Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
The British Musrum Slander And Bro. John Payne Collier.*
my intimate friend in spite of his self-regretted attack upon me , as an editor of Shakespeare , in his . Remarfcs , & c , 1844 ) but in the first instance only of ' the H . S . Letter , ' for that was lithographed some time before the rest . What was his answer , not sent in haste , but after considerable delay and deliberation ? It was in these very Avords , ivhich I copy from a note in his own handwriting : —
'" The facsimile has certainly removed from my mind all doubts about the genuineness of the letter . ' " This opinion , be it observed , was given while the Eev . A . Dyce was printing his ' Beaumont and Fletcher , ' and before he entertained any immediate project of publishing a Shakespeare . Although I hacl known him very intimately from the year 1828 to the time I quitted London in 1850 , it is remarkable that he
never , on a single occasion , intimated to mc a doubt as to the authenticity of any of ' the Bridgewater House Shakespeare Forgeries . ' In his Shakespeare of 1857 I learned , for the first time , that he reiterated the suspicions some had expressed ; it was then , be it remembered , that he was actually engaged on an edition of Shakespeare intended to rival mine ; and it was then that he , for the first time , threw all sorts of discredit on my discoveries . As he hacl formerly given a decided opinion in . favour of the genuineness of ' the II . S . Letter , ' surely , when he subsequently , in his Shakespeare , expressed his doubts , ancl
quoted the doubts of others , he might haA c added , that at one time he had misled Mr . Collier on the subject , by strengthening his belief that ' the II . S . Letter' Avas a genuine manuscript of the period . The Eev . A . Dyce did not pursue this obvious course for his own reasons , but I doubt how far they are at present satisfactory even to himself . "If Mr . Halliwell have seen ground to alter his decision on the
same question , I can have no right to complain : all I know is , that with regard to ' the H . S . Letter , ' up to the year 1848 , he gave it as his positive conviction , not merely that it was a genuine manuscript of the period , but that it coulcl hardly ( for a reason he assigned , and ivhich at least convinced himself ) be a forgery . In his Life of Shakespeare , Sro ., 18-18 , after giving a facsimile of the conclusion of ' the II . S . Letter , ' p . 225 , he observes : — 'The
facsimile of that portion of it relating to Shakespeare , Avhich the reader will find at the commencement of this volume , ivill suffice to convince any one acquainted Avith such matters that it is a genuine manuscript of the period . No forgery of so long a document coulcl present so perfect a continuity of design ; - * yet it is right to state that grave doubts have been thrown on its authenticity . A portion of the facsimile will exhibit on examination a peculiarity few suppositious documents would afford , part of the imperfectly formed letter h , in the word Shakespeare , appearing by a slip of the pen in tbe letter / immediately beneath it . '
"Mr . Halliwell then refers to Mr . Wright , who also had seen the original , as a highly competent judge of such matters , a point lew will dispute ; and he subjoins in a note , ' In the library of the Society of Antiquaries , No . 201 , Art . 3 , is preserved ' a eopye of tbe couunyssion of Sewers in the countye of Kent , ' marked as vera copia , and singularly enough , written apparently by the same hand that copied the letter of II . S . ' As I have
never seen this ' copy of a commission' I can offer no opinion upon the identity of handwriting , but it is a matter upon which no man can be better qualified to give final judgment than Mr . Halliwell . " Upon opinions such as those I have acted in uniformly attaching the weight and value of authenticity to the documents in question . I may be wrong , or others may be in error ; but all the facts
within my knowledge are before the world . The documents themselves , after I had printed them , remained for many years in my possession—at least from 1 S 3 G to about 1845 : Lord Ellesmere never asked for them , nor inquired regarding them ; but one clay , after 1845 , Lord Ellesmere either told me , or wrote to me , that Mr . J . Wilson Croker had questioned their genuineness . His lordshithereforedesired me to send the oriinal
p , , g papers to his house ; I did so instantly , and expressed my satisfaction that he had resumed possession of what was his own property , though he had kindly permitted it to remain so long in ] ny custody . When I saw Lord Ellesmere next , some weeks hacl elapsed , and he informed mc that in the interval the documents had been ' tested : ' he did not say by whom , nor in what way ; but he added that he perfectlsatisfiedAfterwards Mr
was y . . Croker learned that I had , among my other manuscripts , an original poem by Pope , as the fact certainly was : he applied to me for it for his new edition , and I sent it to him , and he returned it to me with thanks , adding that there was no doubt as to Pope's handwriting . This introduced the topic of the Ellesmere Shake - speare manuscripts , and he informed me that he was now a be-
