

token.... d ||I would have.... || [i]f I bene sue[r] ..... || and

inquire after the fellow," etc.

The parallels || in the above paragraph indicate the divisions of the

lines in the original manuscript; and a moment's examination will

convince the reader that the existence of those words of Mr. Collier's

version which we have printed in Italic letter in the place to which he

assigns them is a physical impossibility, as Mr. Hamilton has clearly

shown.[E] And that the mention of Shakespeare, and what he said, was not

on a part of the letter which has been broken away, is made certain by

the fortunate preservation of enough of the lower margin to show that no

such passage could have been written upon it.

[Footnote E: _An Inquiry_, etc., pp. 86-89. See also Ingleby's _Complete

View_, etc., pp. 279-288. Both Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Ingleby give

fac-similes of this important postscript.]

Mr. Collier has also been convicted by Mr. Dyce of positive and

malicious misrepresentation in various passages of the Prolegomena and

Notes to his last edition of Shakespeare. (London, 1858, 6 vols.) The

misrepresentations refer so purely to matters of textual criticism,

and the exhibition of even one of them would involve the quotation of

passages so uninteresting to the general reader, that we shall ask him

to be content with our assurance that these disgraceful attempts to

injure a literary opponent and former friend assume severally the form

of direct misstatement, suppression of the truth, prevarication,

and cunning perversion; the manner and motive throughout being very

shabby.[F] The purpose of all these attacks upon Mr. Dyce is not only to

wound and disparage him, but to secure for the writer a reputation for

superior sagacity and antiquarian learning; and we regret that we are

obliged to close this part of our paper by saying that we find that the

same motive has led Mr. Collier into similar courses during a great part

of his literary career. It has been necessary for us to examine all

that he has written upon Shakespeare, and we have again and again

found ourselves misled into giving him temporary credit for a point

established or a fact discovered, when in truth this credit was due

to Malone or Chalmers or some other Shakespearian scholar of the past

century, and was sought to be appropriated by Mr. Collier, not through

direct misstatement, but by such an ingenious wording and construction

of sentences as would accomplish the purpose without absolute falsehood.

An instance of this kind of manoeuvring is brought to light in

connection with the investigations into the discovery and character of a

paper known as "The Players' Petition," which was first made public by

Mr. Collier in his "Annals of the Stage," (Vol. i. p. 298,) and which

has been pronounced a forgery. Of this he says, in his "Reply to Mr.

Hamilton," (p. 59,) "Mr. Lemon, Senior, _undoubtedly did_ bring the

'Players' Petition' under my notice, and very much obliged I was," etc.

Now Mr. Collier, in the "Annals of the Stage," after extended remarks

upon the importance of the document, merely says, "This remarkable paper

has, perhaps, never seen the light from the moment it was presented,

until it was recently discovered." No direct assertion here that Mr.

Collier discovered it, but a leading of the reader to infer that he did;

and not a word about Mr. Lemon's agency, until, upon the suggestion of

that gentleman's son, it is serviceable to Mr. Collier to remember it.

By reference to Mr. Grant White's "Shakespeare," Vol. ii. p. lx., an

instance may be seen of a positive misstatement by Mr. Collier, of

which, whatever the motive or the manner, the result is to deprive

Chalmers of a microscopic particle of antiquarian credit and to

bestow it upon himself. In fact, our confidence in Mr. Collier's

trustworthiness, which, diminished by discoveries like these, as our

knowledge of his labors increased, has been quite extinguished under the

accumulated evidence of either his moral obliquity or his intellectual

incapacity for truth. We can now accept from him, merely upon his word,

no statement as true by which he has anything to gain.

[Footnote F: See Dyce's _Strictures_, etc., pp. 2, 22, 28, 35, 51, 54,

56, 57, 58, 70, 123, 127, 146, 168, 192, 203, 204.]

The bad effect of what he does is increased by the manner in which he

seeks to shield himself from the consequences of his acts. He should

have said at once, "Let this matter be investigated, and here am I to

aid in the investigation," Soon after this folio was brought into public

notice, Mr. Charles Knight proposed that it should be submitted to a

palaeographic examination by gentlemen of acknowledged competence; but

so far was Mr. Collier from yielding to this suggestion, that we have

good reason for saying that it was not until after the volume passed, in

1859, into the hands of Sir Frederic Madden of the British Museum,

that the more eminent Shakespearian scholars in London had even an

opportunity to look at it closely.[G] The attacks upon the genuineness

of the writing on its margins Mr. Collier was at once too ready to

regard as impeachments of his personal integrity, and to shirk by making

counter-insinuations against the integrity of his opponents and the

correctness of their motives. He attributes to the pettiest personal

spite or jealousy the steps which they have taken in discharge of a duty

to the interests of literature and the literary guild, and at the risk

of their professional reputations, and then slinks back from his charges

with,--"I have been told this, but I don't believe it: this may be so,

but yet it cannot be: I did something that Mr. So-and-so's father did

not like, yet I wouldn't for a moment insinuate," etc., etc.[H] Then,

Mr. Collier, why do you insinuate? And what in any case do you gain?

Suppose the men who deny the good faith of your marginalia are the

small-souled creatures you would have us believe they are, they do not

make this denial upon their personal responsibility merely; they produce

facts. Meet those; and do not go about to make one right out of two

wrongs. Cease, too, this crawling upon your belly before the images of

dukes and carls and lord chief-justices; digest speedily the wine and

biscuits which a gentleman has brought to you in his library, and let

them pass away out of your memory. Let us have no more such sneaking

sentences as, "I have always striven to make myself as unobjectionable

as I could"; but stand up like a man and speak like a man, if you have

aught to say that is worth saying; and your noble patrons, no less than

the world at large, will have more faith in you, and more respect for

you.

[Footnote G: Such hasty examinations as those which it must have

received at the Society of Antiquaries and the Shakespeare Society,

where Mr. Collier took it, are of little importance.]

[Footnote H: See, for instance, "I have been told, but I do not believe

it, that Sir F. Madden and his colleagues were irritated by this piece

of supposed neglect; and that they also took it ill that I presented the

Perkins folio to the kindest, most condescending, and most liberal of

noblemen, instead of giving it to their institution." (_Reply_, p. 11.)

And see the same pamphlet and Mr. Collier's letters, _passim_.]

But what has been established by the examination of Mr. Collier's folio

and the manuscripts which he has brought to light? These very important

points:--

The folio contains more than twice, nearly three times, as many marginal

readings, including stage-directions and changes of orthography, as are

enumerated in Mr. Collier's "List of Every," etc.

The margins retain in numerous places the traces of

pencil-memorandums.[I]

[Footnote I: This is finally admitted even by Mr. Collier's supporters.

The Edinburgh Reviewer says,--"But then the mysterious pencil-marks!

They are there, most undoubtedly, and in very great numbers too. The

natural surprise that they were not earlier detected is somewhat

diminished on inspection. Some say they have 'come out' more in the

course of years; whether this is possible we know not. But even now they

are hard to discover, until the eye has become used to the search. But

when it has,--especially with the use of a glass at first,--they become

perceptible enough, words, ticks, points, and all."]

These pencil-memorandums are in some instances written in a modern

cursive hand, to which marginal readings in ink, written in an antique

hand, correspond.

There are some pencil-memorandums to which no corresponding change in

ink has been made; and one of these is in short-hand of a system which

did not come into use until 1774.[J]

[Footnote J: In _Coriolanus_, Act v. sc. 2, (p. 55, col. 2, of the C.

folio,) "struggles or instead noise,"--plainly a memorandum for a

stage-direction in regard to the impending fracas between Menenius and

the Guard.]

