Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861

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In the last scene, all after Horatio's speech; "Now cracks a noble
heart," etc., is struck out. Who will believe that any man in his
senses, making corrections for which he meant to claim the deference
due to a higher authority than the printed test, would make such and so
numerous erasures? In fact, no one does so believe.

But the collations of "Hamlet" furnish in these erasures one other very
important piece of evidence. In Act II., Sc. 1, the passage from and
including Reynaldo's speech, "As gaming, my Lord," to his other speech,
"Ay, my Lord, I would know that," is crossed out. But the lines are not
only crossed through in ink, they are "also marked in pencil." Now it
is confessed by the accusers of Mr. Collier that these erasures are the
marks of an ancient adaptation of the text to stage purposes, which were
made before the marginal corrections of the text; otherwise they must
needs have maintained the preposterous position just above set forth.
And besides, it is admitted, that, in the numerous passages which are
both erased and corrected, the work itself shows that the corrections
were made upon the erasures, and not the erasures upon the corrections.
We have, therefore, here, upon the very pages of this folio, evidence
that alterations in pencil not only might have been, but were, made upon
it at an early period, even in regard to so very slight a matter as the
crossing out of fourteen lines; and that these pencilled lines served as
a guide for the subsequent permanent erasure in ink.

And this collation of "Hamlet" also enables us to decide with
approximate certainty upon the period when these manuscript readings
were entered upon the margins of the folio. Not more surely did the
lacking aspirate betray the Ephraimite at Jordan than the spelling of
this manuscript corrector reveals the period at which he performed his
labors. Take, for instance, the word "vile." Any man who could make the
body of these corrections knows that the most common spelling of "vile"
down to the middle of the century 1600 was _vild_ or _vilde_. This
spelling has even been retained in the text by some editors, and with at
least a semblance of reason, as being not a mere variation in spelling,
but as representing a different form of the word. No man knows all this
better than Mr. Collier; and yet we are called upon to believe that he,
meaning to obtain authoritative position for the marginal readings in
this folio, by making them appear to have been written by a contemporary
of Shakespeare's later years, altered _vild_ to _vile_ in three passages
of a single play, though he thereby made not the slightest shade of
difference in the meaning of the passage! And the same demand is made
upon our credulity in regard to the eight hundred and fifty similar
instances! Sir Frederic Madden, Mr. Duffus Hardy, Mr. Hamilton,
Dr. Ingleby, accomplished palaeographers, keen-eyed, remorseless
investigators, learned doctors though you be, you cannot make men who
have common sense believe this. Your tests, your sharp eyes, and your
optical aids, even that dreadful "microscope bearing the imposing and
scientific name of the Simonides Uranius," which carried such terror to
the heart of Mr. Collier, will fail to convince the world that he spent
hour after hour and day after day in labors the only purpose of which
was directly at war with that which you attribute to him, and which, if
he made these manuscript corrections, must have been the motive of his
labors.

But if Mr. Collier, or some other man of this century, did not make
these orthographical changes, when were they made? Let us trace the
fortunes of _vile_, which is a good test word, as being characteristic,
and as it occurs several times in "Hamlet," and is there thrice
modernized by the manuscript corrector. It occurs five times in that
play, as the reader may see by referring to Mrs. Clarke's "Concordance."
In the folio of 1623, in all these cases, except the first, it is
spelled _vild_; in the folio of 1632, with the same exception, we also
find _vild_; even in the folio of 1664[ll] the spelling in all these
instances remains unchanged; but in the folio of 1685, _vild_ gives
place to _vile_ in every case. As with "vild," so with the other words
subjected to like changes. To make a long story short, the spelling
throughout the marginal readings of this folio, judged by the numerous
fac-similes and collations that have been published, indicates the close
of the last quarter of the century 1600 as the period about which the
volume in which they appear was subjected to correction. The careful
removal (though with some oversights) of those irregularities and
anomalies of spelling which were common before the Restoration, and the
harmonizing of grammatical discords which were disregarded before that
period, and, on the other hand, the retention of the superfluous final
_e_, (once the _e_ of prolongation,) and of the _l_ in the contractions
of "would," in accordance with a pronunciation which prevailed in
England until 1700 and later, all point to this date, which is also
indicated by various other internal proofs to which attention has been
heretofore sufficiently directed.[mm] The punctuation, too, which,
as Mr. Collier announced in "Notes and Emendations," etc., 1853, is
corrected "with nicety and patience," is that of the books printed after
the Restoration, as may be seen by a comparison of Mr. Collier's private
fac-similes and the collations of "Hamlet" in Mr. Hamilton's book with
the original editions of poems and plays printed between 1660 and 1675.

