a word or a letter has appeared in a hand which was not
in common use from the latest years of Elizabeth's reign, through James
I.'s and Charles I.'s, down through the Commonwealth to and well past
the time of the Restoration,--a period, be it remembered, of only
between fifty and seventy-five years. We are prepared to show, upon
the backs of title-pages and upon the margins of various books printed
between 1580 and 1660, and in copy-books published and miscellaneous
documents dated between 1650 and 1675, writing as ancient in all its
characteristics as any that has been fac-similed and published with the
purpose of invalidating the genuineness of the marginal readings of Mr.
Collier's folio.

We are also prepared to show that the lack of homogeneousness (aside
from the question of period or fashion) and the striking and various
appearance of the ink even on a single page, which have been relied upon
as strong points against the genuineness of the marginal readings, are
matters of little moment, because they are not evidence either of an
assumed hand or of simulated antiquity; and even further, that the fact
that certain of the pencilled words are in a much more modern-seeming
hand than the words in ink which overlie them is of equally small
importance in the consideration of this question. Our means of
comparison in regard to the folio are limited, indeed, but they are none
the less sufficient; for we may be sure that Mr. Collier's opponents,
who have followed his tracks page by page with microscopes and chemical
tests, who hang their case upon pot-hooks and trammels, and lash
themselves into palaeographic fury with the tails of remarkable _g_-s,
have certainly made public the strongest evidence against him that they
could discover.

Among many old books, defaced after the fashion of old times with
writing upon their blank leaves and spaces, in the possession of the
present writer, is a copy of the second edition of Bartholomew Young's
translation of Guazzo's "Civile Conversation," London, 4to., 1586. This
volume was published without that running marginal abstract of the
contents which is so common upon the books of its period. This omission
an early possessor undertook to supply; and in doing so he left evidence
which forbids us to accept all the conclusions as to the Collier folio
and manuscripts which the British palaeographists draw from the premises
which they set forth. Upon the very first page of the Preface h