Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 47, September, 1861 | Page 7

"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 10l. in those days would have equalled about 60l. of our present money." "A strange youth," he adds, "calls on Mrs. Alleyn and asks the loan of 10l. 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,[O]--
"Rewards; to m'r. Lyllyes man w'ch } brought y'e lotterye boxe to } x's. Harefield: p m'r. Andr. Leigh." }
[Footnote O: See the fac-simile in Dr. Ingleby's Complete View. p. 262.]
Mr. Lyllye's man got ten shillings, then, for his job,--very princely pay in those days. But Mr. Hardy[P] 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 10l. in those days would have equalled about 60l. 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?[Q]
[Footnote P: _A Review_, etc., p. 60.]
[Footnote Q: We could point out numerous other similar failures and errors in the publications in which Mr. Collier is attacked; but we cannot spare time or space for these petty side-issues.]
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 pre?xistence 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