of the compositor in setting up the types turned upside down, &c, ;
these have been struck through with the pen, and the corrigenda
placed on the margin : the punctuation has been frequently altered,
and various other technical errors noticed, all pointing to the evident
conclusion that the corrector, whoever he might be, was preparing
the volume for a reprint. The volume might once have belonged
1 See "Edinburgh Keview," April, 1860, pp. 472, 473, and Note; "Atlas,"
March 24, 1860, p. 232 ; "Notes and Queries," March 24, 1860, p. 232; "Saturday
Eeview," April 21, 1860, p. 496 ; " Athenffium," Feb. 18, I860, p. 230, Ac
2 Dr. Wellesley, Mr. Parry, and Mr. Collier cannot agree as to dates ; this unfor-
tunately tends to give the susjjicious an additional anchor. As regards the alleged im-
probabiUty of Mr. Rodd not seeing the notes in the folio, it is more probable that as
Mr. Collier did not discover them for two years afterwards the former had no notion of
their presence : or surely he would have not parted with the book at so low a price.
9
to a play-house. It was the custom to alter parts, scenes, and
speeches to suit the present moment. Pope says he saw a quarto
" which had the parts divided into lines, and the actors^ names in
the margin, and several passages added in a written hand, and which
are since to be found in the folio."
To account for the evident corruptness of the text will scarcely
be necessary here ; two hundred and thirty years ago the art of
printing in England was comparatively in its infancy, and, as is the
case now, inattention on the part of the compositors will frequently
lead to the most curious mistakes in their compositions, which
are not always, even at the present day, detected by the persons
appointed to read the proofs. The Old Corrector, being doubtless
aware of this, contemplated correcting this copy of Shakespeare
which he found so corrupt before he submitted it to the printer for
the sake of reprinting it. He imitated in fact the first publishers
of Shakespeare's collected plays, who told the public that thev
offered them " Cured " from the maimed limbs made by impostors.
But, as many of the more important emendations of the text are
not to be found in any other Folio as yet come to light, I should
be less inclined to think that he made his corrections wholly from
earlier or the different existing editions of the day, or that he
took his book to where Shakespeare's plays were being performed
and there made most of his alterations, than that he did so partly
from memory, from his own private judgment, and from a know-
ledge of what Shakespeare had actually written : and supposing him
to have been born about the year 1500, he would have had ample
opportunity for hearing what Shakespeare had written most correctly
spoken. A disquisition on the reasons why Shakespeare and other
authors of his day were averse to having their works published
would be out of place here. Heminge and Condell, Shakespeare's
fellow-managers, first published a collected edition of his plays in
1G23, seven years after his death, the text of which Mr. Dyce and
others have ably shown was very corrupt.^
' The corrections in the foUo 1632, are often made to agree with the reading of the
10
But before the Old Corrector made his corrections in ink (we
will assume for the moment its archaic character), he, like other
authors of his day, inserted first some of his corrections in pencil.
If, as would be, in a large volume like the present, almost a matter
of necessity, he made them at different times, as opportunity allowed,
it will be easy to understand that ink not always being at hand,
pencil would therefore be sometimes used ; and also as he would
make them in different places the ink would naturally vary a little
as to colour and thickness; the various "touchings up" here and
there would be nothing more than might be expected from a man
persevering in such an arduous undertaking. All this, 1 submit, is
possible.^
It has been alleged that the pencil marks and corrections actually
nnderlyhig the antique-looking ink corrections, and those on the
margin near the ink, are executed by one hand throughout, and
" have no pretence '^ (Inquiry, p. 135) to antiquity about them
either in form or spelling. This statement simply amounts to an
argumentum ad captandum ; for the form of several letters and
syllables under the ink could very justly lay claim to having been
written in the natural hand of the Old Corrector, whilst other
pencil words, separate from the ink, are so obviously modern as to
deceive no one. A critic in " Notes and Queries " (March 24, 1860)
quotes an instance in Cymbeline, p. 400, col. 1 (quoted in " Inquiry,
p. 134) where the word " ClifiFes," which is written va. pencil on the
margin as an emendation of the word " Oakes " in the text, is in
as old handwriting as a second emendation, " Kockes," in ink.
