"Who _wou_ld be so mock'd with glory, or to live."
Here, by a misprint both in the first and second folio, there is a syllable too much for rhythm; and the corrector properly abbreviates "Who would" into one syllable; but he does it, not by striking out all of "would" but the d, as a forger of modern days inevitably would have done: he scrupulously leaves the l, which was pronounced in Shakespeare's time, and for many years after; though this, we believe, was never remarked until the appearance of a work very recently published in this country!
To revert to some of the aimless work of this supposed forger. There are many passages in the Collier folio, some of a few lines, others of many, which are entirely stricken out; and of these there is not one that we have noticed which it could possibly have been intended to represent as spurious. What was a forger to gain by this? It could but serve to throw discredit on his work. And again, in these erased passages, and on erasures for new readings, the verbal and literal changes are still made, and made, too, in points of not the slightest moment as to the text, and which, in fact, produce no change in it, Take this instance, in a passage given from "Hamlet," Act V. Sc. 2:—
"Hora. Now cracks a Noble heart: Good night sweet Prience," etc.
Here "sweet Prience" is struck out, and "be blest" substituted in the margin; but, previously to this change, the first e had been struck out in "Prience,"—a change of no more consequence than if the capital N in "Noble" had been changed to a small one. What, too, did the forger propose to gain by putting, at great pains to himself, commas, in passages like this, from "Timon of Athens," Act IV. Sc. 2:—
"To have his pompe, and all state comprehends,
But onely painted like his varnisht Friends"?
where he inserts a comma after "painted," properly enough, but without at all changing the sense of the passage, or facilitating our comprehension of it in the slightest degree.
But enough, although we leave much unsaid. For we think that our readers can hardly fail to conclude with us, that proof far stronger and more complete than the discovery of modern-looking pencil-marks under antique-looking words in ink is required to prove Mr. Collier's folio a fabrication of the present day. This external physical evidence is, to say the least, far from conclusive, even on its own grounds; and the internal moral evidence, ever the higher and the weightier in such questions, is all against it. The forgery may be proved hereafter; but it has not been proved yet. The character of the ink is not clearly established in all the readings which have thus far been submitted to experiment, as Mr. Maskelyne admits; and that question is still to be determined. We await with interest the appearance of a pamphlet upon the subject, which is now in preparation at the British Museum. Meantime, upon this brief examination of the subject in a light as new to us as to our readers, we venture to repeat the opinion which we have before expressed, that many, if not all, of the corrections in this folio were made in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The dropping of superfluous e-s, (as in "sayes,") and a-s, (as in "cloath,") and s-s, (as in "shakes,") points to as late a date as that; and the retention of the l in the abbreviation of "would" indicates a period before the reign of William and Mary. We conjecture, that, possibly, some of the readings are spurious, and were added by a person who found the volume with many ancient corrections, and seized the opportunity to obtain the authority of age and the support of those corrections for others of later date. This, however, is but a conjecture, and upon a point of little consequence. Indeed, the chief importance of this investigation at the British Museum, to all the world but Mr. Collier, is, that, whether the pencil-marks, which the corrector chose in some cases to follow, in others to disregard, prove to be ancient or modern, the corrections are now deprived of all pretence to authority, and thrown upon their own merits; which is just the position in which all candid people desire to see them.
The Exploits and Triumphs in Europe of Paul Morphy, the Chess Champion; including an Historical Account of Clubs, Biographical Sketches of Famous Players, and Various Information and Anecdote relating to the Noble Game of Chess. By Paul Morphy's late Secretary. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 203.
The American Chess Congress, at New York, in October, 1857, by the wide-spread interest which it awakened, revealed what was not very generally suspected,—that the game of chess is played and studied in the New World more generally, and on the present occasion, we may say more thoroughly and successfully, than in the Old. This interest in chess the subsequent career of Paul Morphy, the prime hero of that grand encounter, has greatly widened and deepened; and to all who had the chess-fever before his advent, or who have caught it since, this book will be welcome. It fulfils all the promises of its title-page, and tells the story of Paul Morphy's modestly achieved victories at home and abroad with authority and intimate knowledge. Chess-players, and all who take even an incidental interest in Mr. Morphy's adventures abroad, will be glad to find here a particular account of his engagements with Harrwitz, Anderssen, and especially of the match which he did not play with Mr. Stanton, and why he did not play it. The whole of the Stanton affair is recounted with much minuteness of date and circumstance, and a production of all the letters which passed upon the subject; and we must say, that upon the facts, (about which there appears to be no room for dispute,) aside from any color given to them by the writer's manner of stating them, the case has a very bad aspect for the English champion. How much better would Mr. Stanton now be standing before his brother chess-players, and, so much attention has the affair attracted, before the world, had he been fairly beaten, like Professor Anderssen! His reputation as a chess-player would have suffered no diminution by such a result of an encounter with Mr. Morphy; that would only have shown, that, well as Stanton played, Morphy played better,—as to which the world is as well satisfied now as then it would have been. And as to his reputation as a man,—what need to say a word about it? This chess-flurry has been fraught with good lessons by example. The frankness, the entire candor, and simple manliness of Professor Anderssen, who went from Breslau to Paris for the purpose of meeting Mr. Morphy and there contending for the belt of the chess-ring, and who played his games as if he and his opponent were two brothers, playing for a chance half-hour's amusement, is charming, and has won him regard the world over. Such generosity is truly noble, and it appears yet nobler by contrast with the endeavors of Harrwitz to worry and tire his opponent into defeat, and his final contrivance to avoid a confession that he was beaten. Mr. Stanton's conduct is a warning that cannot be entirely lost upon men not utterly depraved, who are tempted into petty duplicity to serve petty ends; and in the midst of all, how Paul Morphy's modesty, dignity of carriage, generosity, and entire honesty of purpose shine out and make us proud to call him countryman!