[Footnote ll: Or 1663, according to the title-pages of some copies that
we have seen.]

[Footnote mm: See _Shakespeare's Scholar_, pp. 56-62. And to the
passages noticed there, add this: In _King Henry VI_., Part II., Act
IV., Sc. 5, is this couplet:--

"Fight for your King, your country, and your lives.
And so farewell; for I must hence again."

The last line of which in Mr. Collier's folio is changed to

"And so farewell; _Rebellion never thrives_."

Plainly this was written when Charlie was no longer over the water.]

From the foregoing examination of the evidence upon this most
interesting question, it appears, we venture to assume, that the
conclusions drawn by Mr. Collier's opponents as to the existence of
primal evidence of forgery in the ink writing alone in his folio are not
sustained by the premises which are brought forward in their support. It
seems also clear, that, to say the least, it is not safe to assume that
all the pencil memorandums which appear upon the margins of that
volume as guides for the corrections in ink are proofs of the spurious
character of those corrections; but that, on the contrary, those
pencil-marks, with certain exceptions, may be the faint vestiges of the
work of a corrector who lived between 1632 and 1675, and who entered his
readings in pencil before finally completing them in ink. We have found,
too, that this volume, for the manuscript readings in which the alleged
forger claimed an authority based upon the early date at which they were
written, presents upon its every page changes in phraseology, grammar,
orthography, and punctuation, which, utterly useless for a forger's
purpose, could not have been made before a late period in the century
1600. Now when, in view of these facts, we consider that the man who is
accused of committing this forgery is a professed literary antiquary,
who, at the time when he brought forward this folio, (in 1852,) had been
engaged in the minute study of the text of old plays and poems for more
than thirty years,[nn] can we hesitate in pronouncing a verdict of not
guilty of the offence as charged? It is as manifest as the sun in
the heavens that Mr. Collier is not the writer of the mass of the
corrections in this folio. It is morally impossible that he should have
made them; and, on the other hand, the physical evidence which is relied
upon by his accusers breaks down upon examination.

[Footnote nn: _The Poetical Decameron, or Ten Conversations on English
Poets and Poetry, particularly of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I._
London, 1820.]

* * * * *

But the modern cursive pencil-writing!--for you see that it is this
cursive writing that damns this folio,--what story does that tell?
What is its character? Who wrote it? Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Ingleby have
answered these questions by the publication of between twenty and thirty
fac-similes of this pencil-writing, consisting in only five instances of
more than a single word, letter, or mark. But these are undeniably the
work of a modern hand,--a hand of this century, as may be seen by the
following reproductions of two of the fac-similes:--

[Illustration: Handwriting sample.]

The upper one represents the stage-direction in ink, with its
accompanying pencil-memorandum, for an _aside_ speech in "King
John," Act II., Sc. 1,--doubtless that of Faulconbridge,--"O prudent
discipline," etc. This is reproduced from a fac-simile published by Dr.
Ingleby. Mr. Hamilton has given a fac-simile of the same words; but Dr.
Ingleby says that his is the more accurate. The lower memorandum is a
pencilled word, "_begging_" opposite the line in "Hamlet," Act III., Sc.
2, "And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee," to which there is no
corresponding word in ink. Both these words are manifestly not examples
of an ancient cursive hand, like those of which fac-similes are given
above, but of rapid pencil-writing of the present century. They fairly
represent the character of all the fac-similes of words in pencil, with
two exceptions, which Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Ingleby have published. But
the question as to their origin can be brought down to a narrower point.
For not only does competent testimony from London assure us that Mr.
Collier's handwriting and that of these pencil-memorandums is identical,
but, having some of that gentleman's writing in pencil by us, we are
able to see this identity for ourselves. We can discover not the
slightest room for doubt that a certain number of the pencil-guides for
the corrections upon the margins of this folio were written either by
Mr. Collier himself, or in the British Museum by some malicious
person who desired to inculpate him in a forgery. The reader who has
accompanied us thus far can have no doubt as to which alternative we
feel compelled to choose. The indications of the pencilled words
in modern cursive writing are strengthened by the short-hand
stage-direction in "Coriolanus," Act V., Sc. 2, "Struggles or instead
noise," in the characters of Palmer's system, which was promulgated in
1774. This system is one which a man of Mr. Collier's years would be
likely to use, and the purport of the memorandum is obvious. Would Mr.
Collier have us believe that this also was introduced in the British
Museum?