4tos. Many of the literal errors reprinted in the text of tlie folio 1632, and emended
by the Old Corrector," are also in the earlier folio 1623. I have heard some remark on
tlie singularity of so many of the corrections agreeing -vrith what several of our
eminent Shakesperian commentators had suggested : it is surely less to be vrondered at,
that these critics should have, in the com'se of so mam* years, stumbled upon " some of
the true readings."
• Lord EUesmere's folio, where tlie ink corrections are, according to his lordship,
but contradicted by Mr. Hamilton (Inquii-y, p. 71) in a "totally diflerent hand-
writing to the folio 1632," exhibits the same characteristicB — pencil being detected in
some places beneath the ink.
11
But this is not correct. The word " Cliffes " was originally written
in ink, and has been half erased by the Old Corrector, and
" Rockes^' substituted on the opposite margin. There is no trace
of pencil in this alteration.
But even supposing many of the pencil marks to be in a more
modern-looking handwriting than the ink, it has been very satis-
factorily demonstrated and acknowledged that such cursive hand-
writing, especially in pencil, was not infrequent in the middle of
the seventeenth century. ^ The error in some people's judgment
seems to have arisen from taking for granted that because certain
pencil words and parts of words in the margin are undoubtedly by
a modern hand, that all the others are so likewise. In fact they
are looking at one thing whilst thinking of another : it was the
player's fault, who "looked on the earth when he implored the
heavens, and to the heavens when he addressed the earth."
In facsimile No. 1. of the Inquiry, the correction "Enter F &c.,"
is written clearly in pencil by the side of its counterpart in ink.
It may have been written in a modern hand. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4,
7, 8, 9, II (both), 13 and 14 are, to the best of my belief, all in
a modern handwriting ; and the reader will observe that all these
corrections are on the white margin, distinct both from the text
and the ink corrections. They can be accounted for in several
ways. A modern reader (I will not say Thomas Perkins, or any
of his relatives or friends, I will say Mr. Jones of the nineteenth
century), like thousands of " modern men'' would, on reading the
folio merely for his own gratification, instruction, curiosity, or use,
in most of the cases enumerated, be likely to be somewhat puzzled
at the curious looking forms of many of the old letters in the ink
emendations : for there are few men, comparatively speaking, that
possess the advantages for deciphering old words that the gentlemen
of the British Museum connected with the MS. Department do.^
1 A writer in the " Critic " (March 3, 1860, p. 264) asserts that pencil marks rubbed
out will, after a lapse of time, reappear: this we know is not impossible. In 1861 the
pencil marks in question may be still more legible.
' I must here remark that the ink writing on the facsimiles in Mr. Hamilton's
12
Mr. Jones, tlierefore_, either to save himself further trouble here-
after^ or (it matters not much Avhich) to guide future readers^ or
perhaps intending to copy the Corrections out clear for printing or
otherwise, wrote in pencil — for he would not surely damage the
work by touching it with ink, — as it would appear in a hasty
manner, the indistinct word, in most cases I have mentioned, by
its side, merely as an explanation of what the Old Corrector had
written. Mr. Hamilton says, " in obedience to which the Old Cor-
rector has made his emendations^' (Inquiry, p. 135) . But he cannot
prove this : as the ink is not written ovei' the pencil in these cases.
A glance at the facsimile page will make my meaning perfectly
clear. ] very much doubt if ]Mr. Jones ever dreamed, in making
his " pencillings by the way " of any others lurking in their neigh-
bourhood ; or if he did, whether he could have succeeded in
bringing them into such notoriety as they have now been. In
No. 1, the "ter" of the word "Enter'' was evidently the stickler
with Mr. Jones, for he merely put " K &c." in pencil for the rest
of the ink correction, not considering it necessary to rewrite the
whole of it. It will be answered that the forger wrote the pencil
first as a remembrancer, or suggestion, to guide him in making
his ink alterations afterwards. But the reader will see that there
is an outer and inner margin, on each side of the page, caused
by the printed black line that runs round the text : and it is to
be remembered that the pencil word is generally written on which-
ever margin the ink one does not occupy. If these were the
Old Corrector's pencil words, he would have most probably written
his ink over them, as in fact he appears to have done in many
instances.
