Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 074.djvu/188

182 seems to have befallen Mr Collier, whom accident lately placed in possession of a copy of the folio of Shakespeare, 1632, plentifully garnished with manuscript note and emendations. in these trying circumstances he has acted very much in the way which might have been anticipated It is true that he announces his good fortune in a strain of moderated enthusiasm. "In the spring of 1849," says he, "I happened to be it the shop of the late Mr Rodd, of Great Newport Street, at a time when a package of books arrived from the country." Among them was a very indifferent copy of the folio of Shakespeare, 1632, which Mr Collier, concluding hastily that it would complete an imperfect copy of the same edition which he had purchased from the same bookseller some time before, bought for thirty shillings. The purchase did not answer its purpose. The two leaves that were wanted to complete the other folio "were unfit for my purpose, not merely by being too short" (how very particular these book-fanciers are), "but otherwise damaged and defaced. Thus disappointed, I threw it by, and did not see it again until I made a selection of books I would take with me on quitting London. On consulting it afterwards," continues Mr Collier, "it struck me that Thomas Perkins, whose name, with the addition of 'his Booke,' was upon the cover, might be the old actor who had performed in Marlowe's Jew of Malta on its revival shortly before 1633." That would have been an important fact, as helping to connect the MS. corrections closely with the Shakespearian era. But here Mr Collier was doomed to disappointment. On further inquiry he found that the actor's name was Richard Perkins: "still," says he, with a faith too buoyant to be submerged by such a trifle, "Thomas Perkins might have been a descendant of Richard," from whom, of course, he probably inherited a large portion of the emendations. "This circumstance," says Mr Collier, "and others, induced me to examine the volume more particularly: I then discovered, to my surprise, that there was hardly a page which did not present, in a handwriting of the time, some emendations in the pointing or in the text, while on most of them they were frequent, and on many numerous. Of course I now submitted the folio to a most careful scrutiny; and as it occupied a considerable time to complete the inspection, how much more must it have consumed to make the alterations? The ink was or various shades, differing sometimes on the same page, and was once disposed to think that two distinct hands had been employed upon them. This notion I have since abandoned, and I am now decidedly of opinion that the same writing prevails from beginning to end, but that the amendments must have been introduced from time to time during perhaps the course of several years."

But although Mr Collier speaks thus calmly of his prize we are nevertheless convinced, by the rapidity of his conversion from the old readings to the new, that he, like the rest of us, is liable to be carried a little off his feet by any sudden stroke of prosperity, and is keenly alive (as most people are) to the superior merits of anything that happens to be his own. It is our nature to admire what we alone have been privileged to possess or to discover. Hence Mr Collier has stepped at one plunge from possession into cordial approbation and unhesitating adoption of most of the corrections set forth on the margins of his folio. Formerly the stanchest defender of the old Shakesperian text, he is now the advocate of changes in it, to an extent which calls for very grave considerations on the part of those who regard the language of the poet as a sacred inheritance, not to be disturbed by innovations, without the strongest evidence, the most conclusive reasons, and the most clamant necessity being adduced in their support.

We are far from blaming Mr Collier for having published his volume of "Notes and Emendations." Although it might be advantageously reduced in balk by the omission of many details occupied with the settlement of matters which have been long ago settled, still it is in some respects a valuable contribution to the literature of Shakespeare. We have no faith whatever in the authenticity of the new readings; a