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

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. 7 7 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. 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. 8 8 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 . 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.

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. 9 9 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. 10 10 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. 11 11 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"; 12 12 See Putnam's Magazine , October, 1853, and Shakespeare's Scholar , 1854, p. 74. and this opinion is now shared even by the authority which gave them at first the fullest and most uncompromising support. 13 13 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."