Page:The Review of English Studies Vol 1.djvu/88

74 writer draws up final a, e and r. I was finally convinced by finding the rather curious V which occurs twice in Venice in the Scrap. The unbeliever suddenly became a convert, and began to orient himself to the points of the new situation. The difficulty of the paper solved itself when the identical water-mark appeared on paper adjacent to one of Musgrave’s letters. The accompanying facsimiles show the general appearance of the two hands to be similar, and any one who makes a more critical examination will probably have little doubt that the hands are the same. It is hardly necessary for me to emphasise particular points, for practically every letter found in the Scrap can be paralleled in the facsimiles ii and iii, here given of Musgrave’s writing: but special attention may be drawn to B, E, G, H, K, L, Q, and to the frequent use of dashes in place of stops.

The position, therefore, now is that Malone received the Scrap from Sir William Musgrave (who died in 1800) somewhere about the year 1791, when Malone inspected the records of the Master of the Revels. It remains for myself or another to unearth a letter of Malone or Musgrave alluding to the matter.

How the identification of Musgrave as the writer of the Scrap affects the question of the genuineness of the Revels Books I should like to be allowed to discuss later. It may be pointed out that Halliwell Phillipps, who first brought the Scrap to notice, still regarded the Revels Books as forged.