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ANTI-COLLIER PERKINS.

volume, and are now sought to be incorporated with the text of Shakespere by an ingenious contriver, apparently only that he might mislead the judgment, and put inquirers off the

scent.

If it be admitted, as some apologists suggest, that the Perkins-Collier folio is a stage-manager's copy adapted to a more modern taste and style of speech, what value, as Shakespere emendations, can the so-called corrections have? None. They are clearly fabrications, by whoever made.

These textual corrections were just discovered (?) when debates regarding the value of different readings had filled our literature with a number of bilious verbal criticisms. They had an apparent second intention-the substantiation of the readings proposed by the discoverer; and they were patiently and grossly used for gain-making by the three successive publications to which they gave rise. They thus fulfilled the antecedent probability of an imposture suited to the time and circumstance, and the subsequent probability of a fabrication being used for a gainful purpose.

The suspicious inconsistency of Mr. Collier in his treatment of the Perkins folio must not be overlooked. 1. His "Notes and Emendations" contained conjectural matter besides those in the folio, and only some of the corrections themselves. 2. His mono-volumed Shakespere professed to incorporate all the corrections with the text, but only did so with some. 3. In "Seven Lectures on Shakespere and Milton," he gave "a list of every note and emendation in Mr. Collier's copy of Shakespere's works," yet scarcely gave above a third. There was here evidently something to conceal. Now he trusts his memory, and distrusts his notes; again he distrusts his memory, and trusts his notes, and rambles about his story in a most inconsequent manner. Moreover, he roundly asserts that he " never made a single pencil-mark

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were not made for a literary but a theatrical purpose, and were not intended for publication by the corrector. This is farther proven by the rhyme-endings, which are so frequently introducedstage-managers' poetry and fustian. Neither Collier nor any other literary man would have made such changes in the hope of commending their labours to the present age.

The quantity, and particularly the quaint and daring nature of the corrections-many of them relating merely to punctuation- the variety, changeableness, and apparent fickleness of purpose, indicated by change of penmanship, ink, mode of correcting, &c, all of which are held to be arguments against the antiquity of the corrections-are in reality strong evidence that they have not been the work of a solitary, persistent forger, who would guard against such (as they would appear to him) suspicion-creating circumstances.

Regarding the pencil-jottings and their modern cursive character, it is a well-known fact that, in general, pencil notes are freer and more diffused than pen ones, and that a fac simile of one's pencil notes would afford but a poor means of judging of one's ordinary penmanship. It is very natural that annotations, when they first strike the mind, should be jotted in pencil, that farther thought may be given to the suggestion before its registration in the less perishable ink-character. There does not, therefore, seem to be anything puzzling in this fact.

Mr. Collier has been an assiduous student of Elizabethan literature for upwards of forty years; he has been well mixed up with Shakesperean polemics, and has exposed himself to the usual consequences of antagonism, doubt, and hate. It is consonant with human nature to suppose that, opportunity arising, there should not be wanting defamers to hint a doubt, or damn with cunning leer.

To believe the folio corrections forged, or rather fabricated, we must believe

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on the pages of the book, excepting crosses, ticks, or lines, to direct attention to particular emendations; while there are to be found in it "an infinite number," Mr. Hamilton says, "of faint pencil-marks and corrections on the margins, in obedience to which the supposed old corrector had made his emendations:" yet these Collier never mentioned in his description of the work. The pencil-writing is said to underlie the ink, and may, it is said, be often seen below it and beyond it. Indeed, continual blundering is the mildest term that can be used for the vague, longwinded, different methods in which he tries to quibble himself out of a difficulty -when straightforward truthfulness could only have one possible way.

The following external characteristics of fabrication are observable in the Perkins folio, viz.:-1. The handwriting is [to all appearance] feigned. 2. The alterations made in ink are [i. e., have been] suggested by marks made with pencil. 3. The pencil-writing is modern. And 4. The same handwriting seemingly appears both in the pencil and the pen alterations.

