ountess
Olivia wrote, as became a young woman of fashion when "Twelfth Night"
was produced; and from this again to the modified chancery hand which
was in such common use in the first half of the century 1600, and again
to a cramped and contracted chirography almost illegible, which went out
of general use in the last years of Elizabeth and the first of James I.
All these varieties of handwriting, except the last, were in use from
1600 to the Restoration. They will be found in the second edition of
Richard Gethinge's "Calligraphotechnia, or The Arte of Faire Writing,
1652." This, in spite of its sounding name, is nothing more than a
writing-master's copper-plate copy-book; and its republication in
1652, with these various styles of chirography, is important accessory
evidence in the present case.[Z]

[Footnote Z: Lowndes mentions no other edition than that of 1652; and
Mr. Bohn in his new edition of the Bibliographer has merely repeated the
original in this respect. But if Lowndes had seen only the edition of
1652, he might have found in it evidence of the date of the publication
of the book. It is dedicated to "Sir Francis Bacon Knight, his Ma'ties
Attorney Generall"; and as Bacon was made Attorney General in 1613 and
Lord Keeper in 1617, the book must have been published between those
dates; and one of the plates, the 18th, is dated "Anno 1615," and
another, the 24th, "1616."]

But to return to the margins of our Guazzo, from five pages of which we
here give fac-similes.

[Illustration]

The writer of the annotations began his work in that clear Italian hand
which came into vogue in the reign of James I., (see, for instance,
Gethinge, Plates 18 to 28,) of which fac-simile No. 1, "_Experience of
father_" is an example. In the course of the first few pages, however,
his chirography, on the one hand, shows traces of the old English
chancery-hand, and, on the other, degenerates into a careless, cursive,
modern-seeming style, of which fac-simile No. 2, "_England_," is a
striking instance. But he soon corrects himself, and writes for twenty
folios (to the recto of folio 27) with more or less care in his clear
Roman hand. Thence he begins to return rapidly, but by perceptible
degrees, to the old hand, until, on the recto of folio 31, and a page
or two before it, he writes, illegibly to most modern eyes, as in
fac-simile No. 3, "_a proverbe_." Thereafter, except upon certain rare
and isolated occasions, he never returns