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

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."[R]
[Footnote R: A _Review_, etc., pp. 6, 7.]
On this point Dr. Ingleby says, succinctly and decidedly, "The primal evidence of the forgery lies in the ink writing, and in that alone";[S] 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."[T] 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.