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

In 1853 there went up a jubilant cry from many voices upon the publication of Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from Early Manuscript Corrections," etc. "Now," it was said, "doubt and controversy are at an end. The text is settled by the weight of authority, and in accordance with common sense. We shall enjoy our Shakespeare in peace and quiet." Hopeless ignorance of Shakespeare-loving nature! The shout of rejoicing had hardly been uttered before there arose a counter cry of warning and defiance from a few resolute lips, which, swelling, mouth by mouth, as attention was aroused and conviction strengthened, has overwhelmed the other, now sunk into a feeble apologetic plea. The dispute upon the marginal readings in this notorious volume, as to their intrinsic value and their pretence to authority upon internal evidence, has ended in the rejection of nearly all of the few which are known to be peculiar to it, and the conclusion against any semblance of such authority. The investigation of the external evidence of their genuineness, though it has not been quite so satisfactory upon all points, has brought to light so many suspicious circumstances connected with Mr. Collier's production of them before the public, that they must be regarded as unsupported by the moral weight of good faith in the only person who is responsible for them.

Since our previous article upon this subject,1 nothing has appeared upon it in this country; but several important publications have been made in London concerning it; and, in fact, this department of Shakespearian literature threatens to usurp a special shelf in the dramatic library. The British Museum has fairly entered the field, not only in the persons of Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Maskelyne, but in that of Sir Frederic Madden himself, the head of its Manuscript Department, and one of the very first paleographers of the age; Mr. Collier has made a formal reply; the Department of Public Records has spoken through Mr. Duffus Hardy; the "Edinburgh Review" has taken up the controversy on one side and "Fraser's Magazine" on the other; the London "Critic" has kept up a galling fire on Mr. Collier, his folio, and his friends, to which the "Athenaeum" has replied by an occasional shot, red-hot; the author of "Literary Cookery," (said to be Mr. Arthur Edmund Brae,) a well-read, ingenious, caustic, and remorseless writer, whose first book was suppressed as libellous, has returned to the charge, and not less effectively because more temperately; and finally an LL.D., Mansfield Ingleby, of Trinity College, Cambridge, comes forward with a "Complete View of the Controversy," which is manifestly meant for a complete extinction of Mr. Collier. Dr. Ingleby's book is quite a good one of its kind, and those who seek to know the history and see the grounds of this famous and bitter controversy will find it very serviceable. It gives, what it professes to give, a complete view of the whole subject from the beginning, and treats most of the prominent points of it with care, and generally with candor. Its view, however, is from the stand-point of uncompromising hostility to Mr. Collier, and its spirit not unlike that with which a man might set out to exterminate vermin.2

And here we pause a moment to consider the temper in which this question has been discussed among the British critics and editors. From the very beginning, eight years ago, there have been manifestations of personal animosity, indications of an eagerness to seize the opportunity of venting long secreted venom. This has appeared as well in books as in more ephemeral publications, and upon both sides, and even between writers on the same side. On every hand there has been a most deplorable impeachment of motive, accompanied by a detraction of character by imputation which is quite shocking. Petty personal slights have been insinuated as the ultimate cause of an expression of opinion upon an important literary question, and testimony has been impeached and judgment disparaged by covert allegations of disgraceful antecedent conduct on the part of witnesses or critics. Indeed, at times there has seemed reason to believe the London "Literary Gazette" (we quote from memory) right in attributing this whole controversy to a quarrel which has long existed in London, and which, having its origin in the alleged abstraction of manuscripts from a Cambridge library by a Shakespearian scholar, has made most of the British students of this department of English letters more or less partisans on one side or the other. Certainly the "Saturday Review" is correct, (in all but its English,) when it says that in this controversy "a mere literary question and a grave question of personal character are being awkwardly mixed together, and neither question is being conducted in a style at all satisfactory or creditable to literary men."

