The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861

Mahomet and his Successors. By Washington Irving. Vol. I. Illustrated Edition. New York. G.P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. 372. $1.50.

Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, from Gales and Seaton's Annals of Congress, from their Register of Debates, and from the Official Reported Debates, by John C. Rives. By the Author of "The Thirty Years' View." Vol. XVI. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 631. $3.00.

The Silent Woman. By the Author of "King's Cope," etc. Boston. T.O.H.P.

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History of Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI. of England. By Jacob Abbott. New York. Harper & Brothers. 18mo. pp. 314. 60 cts.

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notes

1

October, 1859. No. XXIV.

2

We do not attribute the spirit of Dr. Ingleby's book to any inherent malignity or deliberately malicious purpose of its author, but rather to that relentless partisanship which this folio seems to have excited among the British critics. So we regard his reference to "almighty smash" and "catawampously chawed up" as specimens of the language used in America, and his disparagement of the English in vogue here, less as a manifestation of a desire to misrepresent, or even a willingness to sneer, than as an amusing exhibition of utter ignorance. In what part of America and from what lips did Dr. Ingleby ever hear these phrases? We have never heard them; and in a somewhat varied experience of American life have never been in any society, however humble, in which they would not excite laughter, if not astonishment, —astonishment even greater than that with which Americans of average cultivation would read such phrases as these in a goodly octavo published by a Doctor of the Laws of Cambridge University. "And one ground upon which the hypothesis of Hamlet's insanity has been built is 'swagged.'" (Complete View, p. 82.) "The interests of literature jeopardized, but not compromised." (Ib. p. 10.) "The rest of Mr. Collier's remarks on the H.S. letter relates," etc. (Ib. p. 260.) "In the middle of this volume has been foisted." (Ib. p. 261.) We shall not say that this is British English; but we willingly confess that it is not American English. Such writing would not be tolerated in the leading columns of any newspaper of reputation in this country; it might creep in among the work of the second or third rate reporters.

3

Notes and Emendations, p. vii.

4

This volume is universally spoken of as the Perkins folio by the British critics. But we preserve the designation under which it is so widely known in America.

5

An Inquiry, etc., pp. 86-89. See also Ingleby's Complete View, etc., pp. 279-288. Both Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Ingleby give fac-similes of this important postscript.

6

See Dyce's Strictures, etc., pp. 2, 22, 28, 35, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 70, 123, 127, 146, 168, 192, 203, 204.

7

Such hasty examinations as those which it must have received at the Society of Antiquaries and the Shakespeare Society, where Mr. Collier took it, are of little importance.

8

See, for instance, "I have been told, but I do not believe it, that Sir F. Madden and his colleagues were irritated by this piece of supposed neglect; and that they also took it ill that I presented the Perkins folio to the kindest, most condescending, and most liberal of noblemen, instead of giving it to their institution." (Reply, p. 11.) And see the same pamphlet and Mr. Collier's letters, passim.

9

This is finally admitted even by Mr. Collier's supporters. The Edinburgh Reviewer says,—"But then the mysterious pencil-marks! They are there, most undoubtedly, and in very great numbers too. The natural surprise that they were not earlier detected is somewhat diminished on inspection. Some say they have 'come out' more in the course of years; whether this is possible we know not. But even now they are hard to discover, until the eye has become used to the search. But when it has,—especially with the use of a glass at first,—they become perceptible enough, words, ticks, points, and all."

10

In Coriolanus, Act v. sc. 2, (p. 55, col. 2, of the C. folio,) "struggles or instead noise,"—plainly a memorandum for a stage-direction in regard to the impending fracas between Menenius and the Guard.

11

Having at hand some of Mr. Collier's own writing in pencil, we are dependent as to this point, in regard to the pencillings in the folio, only upon the accuracy of the fac-similes published by Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Ingleby, which correspond in character, though made by different fac-similists.

12

See Putnam's Magazine, October, 1853, and Shakespeare's Scholar, 1854, p. 74.

13

See the London Athenaeum of January 8th, 1853:—"We cannot hesitate to infer that there must have been something more than mere conjecture,—some authority from which they were derived…. The consideration of the nine omitted lines stirs up Mr. Collier to a little greater boldness on the question of authority; but, after all, we do not think he goes the full length which the facts would warrant."

Compare this with the following extracts from the same journal of July 9th, 1859;—"The folio never had any ascertained external authority. All the warrant it has ever brought to reasonable critics is internal." "If anybody, in the heat of argument, ever claimed for them [the MS. readings] a right of acceptance beyond the emendations of Theobald, Malone, Dyce, and Singer, (that is, a right not justified by their obvious utility or beauty,) such a claim must have been untenable, by whomsoever urged."

14

The Shakespeare Fabrications, p. 45.

15

See the fac-simile in Dr. Ingleby's Complete View. p. 262.

16

A Review, etc., p. 60.