But Mr. Hamilton says " that pencil sentences and notes occur
in Mr. Collier's handivritiny throughout the margin," (Inquiry,
Inquiry is douily, if not trehly, as clear and legible as that on the facsimiles made by
Mr. Netherclift, Sen., of a page of the said Folio prefixed to Mr. Collier's one volume
edition of Shakespeare, 1853. Many of the corn ctions, indeed, are scarcely yisible to
the naked eye. Many, as said before, are literal errors emended : -which yery naturally
accounts for the omission (Inquiry, p. 32) of some by Mr. Collier.
13
p. 150); that "the ink corrections in obedience to the pencil
corrections, and also the whole of the forgeries treated of in this
volume have been executed by one hand." (Inquiry, pp. 85, 135).
Now some statements always superinduce others of a darker
complexion : and here is indirect charge against Mr. Collier of
forgery — a dangerous word withal : like the torpedo, its touch
benumbs.
Firsts as to Mr. Collier's handwriting. He himself says, (Letter
to Times, July 1859) "that if there be upon the volume any pencil-
lings by me, beyond crosses, ticks, and lines, they will speak for
themselves : they have escaped my recollection, and, as 1 stated in
my former letter, I have not seen the book for several years. Per-
haps the microscope used by Mr. Hamilton might discover that the
plumbago of my pencil was the same as that of other marks, said to
be in connection with some of the emendations" (Inquiry, p. 152).
Now I maintain that they do speak for themselves, and very dis-
tinctly too. Where it is not difficult to be seen : but the evident
fact that two if not three people have been using their lead on the
unfortunate folio has not unnaturally furnished ground for sus-
picions. There are 1st, The faint pencil corrections in the cursive
handwriting of the Old Corrector; 2ndly, The modern glosses
and explanatory comments by Mr. Jones ; and 3rdly, The naturally
still plainer words in Mr. Collier's handv^iting. And hereon
hangs the tale. The first were undoubtedly made to guide the Old
Corrector in making his ink corrections. The second were emana-
tions from the brain of Jones ; and the third from a head which,
according to his antagonists, is not an adept in reading (Inquiry,
pp. 90, 91), nor a hand in copying, old MSS., although of which
antique writing it is roundly asserted they must have been the
authors.
But with regard to Mr. Jones, some people will possibly be led to
inquire who such a person could be. Now it may not have occurred
to many that the folio was out of Mr. Collier's hands for some years
before the pencil marks were discovered : and why should it be
14
thought a thing impossible that the late Duke of Devonshire, whom
Mr, Collier " had seen day after day looking over the emendations,"
had made his comments on the margin of his own book? There
was nothing culpable or extraordinary in his so doing : it is an
every day occurrence. And thus Mr. Collier's surprise at hearing
of the voluminous nature of these pencil corrections can easily be
understood.
In facsimile No. 2, the x of the two letters "Ex" at first sight
appears a "z." In No. 3 the peculiarity of the final letters "ng"
in the word " Going " account for the explanatory pencil. The
initial " G's " of both pencil and ink words look, indeed, as if
executed by the same hand, and might lead to a hasty suspicion of
forgery. All I can say is, that ninety-nine in a hundred, jotting
hastily down words as I conclude these pencil ones to have been,
would make a " G " as it is made in the pencil, especially with the
easy form of the ink " G " close by the side : the eye sometimes
adopts, as it were, the form of an object it rests upon, as you see a
boy on his slate making a 6, 9 and particularly an 8, like one that
may be next to it, however unaccustomed to form it that way;
and the two " G's," in the present case, not being peculiar in form,
but both remarkably easy and ofl'hand, can hardly justify the sus-
picion that they were executed by the same hand : the ink G's
moreover are generally made alike ; the pencil ones (see facsimiles
3 & 4) are not so.
In No. 4 the pencil corrections are in character with those of
No. 3, and need no comment, the dissimilarity between the pencil
and ink writing being at once visible : though on the white ground
of the facsimile page this word seems to be pretty clear, and the
only one that could not have greatly tasked Mr. Jones's or Mr.