We have chosen the word "begging" for fac-simile not merely because of
the marked character of its chirography. It has other significance. Mr.
Collier asks, "What is gained by it?" and says, that, as there is no
corresponding change in the text, "'begging' must have been written in
the margin ... merely as an explanation, and a bad explanation, too, if
it refer to 'pregnant' in the poet's text."[oo] It is, of course, no
explanation; but it seems plainly that it is the memorandum for a
proposed, but abandoned, substitution. Who that is familiar with the
corrections in Mr. Collier's folio does not recognize this as one of
those which have been so felicitously described by an American critic as
taking "the fire out of the poetry, the fine tissue out of the thought,
and the ancient flavor and aroma out of the language"?[pp] The corrector
in this case plainly thought of reading,

"And crook the begging hinges of the knee";

but, doubtful as to this at first, (for we regard the
interrogation-point as a query to himself, and not as indicating the
insertion of that point after "Dost thou hear,") he finally came to the
conclusion, that, although he, and many a respectable poet, might have
written "begging" in this passage, Shakespeare was just the man to write
"pregnant,"--an instance of critical sagacity of which he has left us
few examples. Now it is remarkable that the majority of the changes
proposed by Mr. Collier in the notes to this edition of Shakespeare
(8 vols., 8vo., 1842-3) evince a capacity for the apprehension of
figurative language and for conjectural emendation of the very calibre
indicated by this proposed change of "pregnant hinges" to "_begging_
hinges." He has throughout his literary career, which began, we believe,
with the publication of the "Poetical Decameron," in 1820, shown
rather the faithfulness, the patience, and the judgment of a literary
antiquary, than the insight, the powers of comparison, the sensibility,
and the constructive ingenuity of a literary critic. And one of the
great improbabilities against his authorship of all the corrections in
his folio is, that it is not according to Nature that so late in life he
should develop the constructive ability necessary for the production
of many of its specious and ingenious, though inadmissible, original
readings.

[Footnote oo: _Reply_, p. 22.]

[Footnote pp: Rev. N.L. Frothingham, D.D., in the _Christian Examiner_
for November, 1853.]

We see, then, no way of avoiding the conclusion that this notorious
folio was first submitted to erasure for stage purposes; that afterward,
at some time between 1650 and 1675, it was carefully corrected for
the press with the view to the publication of a new edition; and that
finally it fell into the hands of Mr. Collier, who, either alone or by
the aid of an accomplice, introduced other readings upon its margins,
for the purpose of obtaining for them the same deference which he
supposed those already there would receive for their antiquity.
Either this is true, or Mr. Collier is the victim of a mysterious
and marvellously successful conspiracy; and by his own unwise and
unaccountable conduct--to use no harsher terms--has aided the plans of
his enemies.

Mr. Collier's position in this affair is, in any case, a most singular
and unenviable one. His discoveries, considering their nature and
extent and the quarters in which they were made, are exceedingly
suspicious:--the Ellesmere folio, the Bridgewater House documents,
including the Southampton letter, the Dulwich College documents,
including the Alleyn letter, the Petition of the Blackfriars Company
in the State Paper Office, and the various other letters, petitions,
accounts, and copies of verses, all of which are justly open to
suspicion of tampering, if not of forgery. What a strange and
unaccountable fortune to befall one man! How has this happened? What
fiend has followed Mr. Collier through the later years of his life,
putting manuscripts under his pillow and folios into his pew, and so
luring him on to moral suicide? Alas! there is probably but one man
now living that can tell us, and he will not. But this protracted
controversy, which has left so much unsettled, has greatly served the
cause of literature, in showing that by whomsoever and whensoever these
marginal readings, which so took the world by storm nine years ago, were
written, they have no pretence to any authority whatever, not even
the quasi authority of an antiquity which would bring them within the
post-Shakespearian period. All must now see, what a few at first saw,
that their claim to consideration rests upon their intrinsic merit only.
But what that merit is, we fear will be disputed until the arrival of
that ever-receding Shakespearian millenium when the editors shall no
longer rage or the commentators imagine a vain thing.

