hand than the words in ink which overlie them is of equally small
importance in the consideration of this question. Our means of
comparison in regard to the folio are limited, indeed, but they are none
the less sufficient; for we may be sure that Mr. Collier's opponents,
who have followed his tracks page by page with microscopes and chemical
tests, who hang their case upon pot-hooks and trammels, and lash
themselves into palaeographic fury with the tails of remarkable _g_-s,
have certainly made public the strongest evidence against him that they
could discover.

Among many old books, defaced after the fashion of old times with
writing upon their blank leaves and spaces, in the possession of the
present writer, is a copy of the second edition of Bartholomew Young's
translation of Guazzo's "Civile Conversation," London, 4to., 1586. This
volume was published without that running marginal abstract of the
contents which is so common upon the books of its period. This omission
an early possessor undertook to supply; and in doing so he left evidence
which forbids us to accept all the conclusions as to the Collier folio
and manuscripts which the British palaeographists draw from the premises
which they set forth. Upon the very first page of the Preface he writes,
in explanation of the phrase "hee which fired the temple of Diana," the
name "_Erostrato_" in a manner which brings to mind one point strongly
made by Dr. Ingleby against the genuineness of a Ralegh letter brought
forward by Mr. Collier, as well as of the manuscript readings in the two
folio Shakespeares, which he also brought to light. Dr. Ingleby says,
"I have given a copy of Mr. Collier's fac-simile in sheet No. II.,
and alongside of that I have placed the impossible E in the Ralegh
signature, and the almost exactly similar E which occurs in the
emendation _End, vice_ 'And,' in the Bridgewater Folio. By means of this
monstrous letter we are enabled to trace the chain of forgery from the