Mr. Collier is told by Mr. Duffus Hardy that "he has no one to blame but himself" for "the tone which has been adopted by those who differ from him upon this matter," because he, (Mr. Collier,) by his answer in the "Times" to Mr. Hamilton, made it "a personal, rather than a literary question." But, we may ask, how is it possible for a man accused of palming off a forgery upon the public to regard the question as impersonal, even although it may not be alleged in specific terms that he is the forger? Mr. Collier is like the frog in the fable. This pelting with imputations of forgery may be very fine fun to the pelters, but it is death to him. To them, indeed, it may be a mere question of evidence and criticism; but to him it must, in any case, be one of vital personal concern. Yet we cannot find any sufficient excuse for the manner in which Mr. Collier has behaved in this affair from the very beginning. His cause is damaged almost as much by his own conduct, and by the tone of his defence, as by the attacks of his accusers. A very strong argument against his complicity in any fraudulent proceeding in relation to his folio might have been founded upon an untarnished reputation, and a frank and manly attitude on his part; but, on the contrary, his course has been such as to cast suspicion upon every transaction with which he has been connected.

First he says3 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—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 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 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.

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 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 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

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

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

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 and this opinion is now shared even by the authority which gave them at first the fullest and most uncompromising support.13

Other points sought to be established against Mr. Collier and the genuineness of his manuscript authorities must be noticed in an article which aims at the presentation of a comprehensive view of this subject. These are based on certain variations between Mr. Collier's statements as to the readings of his manuscript authorities and a certain supposed "philological" proof of the modern origin of one of those authorities, the folio of 1632. Upon all these points the case of Mr. Collier's accusers breaks down. It is found, for instance, that in the folio an interpolated line in "Coriolanus," Act iii. sc. 2, reads,—

"To brook controul without the use of anger," and that so Mr. Collier gave it in both editions of his "Notes and Emendations," in his fac-similes made for private distribution, in his vile one-volume Shakespeare, and in the "List," etc., appended to the "Seven Lectures." But in his new edition of Shakespeare's Works (6 vols. 1858) he gives it,—

"To brook reproof without the use of anger," and hereupon Dr. Ingleby asks,—"Is it not possible that here Mr. Collier's remarkable memory is too retentive, and that, though second thoughts may be best, first thoughts are sometimes inconveniently remembered to the prejudice of the second?"14 Here we see a palpable slip of memory or of the pen, by which an old man substituted one word for another of similar import, as many a younger man has done before him, tortured into evidence of forgery. Such an objection is worthy of notice only as an example of the carping, unjudicial spirit in which this subject is treated by some of the British critics.

Mr. Collier is accused at least of "inaccuracy" and "ignorance" on account of some of these variations. Thus, in Mrs. Alleyn's Letter, she says that a boy "would have borrowed x's." (ten shillings); and this Mr. Collier reads "would have borrowed x'li." (ten pounds). Whereupon Mr. Duffus Hardy, Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, produces this as one of "the most striking" of Mr. Collier's inaccuracies in regard to this letter, and says that it "certainly betrays no little ignorance, as 10_l_. in those days would have equalled about 60_l_. of our present money." "A strange youth," he adds, "calls on Mrs. Alleyn and asks the loan of 10_l_. as coolly as he would ask for as many pence!" Let us measure the extent of the ignorance shown by this inaccuracy, and estimate its significance by a high standard. In one of the documents which Mr. Collier has brought forward—an account by Sir Arthur Mainwayring, auditor to Sir Thomas Egerton, in James I.'s reign, which is pronounced to be a forgery, and which probably is one—is an entry which mentions the performance of "Othello" in 1602. The second part of this entry is,15—

"Rewards; to m'r. Lyllyes man w'ch } brought y'e lotterye boxe to } x's. Harefield: p m'r. Andr. Leigh." }

Mr. Lyllye's man got ten shillings, then, for his job,—very princely pay in those days. But Mr. Hardy16 prints this entry,—"Rewarde to Mr. Lillye's man, which brought the lotterye box to Harefield x'li."—ten pounds!—the same sum that Mr. Collier made Mr. Chaloner's boy ask of Mrs. Alleyn. In other words, according to Mr. Hardy, Sir Arthur Mainwayring gave a serving-man, for carrying a box, ten pounds as coolly as he would have given as many pence! Now, Mr. Hardy, "as 10_l_. in those days would have equalled about 60_l_. of our present money," on your honor and your palaeographical reputation, does it betray "no little ignorance" to mistake, or, if you please, to misprint, 10's. for ten 10'li.? If no, so much the better for poor Mr. Collier; but if ay, is not the Department of Public Records likely to come to grief?17