The British Musrum Slander And Bro. John Payne Collier.*
liever in them , after having inspected them . The late Mr . Hallam at a dinner , while I filled the office either of Treasurer , or of one of the Vice-presidents of the Society of Antiquaries , gave me similar information . While , therefore , I freely acknowledge the finding- of those documents , the forging of them I as firmly deny . " Our next step brings us to the question of the Dulwich
letter of Mrs . Alleyn . Bro . Collier distinctly states that when he had occasion to consult that document , thirty years ago , the name of " Mr . Shakespeare of the Globe" was in it , assuring us that the letter was then in a state , of ruinous decay ; ancl , his accuser suggests , as if to point out that he , Bro . Collier , knew he ivas advancing an untruthhe took
, care to fold the letter up and make an endorsement upon the envelope that it Avas of importance , ancl must bo carefully handled—for the jmrposo of no one else seeing it ! Fortunately the envelope is still preserved , and the folloAving editorial remark in the Athenceum will be quite sufficient to dispose of such egregious nonsense . In the
" ' Afliciiwa-m of 25 l , h Feb . last , p . 209 , the editor seems to have been incredulous upon the point whether I did actually leave Mrs . Alleyn ' s letter so carefully inclosed , but he found it in au envelope inscribed thus : ' Important document—not to be liandled until bound and repaired , the lower part being rotten . ' ' Would any man in his senses ( asks the editor ) sedulously guard from harm a document which he had consciously misread ? Would any rogue guilty of foisting in a paragraph into a public take pains to call instant ancl incessant attention to the
paper , very - document ivhich ivould ivitness to his crime ? IS o one out of Bedlam . ' How happens it , I may be allowed to ask , that Mr . N " . E . S . A . Hamilton says not one syllable of the pains I had volunteered to take that the letter should not receive farther injury ? Does not this triflingfact tend to prove the animus with ivhich I am pursued ?' The last charge openly made against Bro . Collier , by
Mr . Hamilton , is that connected Avith the " The Player s Petition , " a document in the State Paper Office ; and Ave can do no better than give the matter in Bro . Collier ' s pamphlet as a comjilete refutation to this most extraordinary piece of fancy . Bro . Collier tells us that"Many years ivere employed by mc in collecting materials for History of English Dramatic Poetry and the Stage : it ivas
pubmy lished twenty-nine years ago , and I think it took more than a year to print it , for it was a work requiring more accuracy than despatch : it was certainty not ready for press until 1829 or 1830 , ancl it bears date in 1881 . I cannot speak positively upon the point , but I think it must be about thirty-three or thirty-four years ago , that I first obtained admission into the State Paper Office that I might copy documents that bore upon my subject .
" That always willing and zealous friend , Mr . Aiuyot , then Treasurer ofthe Society of Antiquaries , gave me a personal introduction to Mr . Lemon , the father of the gentleman who is now so deservedly high in the department . Mr . Lemon , senior , was at that date in a post of great trust and confidence , ancl at my earnest request he promised to look out for me certain muniments relating to plays and theatres . I believe that , as he took a lively interest in my pursuits , he bestowed a good deal of pains on searching out relics that would contribute to my purpose—and calling in Great
George-street , where the State Papers Avere then kept before thenremoval to their present abode , I found , much to my satisfaction , that he had instituted so active an inquiry , that he had discovered for me five or six papers of great novelty and curiosity . "My belief is that the office hours did not extend beyond three in the clay ; ancl as it ivas late before I arrived , I expressed my fears that I should not be able to copy all the documents that
morning . One of them , I Avell remember , was a memorial from some of the principal inhabitants of the precinct of Blackfriars against the continuance of a theatre there , on the ground that it was a nuisance—that it attracted disorderly crowds , and that , as it was about to be repaired and enlarged by the players , the annoyance ivould be increased . Another document was in the form of a petition from the players against that memorial ; and
this last Mr . Lemon very kindly undertook either to copy , or to get copied for me : he took it away for the purpose , and by the time I hacl made some extracts from the memorial , he returned into the room Avhere I was sitting , with the petition and the transcript of it in his hand . He was good enough to aid me in the collation of the two , and when we had finished he took away the petition itself ( which I never saw again , but the authenticity of which I never for a moment doubted ) and left me the copy , which I used for my book , sending the very same sheet to the printer of my History .
