cript authorities must be noticed in an article
which aims at the presentation of a comprehensive view of this subject.
These are based on certain variations between Mr. Collier's statements
as to the readings of his manuscript authorities and a certain supposed
"philological" proof of the modern origin of one of those authorities,
the folio of 1632. Upon all these points the case of Mr. Collier's
accusers breaks down. It is found, for instance, that in the folio an
interpolated line in "Coriolanus," Act iii. sc. 2, reads,--

"To brook _controul_ without the use of anger,"

and that so Mr. Collier gave it in both editions of his "Notes and
Emendations," in his fac-similes made for private distribution, in his
vile one-volume Shakespeare, and in the "List," etc., appended to the
"Seven Lectures." But in his new edition of Shakespeare's Works (6 vols.
1858) he gives it,--

"To brook _reproof_ without the use of anger,"

and hereupon Dr. Ingleby asks,--"Is it not possible that here Mr.
Collier's remarkable memory is too retentive, and that, though second
thoughts may be best, first thoughts are sometimes inconveniently
remembered to the prejudice of the second?"[N] Here we see a palpable
slip of memory or of the pen, by which an old man substituted one word
for another of similar import, as many a younger man has done before
him, tortured into evidence of forgery. Such an objection is worthy of
notice only as an example of the carping, unjudicial spirit in which
this subject is treated by some of the British critics.

[Footnote N: _The Shakespeare Fabrications_, p. 45.]

Mr. Collier is accused at least of "inaccuracy" and "ignorance" on
account of some of these variations. Thus, in Mrs. Alleyn's Letter, she
says that a boy "would have borrowed x's." (ten shillings); and this Mr.
Collier reads "would have borrowed x'li." (ten pounds). Whereupon Mr.
Duffus Hardy, Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, produces this as
one of "the most striking" of Mr. Collier's inaccuracies in regard to
this letter, and says that it "certainly betrays no little ignorance,
as 10_l_. in those days would have equalled about 60_l_. of our present
money." "A strange youth," he adds, "calls on Mrs. Alleyn and asks the
loan of 10_l_. as coolly as he would ask for as many pence!" Let us
measure the extent of the ignorance shown by this inaccuracy, and
estimate its significance by a high standard. In one of the documents
which Mr. Collier has