These pencil-memorandums in some instances underlie the words in ink

which correspond to them.

Similar modern pencil-writing, underlying in like manner antique-seeming

words in ink, has been discovered in the Bridgewater folio, (Lord

Ellesmere's,) the manuscript readings in which Mr. Collier was the first

to bring into notice.

Some of the pencilled memorandums in the folio of 1632 seem to be

unmistakably in the handwriting of Mr. Collier.[K]

[Footnote K: Having at hand some of Mr. Collier's own writing in pencil,

we are dependent as to this point, in regard to the pencillings in

the folio, only upon the accuracy of the fac-similes published by Mr.

Hamilton and Dr. Ingleby, which correspond in character, though made by

different fac-similists.]

Several manuscripts, professing to be contemporary with Shakespeare, and

containing passages of interest in regard to him, or to the dramatic

affairs of his time, have been pronounced spurious by the highest

palaeographic authorities in England, and in one of them (a letter

addressed to Henslow, and bearing Marston's signature) a pencilled guide

for the ink, like those above mentioned, has been discovered. These

manuscripts were made public by Mr. Collier, who professed to have

discovered them chiefly in the Bridgewater and Dulwich collections.

In his professed reprint of one manuscript (Mrs. Alleyn's letter) Mr.

Collier has inserted several lines relating to Shakespeare which could

not possibly have formed a part of the passage which he professes to

reprint.

In the above enumeration we have not included the many complete and

partial erasures upon the margins of Mr. Collier's folio; because these,

although they are inconsistent with the authoritative introduction of

the manuscript readings, do not affect the question of the good faith of

the person who introduced those readings, or serve as any indication of

the period at which he did his work. But it must be confessed that

the points enumerated present a very strong, and, when regarded by

themselves, an apparently incontrovertible case against Mr. Collier and

the genuineness of the folios and the manuscripts which he has brought

to light. Combined with the evidence of his untrustworthiness, they

compel, even from us who examine the question without prejudice, the

unwilling admission that there can be no longer any doubt that he has

been concerned in bringing to public notice, under the prestige of his

name, a mass of manuscript matter of seeming antiquity and authority

much of which at least is spurious. We say, without prejudice; for

it cannot be too constantly kept in mind that the question of the

genuineness of the manuscript readings in Mr. Collier's folio--that is,

of the good faith in which they were written--has absolutely nothing

whatever to do with that of their value or authority, at least in our

judgment. Six years before the appearance of Mr. Hamilton's first letter

impeaching their genuineness, we had expressed the decided opinion that

they were "entitled to no other consideration than is due to their

intrinsic excellence";[L] and this opinion is now shared even by the

authority which gave them at first the fullest and most uncompromising

support.[M]

[Footnote L: See _Putnam's Magazine_, October, 1853, and _Shakespeare's

Scholar_, 1854, p. 74.]

[Footnote M: See the London _Athenaeum_ of January 8th, 1853:--"We

cannot hesitate to infer that there must have been _something more than

mere conjecture_,--some authority from which they were derived.... The

consideration of the nine omitted lines stirs up Mr. Collier to a little

greater boldness on the question of authority; but, after all, we do not

think he goes the full length which the facts would warrant."

Compare this with the following extracts from the same journal of July

9th, 1859;--"The folio never had any ascertained external authority.

All the warrant it has ever brought to reasonable critics is internal."

"If anybody, in the heat of argument, ever claimed for them [the MS.

readings] a right of acceptance beyond the emendations of Theobald,

Malone, Dyce, and Singer, (that is, a right not justified by their

obvious utility or beauty,) such a claim must have been untenable, by

whomsoever urged."]

Other points sought to be established against Mr. Collier and the

genuineness of his manuscript authorities must be noticed in an article

which aims at the presentation of a comprehensive view of this subject.

These are based on certain variations between Mr. Collier's statements

as to the readings of his manuscript authorities and a certain supposed

"philological" proof of the modern origin of one of those authorities,

the folio of 1632. Upon all these points the case of Mr. Collier's

accusers breaks down. It is found, for instance, that in the folio an

interpolated line in "Coriolanus," Act iii. sc. 2, reads,--

"To brook _controul_ without the use of anger,"

and that so Mr. Collier gave it in both editions of his "Notes and

Emendations," in his fac-similes made for private distribution, in his

vile one-volume Shakespeare, and in the "List," etc., appended to the

"Seven Lectures." But in his new edition of Shakespeare's Works (6 vols.

1858) he gives it,--

"To brook _reproof_ without the use of anger,"

and hereupon Dr. Ingleby asks,--"Is it not possible that here Mr.

Collier's remarkable memory is too retentive, and that, though second

thoughts may be best, first thoughts are sometimes inconveniently

remembered to the prejudice of the second?"[N] Here we see a palpable

slip of memory or of the pen, by which an old man substituted one word

for another of similar import, as many a younger man has done before

him, tortured into evidence of forgery. Such an objection is worthy of

notice only as an example of the carping, unjudicial spirit in which

this subject is treated by some of the British critics.

[Footnote N: _The Shakespeare Fabrications_, p. 45.]

Mr. Collier is accused at least of "inaccuracy" and "ignorance" on

account of some of these variations. Thus, in Mrs. Alleyn's Letter, she

says that a boy "would have borrowed x's." (ten shillings); and this Mr.

Collier reads "would have borrowed x'li." (ten pounds). Whereupon Mr.

Duffus Hardy, Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, produces this as

one of "the most striking" of Mr. Collier's inaccuracies in regard to

this letter, and says that it "certainly betrays no little ignorance,

as 10_l_. in those days would have equalled about 60_l_. of our present

money." "A strange youth," he adds, "calls on Mrs. Alleyn and asks the

loan of 10_l_. as coolly as he would ask for as many pence!" Let us

measure the extent of the ignorance shown by this inaccuracy, and

estimate its significance by a high standard. In one of the documents

which Mr. Collier has brought forward--an account by Sir Arthur

Mainwayring, auditor to Sir Thomas Egerton, in James I.'s reign, which

is pronounced to be a forgery, and which probably is one--is an entry

which mentions the performance of "Othello" in 1602. The second part of

this entry is,[O]--

"Rewards; to m'r. Lyllyes man w'ch }

brought y'e lotterye boxe to }

x's. Harefield: p m'r. Andr. Leigh." }

[Footnote O: See the fac-simile in Dr. Ingleby's _Complete View_. p.

262.]

Mr. Lyllye's man got ten shillings, then, for his job,--very princely

pay in those days. But Mr. Hardy[P] prints this entry,--"Rewarde to Mr.

Lillye's man, which brought the lotterye box to Harefield x'li."--ten

_pounds_!--the same sum that Mr. Collier made Mr. Chaloner's boy ask

of Mrs. Alleyn. In other words, according to Mr. Hardy, Sir Arthur

Mainwayring gave a serving-man, for carrying a box, ten pounds as coolly

as he would have given as many pence! Now, Mr. Hardy, "as 10_l_. in

those days would have equalled about 60_l_. of our present money," on

your honor and your palaeographical reputation, does it betray "no

little ignorance" to mistake, or, if you please, to misprint, 10's. for

ten 10'li.? If no, so much the better for poor Mr. Collier; but if ay,

is not the Department of Public Records likely to come to grief?[Q]

[Footnote P: _A Review_, etc., p. 60.]

[Footnote Q: We could point out numerous other similar failures and

errors in the publications in which Mr. Collier is attacked; but we

cannot spare time or space for these petty side-issues.]