The Perkins folio is of date 1632. Collier says it had been once a Mr. Parry's. Parry's was a 1623 copy, and differed in binding, corrections, &c., from that of Mr. Collier, who says he showed him the Perkins folio, and that he acknowledged it; while Mr. Parry disclaims having seen it till he had it presented to him in the British Museum by Sir F. Madden. Again, Collier bought the book for thirty shillings just when the parcel was opened; and he says,

"when I took it home," whereas Dr. Wellesley, on whose testimony he relies, says that Rodd "had put it by for another customer." These appear to be fatal discrepancies in a story which might and ought to be so plainly told.

The intense agony and self-will with which Collier maintains the thesis of the [supposed] Perkins corrections is a singular corroboration of self-iden

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that some one, possessed of more Shakesperean knowledge than all living and ancient commentators put together have had, was content to act more foolishly than a common begging-letter writer, and to jeopardize his whole aim by learning his role imperfectly.

The tone and temper of the controversy on this question are singularly provocative of the thought that literary jealousy and personal pique override the love of truth. There are a virulence of tone and a ferocity of temper displayed in this controversy, which is singularly alien to the consideration which should be given to the works of gentle Shakespere.

No test-word, anachronism, or chronological difficulty has yet been discovered by which the validity of the hypothesis of Collier might be tried, and the falsehood [if any] precipitated by such a drop of pure logic as might make it unmistakeably apparent. Singer suggested "wheedling;" Dyce, unheard ; and Ingleby, cheers; but they have each been shown to be untenable as objections. Besides, Halliwell has shown that the folio of 1632 has undergone some modernization, and so may much more probably an acting copy have done.

Even the test of imputed plagiarism fails when put to trial. Hamilton adduces "Hamlet," of which there are three quartos, as a test of the deficiency of originality in the emendations; but this is evidently an unfair selection; for the nearer the corrector came to the truth, the more nearly must he have approached to the readings of the original text. Dr. Ingleby acts more fairly. He chooses "Measure for Measure," collects the conjectural emendations of former commentators or editors; and finds that of fifty-five alterations proposed by the Perkins folio corrector, twenty-nine coincide with other suggestions, while twenty-six have no known authority except this "Old Corrector." He, whoever he was, then, who annotated this folio, has made nearly as many original emendations on this play as

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tification with the [reputed] author, and is hence suspicious; and all the more so that, in doing this, Collier acts in opposition to his antecedents as a Shakespere editor-a scrupulous adherence to the old texts. And all this 'froth and fury" is for the honour of a hypothetic, not a real, being!

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The unequivocal decision of the greatest palæographers of the day, Sir F. Madden, Messrs. Bond, Hamilton, &c., is that the "Old Corrector" never lived in the seventeenth century, but that the notes were fabricated at a recent period. In this opinion, Messrs. Ingleby, Staunton, Maskelyne, Arnold, Watts, Hardy, Professor Bodenstedt, &c., are understood to concur. The opponents of the Collier-Perkins folio corrections have given their names to the public as a pledge of their honesty. The defenders have carefully adopted and retained the anonymous. The better Shakespereans hold aloof from the contest, and so show that they sympathize with the adverse party.

Suspicion has waited upon every step of Collier's thirty years' long Shakesperean career. No proofs have ever been offered by him of the authenticity of his discoveries, at all adequate to their importance. The long sum of these suspicions, unallayed, gives emphasis to the fear that literature has been tampered with in its inner recesses, and that artful trickery has been made the basis of a reputation which all would wish to be genuine.

The long, inept, evasive, and roundabout reply of Mr. Collier; its style; its impertinences (in all senses); its imputations; its make-shift phraseology; and his careful avoidance of an offer to stand a downright and thorough investigation of the whole covey of discoveries he has made-though not demonstrative of guilt, or guilty fear, -is well-nigh presumptive evidence that all is not right somehow.