Collier's ingenuity.^
No. 7. There are two words in pencil here to one in ink. The
' If the reader may wish to satisfy himself as to the correctness of my observations
regarding the difficulty of reading " easily " the ink writing in this celebrated Folio, he
has but to obtain access to the volume and judge for himself. And this is a point
would lay particular stress upon. But if he cannot do this he may have a better chance of
15
line in the text stands thus : " Sing in your sweet lullaby." The
Old Corrector had scratched through the word "in/' and substi-
tuted "now" in ink on the inner margin.^ Mr. Jones on reading
the line did not feel quite satisfied with its emendation, and put
" us now " in his pencil on the outer margin as reading better :
many might not be inclined to agree with Mr. Jones as to the judi-
ciousness of the alteration, though it is possible Shakespeare may
never have written the line as it is : but this alteration does not
suppose a forgery. Jones had evidently no reason for rewriting
"now" by itself in pencil as an explanation, the "now" in ink
being clear enough : the us was the point. He certainly had no
right to emend Shakespeare according to his own notions. I repeat,
however, that no proof of forgery can be distilled from this, for
Mr. Collier has not printed, mentioned, or even hinted at, the word
us in any of his editions. Mr. Collier states, too, that " he has not
made the slightest addition to the notes either in pencil or in ink."
No one in fact charges him with adding to them.
No. 8 is merely an explanation of the word " wall," as the ink
word is not so clear as it might be, the quite white ground of the
facsimile page being a bad representation of the real state, dark
appearance, and colour, of the leaves in the old folio.
Nos. 9 and 11, especially the word "over" in No. 11, as also the
seeing the facsimile prefixed to Mr. Collier's one volume Edition of Shakespeare, 1853,
or that of his " Notes and Emendations ; and let him endeavour, on first reading, to
deciplier the line — which the context shows is wanting — inserted bj the Old Corrector
in Pucell's speech : especially the second and last words. He will observe also the
wholesale erasure or rather crossing out of five lines beneath, full of names, of no use
when the play was being acted j a proceeding which would scarcely have entered into
a modern Corrector's or forger's brain (see p. 17).
* The pen which has drawn a line through the word "in" in the text seems to have
been dipped in a darker, or a blacker ink than the other corrections on the margins.
This word, which evidently makes nonsense of the sentence, the Old Corrector had
marked through, and not knowing what to substitute, probably left it until he made
the body of his corrections in the browner ink. He then substituted the word" now,"
writing it on the inner margin. Or, when he had written the word " now" he may
have forgotten to erase "in" in the text, and did it when he noticed it some time
afterwards in, not unnaturally, a different-shaded ink. I have seen ink, which had been
kept in a metal stand, turn a pale Irown on paper within a month.
16
word "armed" in No. 13, speak for themselves. Mr. Jones would
hardly be expected, had he perused the volume two or three times,
to be familiar with the, to modern eyes, eccentric e's, p's and v's
used in MS. writing two hundred years ago : or Mr. Collier for the
sake of transcribing hereafter the corrections for printing might
have jotted it down. Probabilities and possibilities might be
multiplied before the charge of forgery should be pronounced.
With regard to the word " armed " it is curious that it had been
inserted by the Old Corrector in a MS. note in the same Act,
Scene 1, when the Ghost first enters. The Old Corrector at least
was consistent.
The pencil word "begging" written in an unmistakeably modern
hand, in No. 14, is not difficult of explanation. Mr. Jones was
naturally perplexed at the word "faining." If he did not make a
guess, he probably looked it out in his dictionaries, and not finding
it there — (at least so as to suit the sense here — Spenser using the
verb only in the sense of " wishing earnestly ") — made a gloss, com-
ment, or suggestion by the side, writing in pencil " begging." It
was no bad shot either. The Old Corrector might have been going to
make a remark in writing when he saw the word, and made some
scratches in the brown ink to draw attention to it, (as may be seen
in the facsimile after the letter "g") — but somehow or other did
not.^ Of course it is quite possible Mr. Collier might have put this
gloss, but which I very much doubt for reasons I will state here-
after : it is more likely that Mr. Jones, seeing the Old Corrector's
mark, tried to interpret the word "faining" and wrote the
explanatory or suggestive word " begging " in pencil by its side :
and if the reader will refer to the context, he will see that the
word " begging " would not be at all unlikely to have suggested
itself to his mind, when trying to make a meaning for " faining."