A very strong point has been made upon the alteration of "so eloquent as

a _chair_" to "so eloquent as a _cheer_" in Mr. Collier's folio. It is

maintained by Mr. Arthur Edmund Brae, and by Dr. Ingleby, that "cheer"

as a shout of "admirative applause" did not come into use until

the latter part of the last century. This is the much vaunted

philologico-chronological proof that the manuscript readings in that

folio are of very recent origin. Dr. Ingleby devotes twenty pages to

this single topic. Never was labor more entirely wasted. For the

result of it all is the establishment of these facts in regard to

"cheer":--that shouts of encouragement and applause were called "cheers"

as early, at least, as 1675, and that in the middle of the century

1500, if not before, "to cheer" meant to utter an audible expression of

applause. The first appears from the frequent use of the noun in the

Diary of Henry Teonge, a British Navy Chaplain, dated 1675-1679, by

which it appears that "three cheers" were given then, just as they are

now; the second, from a passage in Phaer's Translation of the "Aeneid,"

published in 1558, in which "_Excipiunt plausu pavidos_" is rendered

"The Trojans them did _chere_." And now will it be believed that

an LL.D. of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a professed student of

Shakespeare, seeks to avoid the force of these facts by pleading, that,

although Teonge speaks of "three cheers," it does not follow that there

was such a thing known in his day as a cheer; that "three cheers" was

a recognized phrase for a certain naval salute; and that "to confound

_three cheers_ with _a cheer_ would be as ignorant a proceeding as

to confound the phrases 'manning the yards' and 'manning a

yard'"?--Exactly, Dr. Ingleby,--just as ignorant; but three times one

are three; and when one yard is manned the sailors have manned a yard,

and while they are a-doing it they are manning a yard. What did the

people call one-third of their salute in 1675? And are we to suppose

that they were never led to give "one more" cheer, as they do nowadays?

And have the LL.D.s of Cambridge--old Cambridge--yet to learn that the

compound always implies the preëxistence of the simple, and that "a

cheer" is, by logical necessity, the antecedent of "three cheers"?

Can they fail to see, too, as "cheer" meant originally face, then

countenance, then comfort, encouragement, that, before it could be used

as a verb to mean the _expression_ of applause, it must have previously

been used as a noun to mean applause? And finally, has an intelligent

and learned student of Shakespeare read him so imperceptively as not to

know, that, if "cheer," or any other word, had been used in his time

only as a verb, he would not have hesitated a moment about using it as a

noun, if it suited his purpose to do so? That the original text in the

passage in question, "so eloquent as a chair," is correct, we have no

doubt; but the attempt to make the introduction of "cheer" into Mr.

Collier's folio a chronological test of the good faith of its MS.

readings has failed entirely.

But Mr. Collier's accusers fall short of their aim upon other and no

less important points. It seems more than doubtful that the spuriousness

of all the marginal readings in the notorious folio and all the

documents brought forward by Mr. Collier has been established. Under

ordinary circumstances, when palaeographers like Sir Frederic Madden,

Sir Francis Palgrave, and Mr. Duffus Hardy, tell us that a manuscript,

professing to be ancient and original, is a modern fabrication, we

submit at once. A judgment pronounced by such experts commands the

unquestioning deference of laymen; unless, indeed, the doctors differ;

and then the humblest and most ignorant of us all must endeavor

to decide between them. And when a court, under extraordinary

circumstances,--and those of the present case are very extraordinary,--

not only pronounces judgment, but feels compelled to assign the reasons

for that judgment, thinking men who are interested in the question under

consideration will examine the evidence and weigh the arguments for

themselves.

In the present case reasons have been given by Sir Frederic Madden, Mr.

Hardy, and Dr. Ingleby, the chief-justice and two puisne judges of our

court. The first says, (in his letter of March 24th, 1860, to the London

"Critic,") that, on examining the folio with Mr. Bond, the Assistant

Keeper of his Department, they were both "struck with the very

suspicious character of the writing,"--certainly the work of one hand,

but presenting varieties of forms assignable to different periods,--the

evident painting of the letters, and the artificial look of the ink.

Mr. Hardy speaks more explicitly to the same purpose; and we must quote

him at some length. He says,--

"The handwriting of the notes and alterations in the Devonshire folio

[Mr. Collier's] is of a mixed character, varying even in the same page,

from the stiff, labored Gothic hand of the sixteenth century to the

round text-hand of the nineteenth, a fact most perceptible in the

capital letters. It bears unequivocal marks also of laborious imitation

throughout.

"In their broader characteristics, the features of the handwriting of

this country, from the time of the Reformation, may be arranged under

four epochs, sufficiently distinct to elucidate our argument:--

"1. The stiff upright Gothic of Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

"2. The same, inclining and less stiff, as a greater amount of

correspondence demanded an easier style of writing, under Elizabeth.

"3. The cursive, based on an Italian model, (the Gothic becoming more

flexible and now rapidly disappearing,) in the reign of James I., and

continuing in use for about a century.

"4. The round hand of the schoolmaster, under the House of Hanover,

degenerating into the careless, half-formed hands of the present day.

"Now it is perfectly possible that any two of these hands in succession

may have been practised by the same person.... That the first and third

or the second and fourth should be coexistent is very improbable. That

all, or that the first, second, and fourth, should be found together, as

belonging to one and the same era, we hold to be utterly impossible.

"Yet this is a difficulty that Mr. Collier has to explain; as the

handwritings of the MS. corrections in the Devonshire folio, including

those in pencil, vary as already said, from the stiff, upright,

labored, and earlier Gothic, to the round text-hand of the nineteenth

century."[R]

[Footnote R: A _Review_, etc., pp. 6, 7.]

On this point Dr. Ingleby says, succinctly and decidedly, "The primal

evidence of the forgery lies in the ink writing, and in that alone";[S]

but he expressly bases this dictum upon the decisions of the professed

palaeographers of the British Museum and the Record Office. He goes on,

however, to assign important collateral proof of the forgery, both of

the readings in the folio and the documents brought forward by Mr.

Collier, by connecting them with each other. Thus he says, that whoever

will compare the fac-similes of the document known as "The Certificate

of the Blackfriars Players" with those which he gives of two passages in

the folio "will surely entertain no doubt that one hand wrote both."[T]

He expresses also the same confidence that "there can be but one

intelligent opinion" that another important document, known as "The

Blackfriars Petition," was, as Mr. Hamilton believes, "executed by the

same hand" as that to which we owe the Certificate, and, consequently,

the folio readings.[U] Again, with regard to another of these documents,

known as "The Daborne Warrant," Dr. Ingleby says,--"Mr. Hamilton

remarks, what must be plain to every one who compares the fac-simile

of the Daborne Warrant with those of the manuscript emendations in the

Perkins folio, that the same hand wrote both. In particular the

letters E, S, J, and C are formed in the same peculiar pseudo-antique

manner."[V] And finally, Mr. Hamilton decides, and Dr. Ingleby concurs

with him, that a certain List of Players appended to a letter from the

Council to the Lord Mayor, in which Shakespeare's name stands third, is

"done by the same hand" which produced the professed contemporary copy

of a letter signed H.S. about Burbage and Shakespeare, supposed to be

from the Earl of Southampton. Giving his reason for this opinion, Dr.

Ingleby says,--"Among other similarities in the forms of the letters

to those characterizing the H.S. letter, is the very remarkable _g_ in

'Hemminges'."[W]

[Footnote S: A _Complete View_, p. 114.]

[Footnote T: _Ib._ p. 250.]

[Footnote U: _Ib._ p. 293.]

[Footnote V: _Ib._ p. 256.]

[Footnote W: _Ib._ p. 271.]

