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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861 by Various
page 28 of 295 (09%)
[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 to his Italian hand, but
becomes more and more antique in his style, so that on folio 65, and for
ten folios before and after, we have such writing as that of fac-simile
No. 4, "_strangers where they come change the speech there used_." On
folios 93 to 95 we find characters like those given in fac-simile No. 5,
which it requires more experience than ours in record-reading entirely
to decipher. On the reverse of folio 95 the annotator, apparently weary
of his task, stayed his hand.

Now in these ninety-nine folios (including the Preface, which is not
numbered) are not only all the five varieties of chirography fac-similed
above, but others partaking the character of some two of these, and
all manifestly written by the same hand; which is shown no less by the
phraseology than by the chirographic traits common to all the notes. And
besides, not a few of these notes, which fill the margins, are in
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