Direct accusation and cogent inference have both been employed against the Perkins folio. It has never been

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all the commentators during two centuries-supposing that he had actually borrowed all the others. This shows a power and boldness not easily to be accounted for on the score of falsehood, fraud, and wilful imposition. Even in the "Hamlet" there are no coincidences between the suggestions of contemporary critics or of any editor more modern than Johnson, 1765-1779. If the former fact gave evidence of unhesitating boldness, will it do here to argue that the supposed forger was afraid to "take" or "convey " more modern readings? Does it not rather force us to believe that the folio corrections here are of a date anterior to Collier's birth? Ingleby's "True Restoration," viz., writing, in "Hamlet," is pressed into the service of the antagonists of the folio by a very roundabout logicscarcely trustworthy as reasoning.

Collier's position, as a Shaksperean critic, had been already won; and he is not likely to have hazarded that by any act so certain to displace him from his coigne of vantage," as a wilful fraud or forgery.

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Mr. Collier circumstantially denies that he had any opportunity, even though he had had the will and the inducement, to make any such elaborate simulations as those said to be contained in the Perkins folio.

That suspicion has been vigilantly upon Mr. Collier's track for nearly thirty years, and has been unable to get up a case earlier, is a good proof of his innocence, or of his critics' excessive stupidity. Which horn?

Ireland's forgeries had a short-lived repute and acceptance. If the accusations brought against Collier's Shakespere labours were all true, sagacity must have fled from the lynx-eyes of British critichood.

Dyce, Singer, Halliwell, Knight, with the lesser lights, Hamilton, Staunton, Arnold, Ingleby, Bodenstedt-all outmatched by Collier's single mind!absurd! "Oh, judgment!-thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have

freed from either by any responsible writer. The sulky silence of Collier and the Athenæum is more suspicious than dignified.

lost their reason," if such things could be forged, and be undetected, during the currency of lengthened years!

We have now, as well as possible in our space, with our means and in our circumstances, presented a résumé of the chief items requiring notice in the life and about the writings of Shakespere. We have aimed at little more than supplying our readers with a distinct notion of the poet, the man, his works and his ways, so far as they could be gathered or guessed from the stray materials known of his and their history. We hope we have succeeded in being useful, if not agreeable, companions in this investigation into the “Shakespere facts, fancies, forgeries, and fabrications," in which all thinking men are now interesting themselves. If so, we shall be glad.

APPENDIX.

THE SONNETS.

THE Sonnets of Shakespere constitute one of the enigmas of literature. According to Wordsworth, "there is extant a small volume of miscellaneous poems, in which Shakespeare expresses his feelings in his own person," "exquisite feelings, felicitouly expressed." In speaking of the Sonnets, he affirms that

"With this key

Shakespere unlocked his heart,"

How much of hem

and so implies that they are autobiographical. ought to be construed as the dim forthshadowing of actuallife; how much as the mere registration of fleeting, fitful fancies how much as mere exercitations in expression, rhythm, and poeticskill; how much as matter merely composed in accordance win the ordinary custom of the time when sonneteering was fashionale,—is yet a matter of dispute. Chalmers believed they were all adressed to Queen Elizabeth, an hypothesis certainly absurd nough. Glidon thought they were all amatory effusions, addressd to a mistress. Several other commentators, e. g., Steevens, Malone, Farmer, Tyrwhitt, Drake, &c., decided that several were:ffusions of ardent friendship for a man. Coleridge regards them s having come from a man deeply in love, and in love with awoman.' Schlegel holds that they are the confessions of a wasted puth, and a lament for time and opportunity misused. Hallam poposes to consider that the cause of their being written was anamour, in which he was at last outwitted and betrayed by his nstress and his friend,—a horrible hypothesis of infidelity in all tree. Mrs. Jameson says: “It appears that some of them are addessed to hig amiable friend, Lord Southampton; and others, I thnk, are addressed, in Southampton's name, to that beautifi Elizabeth Vernon, to whom the Earl was so long and so ardenty attached.”

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