Bacon's DictionaryAppendices

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The exhibits and miniatures of which are found in this section, are designed to assist the serious student and reader in following the path of the Authorship Controvesy that has been so laboriously persued by many authors and researchers during its commence.

These exhibits have been placed here as not to interrupt the flow of reading in the Baconian Dictionary sections, being a finding list of Bacon’s works, his history, his thoughts and his aims, which are a subject of study and discussion.

Collier’s Forgeries

J. Payne Collier announced his retirement in 1850, though he continued to devote a good deal of time to his Shakespeare research. Two years later he announced the discovery of a copy of the Second Folio of Shakespeare’s plays which contained extensive manuscript annotations and corrections in a hand seemingly contemporary with the book’s 1632 publication. The volume became known as the Perkins Folio because it contained the inscription “Tho. Perkins, his booke” on the outer cover. Collier published his findings in “Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare’s Plays: from Early Manuscript Corrections in a Copy of the Folio, 1632 in the Possession of J. Payne Collier (1853).” He subsequently edited a new edition of Shakespeare’s plays incorporating the corrections and changes he had discovered.

According to Collier, his examination of the Perkins Folio revealed numerous manuscript notations, ranging from simple changes in punctuation, to revised stage directions and entire new lines. Collier’s findings caused a sensation in Shakespeare circles and his contemporaries pleaded with him to allow a thorough examination of the volume, but he never granted anyone more than a cursory look at the book. As might be expected, his claims were questioned by a number of critics, notably Samuel Weller Singer and Alexander Dyce, both of whom published critiques of Collier shortly after the publication of “Notes and Emendations.” Though challenged, Collier was unyielding and might have remained so if not for the death of his patron, the Duke of Devonshire, in 1858. Collier had presented the Perkins Folio to the Duke in whose library it resided, under the watchful eye of his librarian. Following the Duke’s death, his heir deposited the work in the British Museum. There it was examined thoroughly by experts and in July 1859, Nicholas S.E.A. Hamilton, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, initially in a letter to The Times, declared that the manuscript annotations had been written in the nineteenth century, not the seventeenth. The implication was quite obvious: John Payne Collier had forged the emendations in the Perkins Folio. Although Collier had defenders, the evidence against him continued to mount. The publication of Hamilton’s “An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collie’s Annotated Shakspere, Folio, 1632: and of Certain Shaksperian Documents Likewise Published by Mr. Collier” (1860) summarized the analysis done at the British Museum. But the final salvo came from the critic Clement Mansfield Ingleby, who in 1859 had accused Collier of deceit in his The Shakspeare Fabrications. Ingleby built upon the evidence that had been amassed by various critics and produced A Complete View of the Shakspere Controversy which was published in 1861. Ingleby summarized all of the evidence in the case and accused Collier outright of having forged the manuscript annotations in the Perkins Folio. Collier never responded to this attack and his guilt was established.

Collier continued his scholarly endeavours for the duration of his life; he even edited another edition of Shakespeare, but his reputation remained tarnished. Following Collier’s death, new discoveries were made which suggested he had produced other forgeries and he remains an unfortunate figure in the history of English letters.

Although Collier produced some of the most important works of legitimate scholarship of his era, his forgeries have tainted these accomplishments permanently and his reputation has never recovered. This book was the final, damning blow against Collier. Neither Collier nor his defenders ever issued a serious challenge to Ingleby’s Complete View, although he directly accused Collier of numerous offenses of which “the fabrication of the Perkins notes is the worst.”

Ernest Law, in Some Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries (1911) gives the following account: “On the April 29, 1868 a letter was received by Sir Frederick Madden, keeper of manuscripts in the British Museum, offering for sale to the trustees two very interesting documents of the time of James I., the Account-Books of the Revels Office for the years 1604–05 and 1611–12.” The writer of the letter, who was well-known to the assistant keeper of manuscripts, Mr. Bond, stated that he had found these papers some thirty years before, when a clerk in the Audit Office, “under the vaults of Somerset House far under the Quadrangle in a dry and lofty cellar, known by the name of the Charcoal Repository. Had I been a rich man,” proceeded the writer, “I would have presented these highly interesting papers to the nation.” But as he was not so, he added in a postscript, that he would “be content with any sum that the trustees of the British Museum may see fit to give me for these papers.”