Let us examine the alleged grounds of these decisions,--"the varieties

of forms assignable to different periods," and the extension of those

varieties "from the stiff, labored Gothic hand of the sixteenth century

to the round-text hand of the nineteenth." This judgment is passed upon

_all_ the writing on the margins of the folio, including the pencil

memorandums. For the present we shall set aside the latter,--the pencil

memorandums,--as not properly belonging to this branch of the subject.

For this pencil writing, although it has a most important bearing

upon the question of the good faith of the marginal readings, has no

professed character, antique or modern: it is, of course, not set forth

directly or indirectly, either by the unknown writer of the marginalia,

or by Mr. Collier, as evidence of the date at which they were made. And

as, according to Dr. Ingleby, "the primal evidence of the forgery lies

in the ink writing, and in that alone," with that alone we shall at

present concern ourselves. As the careless, half-formed hand of the

present day, degenerate from "the round hand of the school-master,"

appears only in the pencil writing, we have therefore to deal but with

the first three styles of writing enumerated by Mr. Hardy; and as he

himself admits that "it is perfectly possible that any two of these

hands in succession may have been practised by the same person," if

those who maintain the side of forgery fail to show that "the stiff

upright Gothic of Henry VIII. and Edward VI." appears upon the margins

of this folio, we shall only have the second and third styles enumerated

by Mr. Hardy, i.e., the hands of Elizabeth and James I., to take into

consideration; and the so-called "primal evidence of the forgery," in

the "varieties of forms assignable to different periods," falls to the

ground.

Now it is most remarkable, that, among all the numerous fac-similes

of the writing in this volume which have been published either by Mr.

Collier himself, or by his opponents, with the very purpose of proving

the forgery, not a word or a letter has appeared in a hand which was not

in common use from the latest years of Elizabeth's reign, through James

I.'s and Charles I.'s, down through the Commonwealth to and well past

the time of the Restoration,--a period, be it remembered, of only

between fifty and seventy-five years. We are prepared to show, upon

the backs of title-pages and upon the margins of various books printed

between 1580 and 1660, and in copy-books published and miscellaneous

documents dated between 1650 and 1675, writing as ancient in all its

characteristics as any that has been fac-similed and published with the

purpose of invalidating the genuineness of the marginal readings of Mr.

Collier's folio.

We are also prepared to show that the lack of homogeneousness (aside

from the question of period or fashion) and the striking and various

appearance of the ink even on a single page, which have been relied upon

as strong points against the genuineness of the marginal readings, are

matters of little moment, because they are not evidence either of an

assumed hand or of simulated antiquity; and even further, that the fact

that certain of the pencilled words are in a much more modern-seeming

hand than the words in ink which overlie them is of equally small

importance in the consideration of this question. Our means of

comparison in regard to the folio are limited, indeed, but they are none

the less sufficient; for we may be sure that Mr. Collier's opponents,

who have followed his tracks page by page with microscopes and chemical

tests, who hang their case upon pot-hooks and trammels, and lash

themselves into palaeographic fury with the tails of remarkable _g_-s,

have certainly made public the strongest evidence against him that they

could discover.

Among many old books, defaced after the fashion of old times with

writing upon their blank leaves and spaces, in the possession of the

present writer, is a copy of the second edition of Bartholomew Young's

translation of Guazzo's "Civile Conversation," London, 4to., 1586. This

volume was published without that running marginal abstract of the

contents which is so common upon the books of its period. This omission

an early possessor undertook to supply; and in doing so he left evidence

which forbids us to accept all the conclusions as to the Collier folio

and manuscripts which the British palaeographists draw from the premises

which they set forth. Upon the very first page of the Preface he writes,

in explanation of the phrase "hee which fired the temple of Diana," the

name "_Erostrato_" in a manner which brings to mind one point strongly

made by Dr. Ingleby against the genuineness of a Ralegh letter brought

forward by Mr. Collier, as well as of the manuscript readings in the two

folio Shakespeares, which he also brought to light. Dr. Ingleby says,

"I have given a copy of Mr. Collier's fac-simile in sheet No. II.,

and alongside of that I have placed the impossible E in the Ralegh

signature, and the almost exactly similar E which occurs in the

emendation _End, vice_ 'And,' in the Bridgewater Folio. By means of this

monstrous letter we are enabled to trace the chain of forgery from the

Perkins Folio through the Bridgewater Folio, to the perpetration of the

abomination at the foot of the Ralegh letter."[X]

[Footnote X: _Complete View_, p. 309.]

Below we give fac-similes of six E-s. No. I is from the margin of the

first page of the Preface to Guazzo, mentioned above; No. 2 from the

third, and No. 3 from the fifth page of the same Preface; No. 4 from

fol. 27 _b_ of the body of the work; No. 5 is the "monstrous letter"

of the Bridgewater folio; and No. 6 the "impossible E" of the Ralegh

signature.

[Illustration]

Now how monstrous the last two letters are is a matter of taste,--how

impossible, a matter of knowledge; but we submit that any man with a

passable degree of either taste or knowledge is able to decide, and

will decide that No. 6 is not more impossible than No. 1, or No. 4 more

monstrous than No. 2; while in Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, there is exhibited a

variation in the form of capital letters, instances of which Dr. Ingleby

intimates it is impossible to find in genuine handwriting, and the

existence of which in the Collier folio Mr. Hamilton sets forth as one

reason for invalidating the good faith of its marginal readings.[Y]

[Footnote Y: Inquiry, p. 23.]

But our copy of Guazzo is of further use to us in the examination of

this subject. It exhibits, within less than one hundred folios of

marginal annotations, almost all the characteristics (except, be it

remembered, those of the pencil writing) which are relied upon as proofs

of the forgery of the marginalia of Mr. Collier's folio. The writing

varies from a cursive hand which might almost have been written at the

present day to (in Mr. Duffus Hardy's phrase) "the cursive based on an

Italian model,"--that is, the "sweet Roman hand" which the Countess

Olivia wrote, as became a young woman of fashion when "Twelfth Night"

was produced; and from this again to the modified chancery hand which

was in such common use in the first half of the century 1600, and again

to a cramped and contracted chirography almost illegible, which went out

of general use in the last years of Elizabeth and the first of James I.

All these varieties of handwriting, except the last, were in use from

1600 to the Restoration. They will be found in the second edition of

Richard Gethinge's "Calligraphotechnia, or The Arte of Faire Writing,

1652." This, in spite of its sounding name, is nothing more than a

writing-master's copper-plate copy-book; and its republication in

1652, with these various styles of chirography, is important accessory

evidence in the present case.[Z]

[Footnote Z: Lowndes mentions no other edition than that of 1652; and

Mr. Bohn in his new edition of the Bibliographer has merely repeated the

original in this respect. But if Lowndes had seen only the edition of

1652, he might have found in it evidence of the date of the publication

of the book. It is dedicated to "Sir Francis Bacon Knight, his Ma'ties

Attorney Generall"; and as Bacon was made Attorney General in 1613 and

Lord Keeper in 1617, the book must have been published between those

dates; and one of the plates, the 18th, is dated "Anno 1615," and

another, the 24th, "1616."]

But to return to the margins of our Guazzo, from five pages of which we

here give fac-similes.

