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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