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

First he says 3 3 Notes and Emendations, p. vii. 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. 4 4 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. —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.

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. 5 5 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. 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.

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. 6 6 See Dyce's Strictures , etc., pp. 2, 22, 28, 35, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 70, 123, 127, 146, 168, 192, 203, 204. 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.