[Illustration]

The writer of the annotations began his work in that clear Italian hand

which came into vogue in the reign of James I., (see, for instance,

Gethinge, Plates 18 to 28,) of which fac-simile No. 1, "_Experience of

father_" is an example. In the course of the first few pages, however,

his chirography, on the one hand, shows traces of the old English

chancery-hand, and, on the other, degenerates into a careless, cursive,

modern-seeming style, of which fac-simile No. 2, "_England_," is a

striking instance. But he soon corrects himself, and writes for twenty

folios (to the recto of folio 27) with more or less care in his clear

Roman hand. Thence he begins to return rapidly, but by perceptible

degrees, to the old hand, until, on the recto of folio 31, and a page

or two before it, he writes, illegibly to most modern eyes, as in

fac-simile No. 3, "_a proverbe_." Thereafter, except upon certain rare

and isolated occasions, he never returns to his Italian hand, but

becomes more and more antique in his style, so that on folio 65, and for

ten folios before and after, we have such writing as that of fac-simile

No. 4, "_strangers where they come change the speech there used_." On

folios 93 to 95 we find characters like those given in fac-simile No. 5,

which it requires more experience than ours in record-reading entirely

to decipher. On the reverse of folio 95 the annotator, apparently weary

of his task, stayed his hand.

Now in these ninety-nine folios (including the Preface, which is not

numbered) are not only all the five varieties of chirography fac-similed

above, but others partaking the character of some two of these, and

all manifestly written by the same hand; which is shown no less by the

phraseology than by the chirographic traits common to all the notes. And

besides, not a few of these notes, which fill the margins, are in

Latin, and these Latin notes are always written in the Italian hand of

fac-simile No. 1; so that we find that hand, in which all the notes,

English and Latin, (with a few exceptions, like "_England_,") are

written for the first twenty-seven folios, afterward in juxtaposition

with each of the other hands. For instance, on folio 87, recto, we find

"_tolerare laborem propter virtutem quis vult si praemia desunt_,"

written in the style of "_Experience_" No. 1 above, though not so

carefully, and immediately beneath it, manifestly with the same pen, and

it would seem with the same pen-full of ink, "the saying of Galen," in

the style of No. 4, "_strangers where they come_," etc.

The ink, too, in which these notes are written illustrates the shifts to

which our ancestors were put when writing-materials were not made and

bought by the quantity, as they are now,--a fact which bears against

a not yet well-established point made by Mr. Maskelyne of the British

Museum against Mr. Collier's marginalia. This writing exhibits every

possible variety of tint and of shade, and also of consistence and

composition, that ink called black could show. As far as the recto of

folio 12 it has the look of black ink slightly faded. On the reverse of

that folio it suddenly assumes a pale gray tint, which it preserves to

the recto of folio 20. There it becomes of a very dark rich brown, so

smooth in surface as almost to have a lustre, but in the course of a few

folios it changes to a pale tawny tint; again back to black, again

to gray, again to a fine clear black that might have been written

yesterday, and again to the pale tawny, with which it ends. It is also

worthy of notice, that, where this ink has the dark rich brown hue, it

also seems, in the words of Professor Maskelyne, in his letter to the

London "Times," dated July 13, 1859, to be "on rather than in the

paper"; and it also proved in this instance, to use the phraseology of

the same letter, to be "removable, with the exception of a slight stain,

by mere water." But who will draw hence the conclusion of the Professor

with regard to the fluid used on the Collier folio, that it is "a

water-color paint rather than ink,"--unless "ink" is used in a mere

technical sense, to mean only a compound of nutgalls and sulphate of

iron?[aa]

[Footnote aa: The effect produced upon the brown ink on the margins of

the Guazzo by the mere washing it for a few seconds with lint and warm

water may be seen in the word "_apollegy_" on folio 25, reverse, of that

volume, which, with the others noticed in this article, will be left

for inspection at the Astor Library, in the care of Dr. Cogswell, for a

fortnight after the publication of this number of the _Atlantic_. This

slight ablution, hardly more effective than the rubbing of a child's wet

finger, leaves only a pale yellow stain upon the paper.]

Now it should be observed, that, among all the fac-similes published of

the marginal readings in Mr. Collier's folio, there are none either

so modern or so antique in their character as the five fac-similes

respectively given above; nor is there in the former a variation of

style approaching that exhibited in the latter, which all surely

represent the work of one hand. Neither do the fac-similes of the folio

corrections exhibit any chirography more ancient, more "Gothic," than

that of the account a specimen of which was published in our previous

article upon this subject,[bb] and which could not have been written

before 1656, and was quite surely not written until ten years later.

[Footnote bb: See the _Atlantic_ for October, 1859, p. 516.]

* * * * *

We have thus far left out of consideration the faint pencil-memorandums

which play so important a part in the history of Mr. Collier's folio.

We now examine one of their bearings upon the question at issue. Is it

possible that they, or any considerable proportion of them, may be

the traces of pencil-marks made in the century 1600? The very great

importance of this question need not be pointed out. It was first

indicated in this magazine in October, 1859. Mr. Collier has seen it,

and, not speaking with certainty as to the use of plumbago pencils at

that period, he says,--"But if it be true that pencils of plumbago were

at that time in common use, as I believe they were, the old corrector

may himself have now and then adopted this mode of recording on the

spot changes which, in his judgment, ought hereafter [thereafter?]

permanently to be made in Shakespeare's text."[cc]

[Footnote cc: _Reply_, p. 20.]

Another volume in the possession of the present writer affords

satisfactory evidence that these pencil-marks may be memorandums made in

the latter half of the century 1600. It is a copy of "The Historie of

the Life and Death of Mary Stuart Queene of Scotland," London, 1636,--a

small, narrow duodecimo, in the original binding. Upon the first one

hundred and sixty-nine pages of this volume, within the ruled margin so

common in old books, are annotations, very brief and sparse, rarely

more than two upon a page, and often not more than one, and consisting

sometimes of only two or three abbreviated words,--all evidently written

in haste, and all entirely without interest. These annotations, or,

rather, memorandums, like those in the Guazzo, explain or illustrate the

text. At the top of the page, within the margin-rules, the annotator has

written the year during which the events there related took place; and

he has also paged the Preface. Now of these annotations _about one half

are in pencil_, the numbering entirely so, with a single exception. This

pencil-writing is manifestly the product of a period within twenty-five

or thirty years of the date of the printing of the book, and yet it

presents apparent variations in style which are especially noteworthy in

connection with our present subject. Some of this pencil-writing is

as clear as if it were freshly written; but the greater part is much

rubbed, apparently by the mere service that the volume has seen; and

some of it is so faint as to be legible only in a high, reflected light,

in which, however, to sharp eyes it becomes distinctly visible.[dd] That

ordinary black pencil-marks will endure on paper for two centuries

may very likely be doubted by many readers, but without reason.

Plumbago-marks, if not removed by rubbing, are even more durable than

ink; because plumbago is an organic, insoluble substance, not subject

to the chemical changes which moisture, the atmosphere, and fluids

accidentally spilled, and solvents purposely applied, make in the

various kinds of ink which are known to us. The writer discovered this

in the course of many amateur print- and book-cleaning experiments, and

has since found his experience confirmed by the high authority of M.

Bonnardot, in his "Essai sur l'Art de Restaurer les Estampes et les

Livres." Paris, 1858.[ee] Of the annotations in the "History of Queen

Mary," many are in a strange short-hand, in which various combinations

of simple angles, triangles, circles, semicircles, and straight lines

play a conspicuous part, which we find, upon examination, is not written

according to any system promulgated since the middle of the last

century. Our present concern is, however, only with the writing which

is in the ordinary letter, and in pencil. Of this there follow three

specimen fac-similes, including the figures indicating the Anno Domini

at the top of the page from which the words are taken. Three of the

figures (4, 7, 8) by which the Preface is paged are also added.[ff]

[Footnote dd: Some of our readers may be glad to know that writing so

faint as to be indistinguishable even in a bright open light may be

often read in the shadow with that very light reflected upon it, as, for

instance, from the opposite page of a book.]