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
The British Musrum Slander And Bro. John Payne Collier.*
my intimate friend in spite of his self-regretted attack upon me , as an editor of Shakespeare , in his . Remarfcs , & c , 1844 ) but in the first instance only of ' the H . S . Letter , ' for that was lithographed some time before the rest . What was his answer , not sent in haste , but after considerable delay and deliberation ? It was in these very Avords , ivhich I copy from a note in his own handwriting : —
'" The facsimile has certainly removed from my mind all doubts about the genuineness of the letter . ' " This opinion , be it observed , was given while the Eev . A . Dyce was printing his ' Beaumont and Fletcher , ' and before he entertained any immediate project of publishing a Shakespeare . Although I hacl known him very intimately from the year 1828 to the time I quitted London in 1850 , it is remarkable that he
never , on a single occasion , intimated to mc a doubt as to the authenticity of any of ' the Bridgewater House Shakespeare Forgeries . ' In his Shakespeare of 1857 I learned , for the first time , that he reiterated the suspicions some had expressed ; it was then , be it remembered , that he was actually engaged on an edition of Shakespeare intended to rival mine ; and it was then that he , for the first time , threw all sorts of discredit on my discoveries . As he hacl formerly given a decided opinion in . favour of the genuineness of ' the II . S . Letter , ' surely , when he subsequently , in his Shakespeare , expressed his doubts , ancl
quoted the doubts of others , he might haA c added , that at one time he had misled Mr . Collier on the subject , by strengthening his belief that ' the II . S . Letter' Avas a genuine manuscript of the period . The Eev . A . Dyce did not pursue this obvious course for his own reasons , but I doubt how far they are at present satisfactory even to himself . "If Mr . Halliwell have seen ground to alter his decision on the
same question , I can have no right to complain : all I know is , that with regard to ' the H . S . Letter , ' up to the year 1848 , he gave it as his positive conviction , not merely that it was a genuine manuscript of the period , but that it coulcl hardly ( for a reason he assigned , and ivhich at least convinced himself ) be a forgery . In his Life of Shakespeare , Sro ., 18-18 , after giving a facsimile of the conclusion of ' the II . S . Letter , ' p . 225 , he observes : — 'The
facsimile of that portion of it relating to Shakespeare , Avhich the reader will find at the commencement of this volume , ivill suffice to convince any one acquainted Avith such matters that it is a genuine manuscript of the period . No forgery of so long a document coulcl present so perfect a continuity of design ; - * yet it is right to state that grave doubts have been thrown on its authenticity . A portion of the facsimile will exhibit on examination a peculiarity few suppositious documents would afford , part of the imperfectly formed letter h , in the word Shakespeare , appearing by a slip of the pen in tbe letter / immediately beneath it . '
"Mr . Halliwell then refers to Mr . Wright , who also had seen the original , as a highly competent judge of such matters , a point lew will dispute ; and he subjoins in a note , ' In the library of the Society of Antiquaries , No . 201 , Art . 3 , is preserved ' a eopye of tbe couunyssion of Sewers in the countye of Kent , ' marked as vera copia , and singularly enough , written apparently by the same hand that copied the letter of II . S . ' As I have
never seen this ' copy of a commission' I can offer no opinion upon the identity of handwriting , but it is a matter upon which no man can be better qualified to give final judgment than Mr . Halliwell . " Upon opinions such as those I have acted in uniformly attaching the weight and value of authenticity to the documents in question . I may be wrong , or others may be in error ; but all the facts
within my knowledge are before the world . The documents themselves , after I had printed them , remained for many years in my possession—at least from 1 S 3 G to about 1845 : Lord Ellesmere never asked for them , nor inquired regarding them ; but one clay , after 1845 , Lord Ellesmere either told me , or wrote to me , that Mr . J . Wilson Croker had questioned their genuineness . His lordshithereforedesired me to send the oriinal
p , , g papers to his house ; I did so instantly , and expressed my satisfaction that he had resumed possession of what was his own property , though he had kindly permitted it to remain so long in ] ny custody . When I saw Lord Ellesmere next , some weeks hacl elapsed , and he informed mc that in the interval the documents had been ' tested : ' he did not say by whom , nor in what way ; but he added that he perfectlsatisfiedAfterwards Mr
was y . . Croker learned that I had , among my other manuscripts , an original poem by Pope , as the fact certainly was : he applied to me for it for his new edition , and I sent it to him , and he returned it to me with thanks , adding that there was no doubt as to Pope's handwriting . This introduced the topic of the Ellesmere Shake - speare manuscripts , and he informed me that he was now a be-
