Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861

After breakfast, Mr. Mellasys left us. It was, he said, the day of the election for President. How wretched that America should not be governed by hereditary sovereigns and an order of nobles trained to control!

The day passed. It was afternoon, and I sat reading one of the novels of my favorite De Balzac to my Saccharissa. At the same time my imagination, following the author, strayed to Paris, and recalled to me my bachelor joys in that gay capital. I resolved to repeat them again, on our arrival there, at my bride's expense. How charming to possess a hundred thousand dollars, ($100,000,) even burdened with a wife!

My reading and my reverie were interrupted by the tramp of horses without. Six persons in dress-coats rode up, dismounted, and approached. All were smoking cigars with the lighted ends in their mouths. Mellasys Plickaman led the party. I recognized also the persons who had questioned me as to my politics. They entered the apartment where I sat alone with Saccharissa.

"Thar he is!" said Mellasys Plickaman. "Thar is the d—d Abolitionist!"

Seeing that he indicated me, and that his voice was truculent, I looked to my betrothed for protection. She burst into tears and drew a handkerchief.

An odor of musk combated for an instant with the whiskey reek diffused by Mr. Plickaman and his companions. The balmy odor was, however, quelled by the ruder scent.

"I am surprised, Mr. Plickaman," said I, mildly, but conscious of tremors, "at your use of opprobrious epithets in the presence of a lady."

"Oh, you be blowed!" returned he, with unpardonable rudeness. "You can't skulk behind Saccharissy."

"To what is this change in tone and demeanor owing, Sir?" I asked, with dignity.

"Don't take on airs, you little squirt!" said he.

It will be observed that I quote his very language. His intention was evidently insulting.

"Mr. Chylde," remarked Judge Pyke, one of the gentlemen who had been inquisitive as to my political sentiments, "The Vigilance Committee of Fire-Eaters of Bayou La Farouche have come to the conclusion that you are a spy, an Abolitionist, and a friend of Beecher and Phillips. We intend to give you a fair trial; but I may as well state that we have all made up our minds as to the law, the facts, and the sentence. Therefore, prepare for justice. Colonel Plickaman, have you given directions about the tar?"

"It'll be b'ilin' in about eight minutes," replied my quondam rival, with a boo-hoo of vulgar laughter.

"Culprit!" said Judge Pyke, looking at me with a truly terrible expression, "I have myself heard you avow, with insolent audacity, that you were not a Democrat. Do you not know, Sir, that nothing but Democrats are allowed to breathe the zephyrs of Louisiana? Silence, culprit! Not a word! The court cannot be interrupted. I have also heard you state that the immortal Breckenridge, Kentucky's favorite son, was the same to you as the tiger Lincoln, the deadly foe of Southern institutions. Silence, culprit!"

Here Saccharissa moaned, and wafted a slight flavor of musk to me from her cambric wet with tears.

"Colonel Plickaman," continued the Judge, "produce the letters and papers of the culprit."

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October, 1859. No. XXIV.

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.

Notes and Emendations, p. vii.

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.

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.

See Dyce's Strictures , etc., pp. 2, 22, 28, 35, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 70, 123, 127, 146, 168, 192, 203, 204.

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.

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 .

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."

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.