We have thus far left out of consideration the faint pencil-memorandums
which play so important a part in the history of Mr. Collier's folio.
We now examine one of their bearings upon the question at issue. Is it
possible that they, or any considerable proportion of them, may be
the traces of pencil-marks made in the century 1600? The very great
importance of this question need not be pointed out. It was first
indicated in this magazine in October, 1859. Mr. Collier has seen it,
and, not speaking with certainty as to the use of plumbago pencils at
that period, he says,--"But if it be true that pencils of plumbago were
at that time in common use, as I believe they were, the old corrector
may himself have now and then adopted this mode of recording on the
spot changes which, in his judgment, ought hereafter [thereafter?]
permanently to be made in Shakespeare's text."[cc]

[Footnote cc: _Reply_, p. 20.]

Another volume in the possession of the present writer affords
satisfactory evidence that these pencil-marks may be memorandums made in
the latter half of the century 1600. It is a copy of "The Historie of
the Life and Death of Mary Stuart Queene of Scotland," London, 1636,--a
small, narrow duodecimo, in the original binding. Upon the first one
hundred and sixty-nine pages of this volume, within the ruled margin so
common in old books, are annotations, very brief and sparse, rarely
more than two upon a page, and often not more than one, and consisting
sometimes of only two or three abbreviated words,--all evidently written
in haste, and all entirely without interest. These annotations, or,
rather, memorandums, like those in the Guazzo, explain or illustrate the
text. At the top of the page, within the margin-rules, the annotator has
written the year during which the events there related took place; and
he has also paged the Preface. Now of these annotations _about one half