Four days later in acknowledging a letter which he had received from Mr. Bond asking him to name a price for what he offered, he said “I have written to Collier about the Revels Accounts I sent you; and he will write to you.” The “Collier” referred to was the notorious John Payne Collier. [Also see Ireland Henry-William.] That one, who had been the subject of so painful a revelation, still fresh in the public mind, should have been asked to put a value on ancient documents, the source of which appeared to be by no means free from suspicion, seemed a somewhat strange thing; even though he prudently stood aloof, and did not respond to the request. The would-be seller, however, in default of any communication from Collier, wrote to Mr. Bond two days after saying: “I do not think that I am asking too much of the trustees of the British Museum, when I ask sixty guineas for them.” There the correspondence, which the present writer has been permitted, for the purposes of this investigation, to see, abruptly came to an end. The two account books were, accordingly, impounded by Sir Frederick Madden, and having been formerly identified by the deputy keeper of the Records, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Thomas Duffus Hardy, were handed over on May 26, 1868 by Mr. Bond, on behalf of the trustees of the British Museum, to the Record Office. There they were placed among the old “Audit Office Declared Accounts Various” where they still remain.

Peter Cunningham, who had been long favourably known as a literary antiquary and the compiler of several excellent works of history and biography, was the man who had been in unlawful possession of the documents in question, and had endeavoured to palm them off on the British Museum as his own. The facts of the disclosure were also the more strange and distressing in that Cunningham was the very person, who in 1842, when he was a young man of twenty–six and had been in the Audit Office eight years had announced to the world his discovery at Somerset House of these particular documents; and had himself edited them, with a valuable Introduction, with other similar papers of earlier dates, in one of the most interesting as well as one of the best known of the volumes issued by the Shakespeare Society, Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court. In this he had explained how he came to find them. He had started, he said, “on a search for old papers, rummaging in dry repositories, damp cellars and still damper vaults, for books of accounts, for warrants and for receipts. My last discovery was my most interesting, and, alighting as I now did upon two official books of the Revels one of Tylney’s and one of Buc’s which had escaped both Musgrave and Malone, I at last found something about Shakespeare, something that was new, and something that was definitive.” But the whole affair was still more astonishing from the strange ingenuousness if it were not the most impudent and reckless effrontery with which Cunningham had written to Sir Frederick Madden, apparently entirely forgetful of everything that had gone before, telling him how he had come by the books, deliberately pointing out to him, in effect, how he could have had no sort of right or title to any property in them. Yet, according to the Athenaeum, “the gentleman who offered them for sale appears to have thought his right of property in them perfect.”

That the documents were not missed and searched for is perhaps not surprising, for the archives of the Audit Office, while still at Somerset House, were in no way accessible to the general public, and consequently without the invaluable protection which publicity always affords; and when they were sent to the Record Office they were simply passed over en bloc, unsorted and unindexed.

In response to an invitation from the Master of the Rolls, Lord Romilly, to explain how he came to be in possession of these public documents, he answered boldly: “They belong to me. To the Commissioners of Audit, they passed from the Auditors of the Imprest. But for me they would have been destroyed, through sheer ignorance, or sold for waste paper.” It was soon afterwards found that he had undoubtedly disposed of, privately and for money, a year or two after, if not before his retirement, of another of these Revels Account books presumably taken possession of by him at the same time as the two others namely, that of Sir George Buc, Tylney’s successor as Master of the Revels, for the year 1636–37, an account which had also formed part of his volume of Extracts in 1842, and which contained references to plays of Shakespeare’s performed at Court before Charles I. What price he got for it, and whether in selling it he gave any explanation of how he had come by it, or where he had got it from, we do not know. The buyer was a bookseller in Fleet Street, of the name of Waller, who, when he heard of the talk about Cunningham and the other books, came forward and gave it up to the Master of the Rolls, when it was replaced in the bundle with the rest of the series. In spite, however, of the decidedly incriminating look of these transactions, nothing further appears to have been done in the matter.

For the sensation caused by the discovery of Cunningham’s attempted sale of the purloined papers was small as compared with that aroused by the announcement that they had fallen under a grave suspicion of having been tampered with the experts, according to The Athenaeum, having arrived at the conclusion that “the whole body of Shakespearean illustrations has been added to the original”; and according to the Daily News, “pronounced by the most competent judges to be modern imitations one of them a clumsy bare-faced performance” that is to say, that the two well-known lists of plays in which were included many of Shakespeare’s greatest works, with the dates of their being acted before King James at Whitehall, were entirely forged. Coming, as this did, on the top of the then still recent exposure of Collier’s far-reaching forgeries, it naturally produced a most disturbing effect on all lovers of Shakespeare, causing among scholars nothing less than dismay. For ever since the publication of the Revel’s Extracts in 1842 the list therein printed (now found to correspond, word for word and letter for letter with the “forged” manuscript) had been taken, almost universally, as decisive of the vexed questions of the dates of composition and production of Measure for Measure, Othello, A Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, and then suddenly the whole basis whereon had been so carefully reared a vast edifice of commentary and learning was declared to be absolutely unsound.

