The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861 by Various
page 16 of 295 (05%)
page 16 of 295 (05%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
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 |
|