[Footnote ee: Mr. Bonnardot says:--"_Taches des crayons._ (_Plombagine,

sanguine, crayon noir_, etc.) Les traces _récentes_ que laissent sur le

papier ces divers crayons s'effacent au contact du caoutchouc, ou de la

mie de pain; mais, _quand elles sont trop anciennes, elles résistent à

ces moyens;_ on a recours alors à l'application du savon, etc., etc.

On frotte, etc., etc. S'il restait, après cette opération, des traces

opiniâtres sur le papier, _il faudrait désespérer les enlever_." p. 81.]

[Footnote ff: By a common mistake, easily understood, the fac-similes

have been put upon the block in reverse order. The lines between the

words represent the coarse column-rules of the margins. (Illustration)]

Of these, No. 1 ("_ffer Ph: 2_") explains that "the Emperour & the King

of Spaine" of the text are Ferdinand and Philip II.; No. 2 ("_ffr: 2

death_") directs attention to the mention of the decease of Francis II.

of France; and No. 3 ("_Dudley Q Eliz great favorite_") is apropos of

a supposition by the author of the History that the Virgin Queen "had

assigned Dudley for her own husband." Of the pencil-writing fac-similed

above, the "1559" and the "_e_" in No. 1 and the "_Dudley_" in No. 8 are

so faint as to be almost indistinguishable; the rest of it, though very

much rubbed, is plain enough to those who have good eyes. As to the

period when these annotations were written, there can be no doubt that

it was between 1636 and the end of the third quarter of that century;

yet the difference between Nos. 1 and 2 and the last line of No. 8 is

very noticeable. There are many other words in pencil in the same volume

quite as modern-looking as "_favorite_" in No. 3. Does not this make it

clear that the pencil-writing on the margins of Mr. Collier's folio, the

greater part of which is so indistinct that to most eyes it is illegible

without the aid of a magnifying-glass, and of which not a few of the

most legible words are incomplete, may be the pencil-memorandums of a

man who entered these marginal readings in the century 1600? Who shall

undertake to say that pencil-writing so faint as to have its very

existence disputed, and which is written over so as to be partially

concealed, possesses a decided modern character, when such writing

as that of "_favorite_" above exists, both in pencil and in ink, the

production of which between 1636 and 1675 it would be the merest folly

to question? The possibility of the readings having been first entered

in pencil need not be discussed. It is not only probable that they would

be so entered, but that would be the method naturally adopted by a

corrector of any prudence, who had not an authoritative copy before him;

and that this corrector had such aid not one now pretends to believe. We

shall also find, farther on, that pencil-memorandums or guides, the good

faith of which no one pretends to gainsay, were used upon this volume. A

similar use of pencil is common enough nowadays. We know some writers,

who, when correcting their own proofs, always go over them with pencil

first, and on a second reading make the corrections, often with material

changes, in ink over the pencil-marks. Even letters are, or rather were,

written in this manner by young people in remote rural districts, where

an equal scarcity of money and paper made an economy of the latter

necessary,--a fact which would have a bearing upon the pencilled Marston

letter, but for one circumstance to be noticed hereafter.

But one point, and that apparently the strongest, made against another

of Mr. Collier's MSS., we are able to set aside entirely. It is that

alleged identity of origin between the List of Players appended to the

letter from the Council to the Lord Mayor of London and the well-known

"Southampton" letter signed H.S., which is based upon an imagined

general similarity of hand and a positive identity of form in a certain

"very remarkable _g_" which is found in both.[gg] The general similarity

seems to us sheerly imaginary; but the _g_ common to the two documents

is undoubtedly somewhat unusual in form. That it is not peculiar to the

documents in question, however, whether they were written by one hand or

two, we happen to be in a position to show. _Ecce signum!_

[Footnote gg: See above, p. 266.]

[Illustration]

No. 1 of the above fac-similes is the _g_ of the H.S. letter, No. 2 the

_g_ of the List of Players, and in the name below is a _g_ of exactly

the same model. This name is written upon the last page of "The Table"

of a copy of Guevara's "Chronicle conteyning the lives of tenne

Emperours of Rome," translated by Edward Hellowes, London, 1577. This

book is bound up in ancient binding with copies of the "Familiar

Epistles" of the same writer, Englished by the same translator, 1582,

and of his "Familiar Epistles," translated by Geffrey Fenton, 1582.

The volume is defaced by little writing besides the names of three

possessors whose hands it passed through piecemeal or as a whole; but it

is remarkable, that, while one possessor has written on the first title

in ink the price which he paid for it, "_pr. 2s. 6d._," in a handwriting

like that of "_proverbe_" in the third fac-simile from Guazzo, on p. 268

above, another has recorded _in pencil_ on the next leaf the amount it

cost him, "pr: 5s.," in a hand of perhaps somewhat later date, more in

the style of the fac-similes from the "Life of Queen Mary," on p. 271.

This pencil memorandum is very plain.[hh] It is worthy of special note

also, that one of the owners of this volume, a Simon Holdip, writes on

the last page of the "Lives of the Ten Emperors," the last in order

of binding, "_per me Simone Holdip in te domine speravi_" in the old

so-called chancery-hand, while on the first page of the Dedication

of the "Familiar Epistles," the first in order of binding, he writes

"_Simon Holdip est verus possessor hujus libri_," in as fair an Italian

hand as Richard Gethinge or the Countess Olivia herself could show. This

evidence of property a subsequent owner has stricken through many times

with his pen. In this volume we not only find the "remarkable _g_," the

tail of which is relied upon as a link in the chain of evidence to prove

the forgery of two documents, but yet another instance of the use of

dissimilar styles of writing by the same individual two hundred or two

hundred and fifty years ago, and also a well-preserved pencil memorandum

of the same period.[ii] But we have by no means disposed of all of this

question as to the pencil-writing, and we shall revert to it.

[Footnote hh: It probably records the price paid by the buyer of the

whole volume at second-hand in the first part of the century 1600.

The first memorandum is quite surely the price paid for the _Familiar

Epistles_ alone; for on the binding of the three books into one volume,

which took place at an early date, the tops of the capital letters of

this possessor's name were slightly cut down.]

[Footnote ii: Similar evidence must abound; and perhaps there is more

even within the reach of the writer of this article. For he has made

no particular search for it; but merely, after reading Dr. Ingleby's

_Complete View_, looked somewhat hastily through those of his old books

which, according to his recollection, contained old writing,--which, by

the way, has always recommended an antique volume to his attention.]

That the writing of the "Certificate of the Blackfriars Players," the

"Blackfriars Petition," and the marginal readings in Mr. Collier's folio

shows that they are by the same hand we cannot see. Their chirography is

alike, it is true, but it is not the same. Such likeness is often to

be seen. The capital letters are formed on different models; and the

variation in the _f-s, s-s, d-s_, and _y-s_ is very noticeable.

* * * * *

We now turn to another, and, to say the least, not inferior department

of the evidence in this complicated case. Mr. Hamilton has done yeoman's

service by his collation and publication of all the manuscript readings

found on the margins of "Hamlet" in Mr. Collier's folio. It is by far

the most important part of his "Inquiry." It fixes indelibly the stigma

of entire untrustworthiness upon Mr. Collier, by showing, that, when he

professed, after many examinations, to give a list of all the marginal

readings in that folio, he did not, in this play at least, give much

more than one-third of them, and that some of those which he omitted

were even more striking than those which he published. We must be as

brief as possible; and we shall therefore bring forward but one example

of these multitudinous sins against truth; and one is as fatal as a

dozen. In the last scene of the play, Horatio's last speech (spoken, it

will be remembered, after the death of the principal characters and the

entrance of Fortinbras) is correctly as follows, according to the text

both of the folios and the quartos:--

"Of that I shall have also cause to speak;

And from his mouth, whose voice will draw on more:

But let this same be presently perform'd,

Even while men's minds are wild, lest more mischance,

On plots and errors, happen."