* * * * *

THE BATH.

Off, fetters of the falser life,--
Weeds that conceal the statue's form!
This silent world with truth is rife,
This wooing air is warm.

Now fall the thin disguises, planned
For men too weak to walk unblamed;
Naked beside the sea I stand,--
Naked, and not ashamed.

Where yonder dancing billows dip,
Far-off, to ocean's misty verge,
Ploughs Morning, like a full-sailed ship,
The Orient's cloudy surge.

With spray of scarlet fire before
The ruffled gold that round her dies,
She sails above the sleeping shore,
Across the waking skies.

The dewy beach beneath her glows;
A pencilled beam, the light-house burns:
Full-breathed, the fragrant sea-wind blows,--
Life to the world returns!

I stand, a spirit newly born,
White-limbed and pure, and strong, and fair,--
The first-begotten son of Morn,
The nursling of the air!

There, in a heap, the masks of Earth,
The cares, the sins, the griefs, are thrown
Complete, as, through diviner birth,
I walk the sands alone.

With downy hands the winds caress,
With frothy lips the amorous sea,
As welcoming the nakedness
Of vanished gods, in me.

Along the ridged and sloping sand,
Where headlands clasp the crescent cove,
A shining spirit of the land,
A snowy shape, I move:

Or, plunged in hollow-rolling brine,
In emerald cradles rocked and swung,
The sceptre of the sea is mine,
And mine his endless song.

For Earth with primal dew is wet,
Her long-lost child to rebaptize:
Her fresh, immortal Edens yet
Their Adam recognize.

Her ancient freedom is his fee;
Her ancient beauty is his dower:
She bares her ample breasts, that he
May suck the milk of power.

Press on, ye hounds of life, that lurk
So close, to seize your harried prey!
Ye fiends of Custom, Gold, and Work,
I hear your distant bay!

And like the Arab, when he bears
To the insulted camel's path
His garment, which the camel tears,
And straight forgets his wrath;

So, yonder badges of your sway,
Life's paltry husks, to you I give:
Fall on, and in your blindness say,
We hold the fugitive!

But leave to me this brief escape
To simple manhood, pure and free,--
A child of God, in God's own shape,
Between the land and sea!

SACCHARISSA MELLASYS.

I.

THE HERO.

When I state that my name is A. Bratley Chylde, I presume that I am
already sufficiently introduced.

My patronymic establishes my fashionable position. Chylde, the
distinguished monosyllable, is a card of admission everywhere,--
everywhere that is anywhere.

And my matronymic, Bratley, should have established my financial
position for life. It should have--allow me a vulgar term--"indorsed" me
with the tradesmen who have the honor to supply me with the glove, the
boot, the general habiliment, and all the requisites of an elegant
appearance upon the carpet or the _trottoir_.

But, alas! I am not so indorsed--pardon the mercantile aroma of the
word--by the name Bratley.

The late Mr. A. Bratley, my grandfather, was indeed one of those rude,
laborious, and serviceable persons whose office is to make money--or
perhaps I should say to accumulate the means of enjoyment--for the upper
classes of society.

But my father, the late Mr. Harold Chylde, had gentlemanly tastes.

How can I blame him? I have the same.

He loved to guide the rapid steed along the avenue.

I also love to guide the rapid steed.

He could not persuade his delicate lungs--pardon my seeming knowledge of
anatomy--to tolerate the confined air in offices, counting-houses, banks,
or other haunts of persons whose want of refinement of taste impels them
to the crude distractions of business-life.

I have the same delicacy of constitution. Indeed, unless the atmosphere
I breathe is rendered slightly narcotic by the smoke of Cabanas and
slightly stimulating by the savor of heeltaps,--excuse the technical
term,--I find myself debilitated to a degree. The open air is extremely
offensive to me. I confine myself to clubs and billiard-rooms.

My late father, being a man distinguished for his clear convictions, was
accustomed to sustain the statement of those convictions by wagers.
The inherent generosity of his nature obliged him often to waive his
convictions in behalf of others, and thus to abandon the receipt of
considerable sums. He also found the intellectual excitement of games of
chance necessary to his mental health.

I cannot blame him for these and similar gentlemanly tastes. My own are
the same.