The British Musrum Slander And Bro. John Payne Collier.*
liever in them , after having inspected them . The late Mr . Hallam at a dinner , while I filled the office either of Treasurer , or of one of the Vice-presidents of the Society of Antiquaries , gave me similar information . While , therefore , I freely acknowledge the finding- of those documents , the forging of them I as firmly deny . " Our next step brings us to the question of the Dulwich
letter of Mrs . Alleyn . Bro . Collier distinctly states that when he had occasion to consult that document , thirty years ago , the name of " Mr . Shakespeare of the Globe" was in it , assuring us that the letter was then in a state , of ruinous decay ; ancl , his accuser suggests , as if to point out that he , Bro . Collier , knew he ivas advancing an untruthhe took
, care to fold the letter up and make an endorsement upon the envelope that it Avas of importance , ancl must bo carefully handled—for the jmrposo of no one else seeing it ! Fortunately the envelope is still preserved , and the folloAving editorial remark in the Athenceum will be quite sufficient to dispose of such egregious nonsense . In the
" ' Afliciiwa-m of 25 l , h Feb . last , p . 209 , the editor seems to have been incredulous upon the point whether I did actually leave Mrs . Alleyn ' s letter so carefully inclosed , but he found it in au envelope inscribed thus : ' Important document—not to be liandled until bound and repaired , the lower part being rotten . ' ' Would any man in his senses ( asks the editor ) sedulously guard from harm a document which he had consciously misread ? Would any rogue guilty of foisting in a paragraph into a public take pains to call instant ancl incessant attention to the
paper , very - document ivhich ivould ivitness to his crime ? IS o one out of Bedlam . ' How happens it , I may be allowed to ask , that Mr . N " . E . S . A . Hamilton says not one syllable of the pains I had volunteered to take that the letter should not receive farther injury ? Does not this triflingfact tend to prove the animus with ivhich I am pursued ?' The last charge openly made against Bro . Collier , by
Mr . Hamilton , is that connected Avith the " The Player s Petition , " a document in the State Paper Office ; and Ave can do no better than give the matter in Bro . Collier ' s pamphlet as a comjilete refutation to this most extraordinary piece of fancy . Bro . Collier tells us that"Many years ivere employed by mc in collecting materials for History of English Dramatic Poetry and the Stage : it ivas
pubmy lished twenty-nine years ago , and I think it took more than a year to print it , for it was a work requiring more accuracy than despatch : it was certainty not ready for press until 1829 or 1830 , ancl it bears date in 1881 . I cannot speak positively upon the point , but I think it must be about thirty-three or thirty-four years ago , that I first obtained admission into the State Paper Office that I might copy documents that bore upon my subject .
" That always willing and zealous friend , Mr . Aiuyot , then Treasurer ofthe Society of Antiquaries , gave me a personal introduction to Mr . Lemon , the father of the gentleman who is now so deservedly high in the department . Mr . Lemon , senior , was at that date in a post of great trust and confidence , ancl at my earnest request he promised to look out for me certain muniments relating to plays and theatres . I believe that , as he took a lively interest in my pursuits , he bestowed a good deal of pains on searching out relics that would contribute to my purpose—and calling in Great
George-street , where the State Papers Avere then kept before thenremoval to their present abode , I found , much to my satisfaction , that he had instituted so active an inquiry , that he had discovered for me five or six papers of great novelty and curiosity . "My belief is that the office hours did not extend beyond three in the clay ; ancl as it ivas late before I arrived , I expressed my fears that I should not be able to copy all the documents that
morning . One of them , I Avell remember , was a memorial from some of the principal inhabitants of the precinct of Blackfriars against the continuance of a theatre there , on the ground that it was a nuisance—that it attracted disorderly crowds , and that , as it was about to be repaired and enlarged by the players , the annoyance ivould be increased . Another document was in the form of a petition from the players against that memorial ; and
this last Mr . Lemon very kindly undertook either to copy , or to get copied for me : he took it away for the purpose , and by the time I hacl made some extracts from the memorial , he returned into the room Avhere I was sitting , with the petition and the transcript of it in his hand . He was good enough to aid me in the collation of the two , and when we had finished he took away the petition itself ( which I never saw again , but the authenticity of which I never for a moment doubted ) and left me the copy , which I used for my book , sending the very same sheet to the printer of my History .