and has been broken and torn away by the accidents of time; but enough
remains to show that the passage in question stands thus,--the letters
in brackets being obliterated:--

"Aboute a weeke agoe ther[e] [cam]e a youthe who said he was || Mr.
Frauncis Chalo[ner]s man [& wou]ld have borrow[e]d x's.--to || have
bought things for [hi]s Mri[s]..... [tru]st hym || Cominge wthout...
token.... d ||I would have.... || [i]f I bene sue[r] ..... || and
inquire after the fellow," etc.

The parallels || in the above paragraph indicate the divisions of the
lines in the original manuscript; and a moment's examination will
convince the reader that the existence of those words of Mr. Collier's
version which we have printed in Italic letter in the place to which he
assigns them is a physical impossibility, as Mr. Hamilton has clearly
shown.[E] And that the mention of Shakespeare, and what he said, was not
on a part of the letter which has been broken away, is made certain by
the fortunate preservation of enough of the lower margin to show that no
such passage could have been written upon it.

[Footnote E: _An Inquiry_, etc., pp. 86-89. See also Ingleby's _Complete
View_, etc., pp. 279-288. Both Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Ingleby give
fac-similes of this important postscript.]

Mr. Collier has also been convicted by Mr. Dyce of positive and
malicious misrepresentation in various passages of the Prolegomena and
Notes to his last edition of Shakespeare. (London, 1858, 6 vols.) The
misrepresentations refer so purely to matters of textual criticism,
and the exhibition of even one of them would involve the quotation of
passages so uninteresting to the general reader, that we shall ask him