And here ends Law’s account; proved forgery or not, a small crumb of comfort this remains however, to all modern literature wits, if such tricks were being structured in the 1700’s and 1800’s.

Mr. J. Payne Collier’s Reply To

Mr. N.E.S.A. Hamilton’s Inquiry Into

The Imputed Shakespeare Forgeries, 1860.

In the very beginning of July last, [1859] they [British Library] opened their attacks by the boldest accusations of forgery, confessedly long before they were in possession of evidence to support them: all was then mere assertion; but they promised, without more delay than could not be avoided, to produce their authorities: they should, they said, “shortly lay before the public” all the particulars they could collect. What was the result? They have occupied nearly eight months in their inquiries: in the meantime, if they were believed, I have had to sustain all the odium produced by their preliminary denunciation; and yet, when their matured imputations are brought forward in the shape of an ambitious pamphlet of 155 quarto pages, they are not found to contain even as much as their original statement; independently of documents and other reprinted matter, there are not 50 pages of the 155 that are new. The composition of these 50 pages occupied more than 220 days, or at the rate of considerably less than a quarter of a page per day this, too, supposing only one hand to have been employed upon the work; whereas it is notorious that the Manuscript Department not only brought all their resources to bear on the subject, but called in the aid of the Mineral Department also.

We do not here take into account the separate labours of the lithographer. Is this, I may ask, to be taken as a test of the rate at which business is conducted in the Department? I always thought, and had some reason to think, that it was one of the most industrious and well conducted departments in the British Museum. In the interval however, they have been far from idle in other ways; they have carried back their researches not merely to the year 1849, when I bought the corrected folio (1632) of Shakespeare’s Works (which, for brevity’s sake, I shall call the Perkins Folio) of Rodd the bookseller, but even to the year 1823, when in fact, my avowed career of authorship was only in its commencement. They have hunted in every dirty hole and obscure corner for information; and if they happened to light upon anything that, in their opinion, at all contributed to the end of blackening my character, individual and literary, they have not failed, during the whole of the last seven or eight months to make it public, not only by paragraphs and articles in newspapers, I wish to avoid giving personal offence, and therefore mention no names; but it is generally stated that the manuscript authorities of the British Museum specially invited gentlemen to see the book, and to listen to their criticisms upon it, who were engaged in various departments of the public press.

The name of one gentleman in particular, for whom otherwise I entertain a high respect in his own branch of knowledge, has almost invariably been coupled in paragraphs directed against me and my literary labours. While I had any influences of the same kind, as all my friends and relations knew, I studiously kept my own name from thus attracting public attention but by laboured attacks upon me in magazines and reviews carefully forwarded to me anonymously. No chance was neglected of discovering something to confirm the impression, which the Manuscript Department hoped they had produced by their earliest onslaught in The Times of July 2, last. The whole of this inquiry and discussion has arisen out of my purchase in 1849 of the Perkins Folio, from the late Thomas Rodd, a bookseller whom I had known for at least fourty years, and who during the whole of that time carried on a most respectable business in Newport Street, Leicester Square.

I have told the story of my acquisition of it so often that, as I am weary of it, and perhaps as the particulars are contained in both editions of my Notes and Emendations, and are more than touched upon in my Shakespeare, 6 Vols. 8vo. 1858, it may not be necessary to say more on the present occasion than that the Perkins Folio came out of a parcel of books from the country; that I was in Kodd’s shop when the parcel arrived; that I bought it for thirty shillings (neither Rodd nor myself being aware of the existence of any manuscript notes in it); and that I left it for a time in the shop. The truth of this statement has been impugned; and if it have not been openly and broadly asserted, it has been more than insinuated that the volume had no notes whatever when it came into my hands; that I subsequently added them, and that having so inserted them in an old handwriting, or in what was meant to look like it, I palmed upon the world my own alterations and emendations of the text of Shakespeare, as the work of some person who had lived about the middle of the seventeenth century.

