Page:Sir Thomas More play.djvu/24

 re-written scenes are found on separate sheets of paper and in different handwritings; and being also very different in style, may be supposed to have been contributed by their several authors in the states in which they are. Mr. Spedding discovered five different handwritings in the MS., whereas Mr. Simpson made out only four. He agrees with Mr. Simpson as to the handwriting of the insurrection scene, ii. 4, ll. 1-157 (pp. 24-29, Dyce,) but differs from him as to ii. 3, (pp. 22-24, Dyce,) which he thinks is in a different hand. Mr. Simpson thought iii. 2, (pp. 39-43, Dyce,) was in the same hand as ii. 4, whereas Mr. Spedding takes "them certainly to be in another, as far as the twentieth line of p. 51", i.e., iii. 2, 1. 248, 'where a change occurs, the remainder of the dialogue having evidently been added by a different and very superior penman; though whether or not by the same who penned the insurrection scene, I should not like to say positively without taking the opinion of an expert." Herr- is a perplexing difference of opinion  which I am unable to reconcile; but so far as the handwriting of the insurrection scene, ii. 4, is concerned they are unanimous, and they also agree that the hand which  wrote it was Shakespeare's, and that his was the mind  which conceived it. On this question of difference or similarity of handwriting I am not qualified to judge,  not having seen the MS., and if I had, my verdict either  way would carry little weight ; in a case of this nature it is only the opinion of an expert paleographer that is of  any real value. What is wanted, and what ought to be  done, is the realisation of Mr. Spedding's suggestion that the whole manuscript, not a scene and a few lines, should