Mr Hamilton himself says (Inquiry, p. 136) that the Old Corrector
had "struck out" the entire passage from "Why should the poore"
&c. to "something too much of this," — proving the Old Corrector's
1 These scratches are explamed in page 21. The facsimile is incorrect.
17'
determination to reject what he could make nothing of: for why
did lie not alter it? there are his marks after the " g." Maybe he
cut it out to shorten the speech, as he seemed very fond of doing
sometimes^ utterly regardless of beauties or fine passages, as if he
were adapting the play for being acted in a shorter form ; and indeed
the very numerous stage directions and other inexplicable elimina-
tions, &c., favour this supposition. (See p. 14, Note.) Mr. Hamilton's
argument is, that (Inquiry, p. 136) the forger having struck the
passage out, was thrown off his guard, and neglected to copy over
in ink the pencil word " begging " &c. But it is just as possible that
Mr. Jones would not much care whether the Old Corrector had
struck it out or not, and read the passage through, out of curiosity
to see whi/ he had so done. The word " faining " naturally drew his
attention, and thus accounts for the gloss " begging." Nor did
Mr. Collier think much about the Old Corrector's elimination of the
passage, for he has printed it in extenso.
Had Mr. Hamilton taken the trouble to examine each graye
statement he made before he sent his "pronouncements'' flying on
the wings of the "Times" to the four corners of the earth, he would
not have fallen into the mistake of supposing that the word"begging"
was " placed there evidently with the intention of superseding the
word pregnant in the text" (Inquiry, p. 136). There would have
been no object in altering the word "pregnant": it would have
been an unnecessary tampering with the text. There was an object
in putting an explanation to the undoubted misprint " faining "
(as the 4tos give " fawning ") caused most likely by the reporter
mi^-hearing what was spoken on the stage, or by the careless-
ness of the compositor, and not detected by the readers for the
press. It is amusing, too, to see the writer in " Eraser " (May,
1860, p. 727) following in the wake of Mr. Hamilton, and solemnly
devoting a column to an argument meant to show the dulness of
the Old Corrector in putting such a gloss for "pregnant." Mr.
Collier also has failed to detect their mistake; for in answer to
Mr. Hamilton's remark he says " what is gained by it (the gloss) ?
18
it must have been written in the margin as an explanation, and a
bad explanation too if it refer to pregnant in the text/^ The Re-
viewer in Fraser proceeds then to dilate upon the force of the word
"pregnant'^ &c.
Thus we cannot suppose Mr. Collier to have written this word
"begging," for he casually notices the misprint "faining" in his
Editions of Shakespeare, not saying anything leading us to suppose
he was ignorant of the right word " fawning": — but the person who
■wrote "begging" evidently could not have known that it ought to
have been printed " fawning." ^
The candid reader will I think, agree with me, that this example
Mr. Hamilton has adduced does as much damage to his cause as
it does to that of Mr. Collier.
There are four more examples I have to mention, Nos. 5, 6, 10,
and 12. No. 5 can scarcely be seen : it may be Mr. Jones's
emendation of a line that he thought halted or lacked another
syllable, like the line in No. 7 ; there are no peculiarities to be re-
marked in the three indistinct words : they may be in the Old
Corrector's cursive handwriting : not being under the ink, no forgery
could be proved from them.
No. 6 makes also for my conjectures. The Old Corrector had
crossed out the i of the word "straines," and substituted on the
margin, in his brown ink, " nge," the " e " being anything but dis-
tinct. INIr. Jones or Mr. Collier, to make every thing appear clear,
— to elucidate, in fact, the Corrector's correction — has written the
whole word in pencil so as to make the " nge " read " strangeness."
Or there is another as equally possible explanation, and perhaps the
better of the two ; the Old Corrector may have written " nge " in
pencil first, then over it the " nge " in ink. ISIr. Jones, for the sake
of distinctness, wrote in front of the ink correction, in pencil, the
1 Mr. Collier's note (1858) is as follows : —
Where thrift may follow fawning.] So aU the 4to8 (excepting that of 1603, where
no word of the kind is met with) but the folio 1623 misprints it faining, which word
is left in the Corr. fo. 1632.
19
letters " str '' (observe also he has inadvertently left out the " a ") ,
and then after it "ness/' thus making the emendation read " strange-
ness." My observations will be better understood by referring to
the facsimile page of the " Inquiry."
No. 10 contains the awful word " body," one of the test words
which have failed to establish, on internal grounds, the spuriousness
of the emendations. If Mr, Jones wrote this word, the want of
space in the margin would naturally account for its cramped appear-
ance. If the pencil underlies the ink, then the Old Corrector had
in the first instance spelt the word with a " y; " this is more
likely, as we find many instances, one in the same page, where he
has used "y" for "ie," and vice versa. Mr. Hamilton's argument