But in Mr. Collier's folio it is "corrected" after this astounding

fashion:--

"Of that I shall have also cause to speak,

And from his mouth, whose voice shall draw on more.

But let this _scene_ be presently perform'd,

_While I remaine behind to tell a tale

That shall hereafter turn the hearers pale_."

Now, while Mr. Collier publishes the specious change of "this same" to

"this _scene_" he entirely passes over the substitution of two whole

lines immediately below. And who needs to be told why? Mr. Collier could

have the face and the folly to bring forward other priceless additions

of whole lines, even, in "Henry VI,"--

"My staff! Here, noble Henry, is my staff:

_To think I fain would keep it makes me

laugh_,"--

but he had judgment enough to see, that, if it were known that his

corrector had foisted the two lines in Italic letter above into the most

solemn scene in "Hamlet," the whole round world would ring with scornful

laughter. This collation of "Hamlet" has not only extinguished Mr.

Collier as a man of veracity, but it has given the _coup de grace_ to

any pretence of deference due to these marginal readings on any score.

But it has done something else. It has brought facts to light which in

themselves are inconsistent with the supposition that Mr. Collier or any

other man forged all these marginal readings,--that is, wrote them in

a pretended antique character,--and which, taken in connection with

the evidence that we have already examined, settles this part of the

question forever.

The number of marginal alterations in this play, according to Dr.

Ingleby's count, which we believe is correct, is four hundred and

twenty-six. Now for how many of this number does the reader suppose

that the sharp eyes and the microscopes of the British Museum and its

unofficial aids have discovered the relics of pencil memorandums?

Exactly ten,--as any one may see by examining Mr. Hamilton's collation.

Of these ten, three are for punctuation,--the substitution of a period

for a semicolon, the introduction of three commas, and the substitution

of an interrogation point for a comma; the punctuation being of not the

slightest service in either case, as the sense is as clear as noonday

in all. Two are for the introduction of stage-directions in Act I.,

Sc. 3,--"_Chambers_," and, on the entrance of the Ghost, "_armed as

before_"; neither of which, again, added anything to the knowledge of

the modern reader. This leaves but five pencil memorandums of changes in

the text; and they, with two exceptions, are the mere adding of letters

not necessary to the sense.

Of these four hundred and twenty-six marginal changes, a very large

proportion, quite one-half, and we should think more, are mere

insignificant literal changes or additions, such as an editor in

supervising manuscript, or an author in reading proof, passes over, and

leaves to the proof-readers of the printing-office, by whom they are

called "literals," we believe. Such are the change of "_Whon_ yond

same starre" to "_When_ yond," etc.; "_Looke_ it not like the king" to

"_Lookes_ it," etc.; "He _smot_ the sledded Polax" to "He _smote_,"

etc.; "_Heaven_ will direct it" to "_Heavens_ will," etc.; "list,

_Hamle_, list," to "list, _Hamlet_, list"; "the _Mornings_ Ayre" to

"the _Morning_ Ayre"; "My Liege and _Madrm_" to "My Liege and _Madam_";

"_locke_ of Wit" to "_lacke_ of Wit"; "both our _judgement_ joyne"

to "both our _judgements_ joyne"; "my _convseration_" to "my

_conversation_"; "the _strucken_ Deere" to "the _stricken_ Deere";

"_Requit_ him for your Father" to "_Requite_ him," etc.; "I'll _anoiot_

my sword" to "I'll _anoint_" etc.; "the _gringding_ of the Axe" to "the

_grinding_" etc. To corrections like these the alleged forger must

have devoted more than half his time; and if the thirty-one pages that

"Hamlet" fills in the folio furnish us a fair sample of the whole of

the forger's labors,[jj] we have the enormous sum of six thousand four

hundred, and over, of such utterly useless changes upon the nine hundred

pages of that volume. Such another laborious scoundrel, who labored for

the labor's sake, the world surely never saw!

[Footnote jj: Dr. Ingleby says,--"The collations of that single play are

a perfect picture of the contents of the original, and a just sample of

the other plays in that volume."--_Complete View_, p. 131.]

But among these marginal changes in "Hamlet," a large number present

a very striking and significant peculiarity,--a peculiarity which was

noticed in our previous article as characterizing other marginal changes

in the same volume, and which it is impossible to reconcile with the

purpose of a forger who knew enough to make the body of the corrections

on these margins, and who meant to obtain authority for them as being,

in the words of Mr. Collier, "Early Manuscript Corrections in the Folio

of 1632." That peculiarity is a _modernization of the text absolutely

fatal to the "early" pretensions of the readings;_ and it appears in the

regulation of the loose spelling prevalent at the publication of this

folio, and for many years after, by the standard of the more regular

and approximately analogous fashion of a later period, and also in the

establishment of grammatical concords, which, entirely disregarded in

the former period, were observed by well-educated people in the latter.

Thus we find "He _smot_" changed to "He _smote_"; "Some _sayes_" to

"Some _say_"; "_veyled_ lids" to "_vayled_ lids"; "_Seemes_ to me all

the uses" to "_Seem_ to me all the uses"; "It lifted up _it_ head" to

"It lifted up _its_ head"; "_dreins_ his draughts" to "_drains_ his

draughts"; "fast in _fiers_" to "fast in _fires_"; "a _vild_ phrase,

beautified is a _vild_ phrase," to "a _vile_ phrase, beautified is a

_vile_ phrase"; "How in my words _somever_ she be shent" to "How in my

words _soever_," etc.; "_currants_ of this world" to "_currents_," etc.;

"theres _matters_" to "theres _matter_"; "like some _oare_" to "like

some _ore_"; "this _vilde_ deed" to "this _vile_ deed"; "a sword

_unbaited_" to "a sword _unbated_"; "a _stoape_ liquor" to "a _stoop_

liquor"; and "the _stopes_ of wine" to "the _stoopes_ of wine." Of

corrections like these we have discovered twenty-eight among the

collations of "Hamlet" alone, and there are probably more. We may safely

assume that in this respect "Hamlet" fairly represents the other plays

in Mr. Collier's folio; for we have not only Dr. Ingleby's assurance

that it is a "just sample" of the volume, but in the four octavo sheets

of fac-similes privately printed by Mr. Collier we find these instances

of like corrections: "_Betide_ to any creature" to "_Betid_," etc.;

"_Wreaking_ as little" to "_Wrecking_ as little"; "painted _cloathes_"

to "painted _clothes_"; "words that _shakes_" to "words that _shake_."

Twenty-eight such corrections for the thirty-one pages of "Hamlet" give

us about eight hundred and fifty for the nine hundred pages of the whole

volume,--eight hundred and fifty instances in which the alleged forger,

who wished to obtain for his supposed fabrication the consideration due

to antiquity, modernized the text, though he obtained thereby only a

change of form, and not a single new reading, in any sense of the term!

