The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.

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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.11

      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";12 and this opinion is now shared even by the authority which gave them at first the fullest and most uncompromising support.13

      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?"14 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.

      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,15—

      "Rewards; to m'r. Lyllyes man w'ch } brought y'e lotterye boxe to } x's. Harefield: p m'r. Andr. Leigh." }

      Mr. Lyllye's man got ten shillings, then, for his job,—very princely pay in those days. But Mr. Hardy16 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?17

      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

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