Public Record Office

July I860.

Should Collier complain of the tone, which has been adopted by those who differed from him in this matter, he has no one to blame but himself. It was the injudicious answer he sent to The Times newspaper, in reply to Hamilton’s letter, that has caused him the annoyance, by making it a personal, rather than a literary, question. A most important literary question that had engaged public attention since July 1859. Not that it is new to those who take an interest in dramatic, and more especially Shakespearian, literature; for it has been before the world since January 1852, when Collier first announced, in The Athenaum that he had discovered in a copy of the second folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1632) a large body of Notes and Emendations, amounting to nearly 20,000 in a hand not much later than the time when this edition emanated from the press, and that in his belief the annotator had made these emendations from better authority than that of the editors of the First Folio. This announcement naturally created a great desire on the part of Shakespearian critics, and other literary men, for a detailed account of these Notes and Emendations; and in order that any person interested in the subject might have an opportunity of inspecting them, Collier as he stated exhibited the book before the Shakespearian Society, and, on three occasions, before the Society of Antiquaries. Further to gratify the curiosity that had then been raised, in the year 1852 Collier published a volume professing to contain the greater part, but not all, of these manuscript alterations, with a facsimile of a portion of one page. No sooner had Collier made public some of the emendations of this annotated folio, than the most lively interest was excited, not only in England, but on the continent as well. The new readings were however, violently assailed by critics of every denomination; one alone (Professor Mommsen) accepting them as genuine. In England, Mr. Singer, Mr. Dyce, Mr. Staunton, Mr. Hunter, and Mr. C. Knight repudiated them in no very measured terms. According to these gentlemen, they were not what they professed to be; the “Old Corrector” (as Collier termed their author) had no authority for his corrections; on the contrary, the greater part of them were adopted from recent annotators; those of which the original could not be traced were violent and inconsiderate changes for the worse; the larger number were frivolous and unnecessary.

Such was the gist of the allegations made in reference to these readings. The scholars, who thus impugned the genuineness of these emendations, arrived at their conclusions wholly from their knowledge of Shakespeare’s text, and of what had been done for it by commentators during the present century and the last. They had never examined Collier’s folio, though more than one had endeavoured to obtain an opportunity of doing so.

As early as 1853 Mr. Charles Knight pointed out, in a temperate but forcible manner, the propriety of having the folio deposited in the custody of some public body, who would allow access to it, under proper regulations, and a full and satisfactory examination of its contents. Disregarding however, the adverse opinions thus expressed, Collier, in 1853, issued a second edition of the Notes and Emendations; and, shortly after, the folio became the property of the Duke of Devonshire. All further chance of a critical examination of the volume had now become apparently hopeless; and it was after a considerable lapse of time that Howard Staunton determined, if possible, to have the handwriting in which these emendations were made examined. “Having myself” he remarked, “from the first publication of the Notes and Emendations, felt assured, by the internal evidence, that they were for the most part plagiarized from the chief Shakespearian editors and critics, arid the rest of quite modern fabrication, I earnestly longed to have the writing tested. That which was a desire before, when the present work was undertaken, became a necessity; and during the year 1858 I more than once communicated to Sir Frederick Madden, as the most eminent paleographer of the age. My motives for wishing that the volume should undergo inspection by persons skilled in ancient handwriting.” Sir Madden’s official engagements at that time prevented his giving the subject the attention it deserved; but in consequence of Staunton’s solicitations, Sir Frederick applied to Collier for his good services in obtaining access to the volume. To this application Collier made no reply; whereupon, Sir Madden requested of the Duke of Devonshire himself the loan of the volume for a short time, in order to afford Bodenstedt, Staunton, and others an opportunity of inspecting it. These gentlemen, and others, who seem to have been perfectly familiar with the handwritings of the period in question, after careful examination were unanimously of opinion that the manuscript notes and emendations were modern fabrications, although written in imitation of hands of the seventeenth century. This opinion was communicated by Hamilton to The Times newspaper in a letter of June 22, 1859; when he also pointed out the remarkable fact, that an infinite number of faint pencil marks and corrections, written in a hand of the present century, could be seen on the margins of the book, and that some of these pencil marks could be distinctly traced underneath the ink of many of the emendations. Collier, in his reply, also published in The Times, denied these assertions; and courted “the most minute, the most searching, and the most hostile examination of Mr. Hamilton’s allegations.”