We turn to kindred evidence in the stage-directions. In "Love's Labor's

Lost," Act IV., Sc. 3, when Birone conceals himself from the King, the

stage-direction in the folio of 1632, as well as in that of 1623, is

"_He stands aside_." But in Mr. Collier's folio of 1632 this is changed

to "_He climbs a tree_," and he is afterward directed to speak "_in the

tree_." So again in "Much Ado about Nothing," Act II., Sc. 3, there is a

MS. stage-direction to the effect that Benedick, when he hides "in the

arbour," "_Retires behind the trees_." Now as this use of scenery

did not obtain until after the Restoration, these stage-directions

manifestly could not have been written until after that period. Upon

this point--which was first made in "Putnam's Magazine" for October,

1853, in the article "The Text of Shakespeare: Mr. Collier's Corrected

Folio of 1632,"--Mr. Halliwell says (fol. Shak. Vol. IV. p. 340) that

the writer of that article "fairly adduces these MS. directions as

incontestable evidences of the late period of the writing in that

volume, 'practicable' trees certainly not having been introduced on the

English stage until after the Restoration." See, too, in the following

passage from "The Noble Stranger," by Lewis Sharpe, London, 1640, direct

evidence as to the stage customs in London, eight years after the

publication of Mr. Collier's folio, in situations like those of Birone

and Benedick:--

"I am resolv'd, I over-

Heard them in the presence appoynt to walke

Here in the garden: now in _yon thicket

I'll stay_," etc.

"_Exit behind the Arras_."

But no man in the world knows the ancient customs of the English stage

better than Mr. Collier,--we may even say, so well, and pay no undue

compliment to the historian of that stage;[kk] and though he might

easily, in the eagerness of discovery, overlook the bearing of such

stage-directions as those in question, will it be believed, by any one

not brimful of blinding prejudice, that, in attempting the imposition

with which he is charged, and in forging in a copy of the folio of 1632

notes and emendations for which he claimed deference because they were,

in his own words, "in a handwriting not much later than the time when it

came from the press," he deliberately wrote in these stage-directions,

which in any case added nothing to the reader's information, and which

he, of all men, knew would prove that his volume was not entitled to the

credit he was laboring to obtain for it?

[Footnote kk: _The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of

Shakespeare: and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration_. By J. Payne

Collier, Esq., F.S.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.]

Again, Mr. Hamilton's collations of "Hamlet" show that no less than

thirty-six passages have been erased from that play in this folio. These

erased passages are from a few insignificant words to fifty lines in

extent They include lines like these in Act I., Sc. 2:--

"With one auspicious and one dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in

marriage,"--

and these from the same scene:--

"It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;

A heart unfortified, or mind impatient;

An understanding simple and unschool'd:

For what we know must be, and is as common

As any the most vulgar thing to sense,

Why should we, in our peevish opposition,

Take it to heart? Fie! 't is a fault to heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

To reason most absurd; whose common theme

Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,

From the first corse, till he that died to-day,

This must be so."

In the last scene, all after Horatio's speech; "Now cracks a noble

heart," etc., is struck out. Who will believe that any man in his

senses, making corrections for which he meant to claim the deference

due to a higher authority than the printed test, would make such and so

numerous erasures? In fact, no one does so believe.

But the collations of "Hamlet" furnish in these erasures one other very

important piece of evidence. In Act II., Sc. 1, the passage from and

including Reynaldo's speech, "As gaming, my Lord," to his other speech,

"Ay, my Lord, I would know that," is crossed out. But the lines are not

only crossed through in ink, they are "also marked in pencil." Now it

is confessed by the accusers of Mr. Collier that these erasures are the

marks of an ancient adaptation of the text to stage purposes, which were

made before the marginal corrections of the text; otherwise they must

needs have maintained the preposterous position just above set forth.

And besides, it is admitted, that, in the numerous passages which are

both erased and corrected, the work itself shows that the corrections

were made upon the erasures, and not the erasures upon the corrections.

We have, therefore, here, upon the very pages of this folio, evidence

that alterations in pencil not only might have been, but were, made upon

it at an early period, even in regard to so very slight a matter as the

crossing out of fourteen lines; and that these pencilled lines served as

a guide for the subsequent permanent erasure in ink.

And this collation of "Hamlet" also enables us to decide with

approximate certainty upon the period when these manuscript readings

were entered upon the margins of the folio. Not more surely did the

lacking aspirate betray the Ephraimite at Jordan than the spelling of

this manuscript corrector reveals the period at which he performed his

labors. Take, for instance, the word "vile." Any man who could make the

body of these corrections knows that the most common spelling of "vile"

down to the middle of the century 1600 was _vild_ or _vilde_. This

spelling has even been retained in the text by some editors, and with at

least a semblance of reason, as being not a mere variation in spelling,

but as representing a different form of the word. No man knows all this

better than Mr. Collier; and yet we are called upon to believe that he,

meaning to obtain authoritative position for the marginal readings in

this folio, by making them appear to have been written by a contemporary

of Shakespeare's later years, altered _vild_ to _vile_ in three passages

of a single play, though he thereby made not the slightest shade of

difference in the meaning of the passage! And the same demand is made

upon our credulity in regard to the eight hundred and fifty similar

instances! Sir Frederic Madden, Mr. Duffus Hardy, Mr. Hamilton,

Dr. Ingleby, accomplished palaeographers, keen-eyed, remorseless

investigators, learned doctors though you be, you cannot make men who

have common sense believe this. Your tests, your sharp eyes, and your

optical aids, even that dreadful "microscope bearing the imposing and

scientific name of the Simonides Uranius," which carried such terror to

the heart of Mr. Collier, will fail to convince the world that he spent

hour after hour and day after day in labors the only purpose of which

was directly at war with that which you attribute to him, and which, if

he made these manuscript corrections, must have been the motive of his

labors.

But if Mr. Collier, or some other man of this century, did not make

these orthographical changes, when were they made? Let us trace the

fortunes of _vile_, which is a good test word, as being characteristic,

and as it occurs several times in "Hamlet," and is there thrice

modernized by the manuscript corrector. It occurs five times in that

play, as the reader may see by referring to Mrs. Clarke's "Concordance."

In the folio of 1623, in all these cases, except the first, it is

spelled _vild_; in the folio of 1632, with the same exception, we also

find _vild_; even in the folio of 1664[ll] the spelling in all these

instances remains unchanged; but in the folio of 1685, _vild_ gives

place to _vile_ in every case. As with "vild," so with the other words

subjected to like changes. To make a long story short, the spelling

throughout the marginal readings of this folio, judged by the numerous

fac-similes and collations that have been published, indicates the close

of the last quarter of the century 1600 as the period about which the

volume in which they appear was subjected to correction. The careful

removal (though with some oversights) of those irregularities and

anomalies of spelling which were common before the Restoration, and the

harmonizing of grammatical discords which were disregarded before that

period, and, on the other hand, the retention of the superfluous final

_e_, (once the _e_ of prolongation,) and of the _l_ in the contractions

of "would," in accordance with a pronunciation which prevailed in

England until 1700 and later, all point to this date, which is also

indicated by various other internal proofs to which attention has been

heretofore sufficiently directed.[mm] The punctuation, too, which,

as Mr. Collier announced in "Notes and Emendations," etc., 1853, is

corrected "with nicety and patience," is that of the books printed after

the Restoration, as may be seen by a comparison of Mr. Collier's private

fac-similes and the collations of "Hamlet" in Mr. Hamilton's book with

the original editions of poems and plays printed between 1660 and 1675.

[Footnote ll: Or 1663, according to the title-pages of some copies that

we have seen.]

[Footnote mm: See _Shakespeare's Scholar_, pp. 56-62. And to the

passages noticed there, add this: In _King Henry VI_., Part II., Act

IV., Sc. 5, is this couplet:--

"Fight for your King, your country, and your lives.

And so farewell; for I must hence again."