brought forward--an account by Sir Arthur
Mainwayring, auditor to Sir Thomas Egerton, in James I.'s reign, which
is pronounced to be a forgery, and which probably is one--is an entry
which mentions the performance of "Othello" in 1602. The second part of
this entry is,[O]--

"Rewards; to m'r. Lyllyes man w'ch }
brought y'e lotterye boxe to }
x's. Harefield: p m'r. Andr. Leigh." }

[Footnote O: See the fac-simile in Dr. Ingleby's _Complete View_. p.
262.]

Mr. Lyllye's man got ten shillings, then, for his job,--very princely
pay in those days. But Mr. Hardy[P] prints this entry,--"Rewarde to Mr.
Lillye's man, which brought the lotterye box to Harefield x'li."--ten
_pounds_!--the same sum that Mr. Collier made Mr. Chaloner's boy ask
of Mrs. Alleyn. In other words, according to Mr. Hardy, Sir Arthur
Mainwayring gave a serving-man, for carrying a box, ten pounds as coolly
as he would have given as many pence! Now, Mr. Hardy, "as 10_l_. in
those days would have equalled about 60_l_. of our present money," on
your honor and your palaeographical reputation, does it betray "no
little ignorance" to mistake, or, if you please, to misprint, 10's. for
ten 10'li.? If no, so much the better for poor Mr. Collier; but if ay,
is not the Department of Public Records likely to come to grief?[Q]

[Footnote P: _A Review_, etc., p. 60.]

[Footnote Q: We could point out numerous other similar failures and
errors in the publications in which Mr. Collier is attacked; but we
cannot spare time or space for these petty side-issues.]

A very strong point has been made upon the alteration of "so eloquent as
a _chair_" to "so eloquent as a _cheer_" in Mr. Collier's folio. It is
maintained by Mr. Arthur Edmund Brae, and by Dr. Ingleby, that "cheer"
as a shout of "admirative applause" did not come into use until
the latter part of the last century. This is the much vaunted
philologico-chronological proof that the manuscript readings in that
folio are of very recent origin. Dr. Ingleby devotes twenty pages to
this single topic. Never was labor more entirely wasted. For the
result of it all is the establishment of these facts in regard to
"cheer":--that shouts of encouragement and applause were called "cheers"
as early, at least, as 1675, and that in the middle of the century
1500, if not before, "to cheer" meant to utter an audible expression of
applause. The first appears from the frequent use of the noun in the
Diary of Henry T