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

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."18

On this point Dr. Ingleby says, succinctly and decidedly, "The primal evidence of the forgery lies in the ink writing, and in that alone";19 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."20 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.21 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."22 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'."23

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."24

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.

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.25

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.26

But to return to the margins of our Guazzo, from five pages of which we here give fac-similes.

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?27

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,28 and which could not have been written before 1656, and was quite surely not written until ten years later.

* * * * *

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."29

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.30 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, 1858.31 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.32