The late Mr. A. Bratley, at that time in his dotage, and recurring to
the crude idioms of his homely youth, constantly said to my father,--

"Harold, you are a spendthrift and a rake, and are bringing up your son
the same."

I object, of course, to his terms; but since he foresaw that my habits
would be expensive, it is to be regretted that he did not make suitable
provision for their indulgence.

He did not, however, do so. Persons of low-breeding never can comprehend
their duties to the more refined.

The respective dusts of my father and grandfather were consigned to the
tomb the same week, and it was found that my mother's property had all
melted away, as--allow me a poetical figure--ice-cream melts between the
lips of beauty heated after the German.

Yes,--all was gone, except a small pittance in the form of an annuity. I
will not state the ridiculously trifling amount. I have seen more
than our whole annual income lost by a single turn of a card at the
establishment of the late Mr. P. Hearn, and also in private circles.

Something must be done. Otherwise, that deprivation of the luxuries of
life which to the aristocratic is starvation.

I stated my plans to my mother. They were based in part upon my
well-known pecuniary success at billiards--I need not say that I prefer
the push game, as requiring no expenditure of muscular force. They were
also based in part upon my intimacy with a distinguished operator in
Wall Street. Our capital would infallibly have been quadrupled,--what
do I say? decupled, centupled, in a short space of time.

My mother is a good, faithful creature. She looks up to me as a Bratley
should to a Chylde. She appreciates the honor my father did her by his
marriage, and I by my birth. I have frequently remarked a touching
fidelity of these persons of the lower classes of society toward those
of higher rank.

"I would make any sacrifice in the world," she said, "to help you, my
dear A---"

"Hush!" I cried.

I have suppressed my first name as unmelodious and connecting me too
much with a religious persuasion meritorious for its wealth alone. Need
I say that I refer to the faith of the Rothschild?

"All that I have is yours, my dear Bratley," continued my mother.

Quite touching! was it not? I was so charmed, that I mentally promised
her a new silk when she went into half-mourning, and asked her to go
with me to the opera as soon as she got over that feeble tendency to
tears which kept her eyes red and unpresentable.

"I would gladly aid you," the simple-hearted creature said, "in any
attempt to make your fortune in an honorable and manly way."

"Brava! brava!" I cried, and I patted applause, as she deserved. "And
you had better make over your stocks to me at once," I continued.

"I cannot without your Uncle Bratley's permission. He is my trustee. Go
to him, my dear son."

I went to him very unwillingly. My father and I had always as much as
possible ignored the Bratley connection. They live in a part of New York
where self-respect does not allow me to be seen. They are engaged in
avocations connected with the feeding of the lower classes. My father
had always required that the females of their families should call on
my mother on days when she was not at home to our own set, and at hours
when they were not likely to be detected. None of them, I am happy to
say, were ever seen at our balls or our dinners.

I nerved myself, and penetrated to that Ultima Thule where Mr. Bratley
resides. His house already, at that early hour of two, smelt vigorously
of dinner. Nothing but the urgency of my business could have induced me
to brave these odors of plain roast and boiled.

A mob of red-faced children rushed to see me as I entered, and I heard
one of them shouting up the stairs,--

"Oh, pa! there's a stiffy waiting to see you."

The phrase was new to me. I looked for a mirror, to see whether any
inaccuracy in my toilet might have suggested it.

Positively there was no mirror in the _salon_.

Instead of it, there were nothing but distressingly bright pictures by
artists who had had the bad taste to paint raw Nature just as they saw
it.

My uncle entered, and quite overwhelmed me with a robust cordiality
which seemed to ignore my grief.

"Just in time, my boy," said he, "to take a cut of rare roast beef and a
hot potato and a mug of your Uncle Sam's beer with us."

I shuddered, and rebuked him with the intelligence that I had just
lunched at the club, and should not dine till six.

Then I stated my business, curtly.

He looked at me with a stare, which I have frequently observed in
persons of limited intelligence.

"So you want to gamble away your mother's last dollar," said he.

In vain I stated and restated to him my plans. The fellow, evidently
jealous of my superior financial ability, constantly interrupted me with
ejaculations of "Pish!" "Bosh!" "Pshaw!" "No go!" and finally, with a
loud thump on a table, covered with such costly but valueless objects as
books and plates, he cried,

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