Mornings Ayre" to "the Morning Ayre"; "My Liege and Madrm" to "My Liege and Madam"; "locke of Wit" to "lacke of Wit"; "both our judgement joyne" to "both our judgements joyne"; "my convseration" to "my conversation"; "the strucken Deere" to "the stricken Deere"; "Requit him for your Father" to "Requite him," etc.; "I'll anoiot my sword" to "I'll anoint" etc.; "the gringding of the Axe" to "the grinding" etc. To corrections like these the alleged forger must have devoted more than half his time; and if the thirty-one pages that "Hamlet" fills in the folio furnish us a fair sample of the whole of the forger's labors,[jj] we have the enormous sum of six thousand four hundred, and over, of such utterly useless changes upon the nine hundred pages of that volume. Such another laborious scoundrel, who labored for the labor's sake, the world surely never saw!

[Footnote jj: Dr. Ingleby says,—"The collations of that single play are a perfect picture of the contents of the original, and a just sample of the other plays in that volume."—Complete View, p. 131.]

But among these marginal changes in "Hamlet," a large number present a very striking and significant peculiarity,—a peculiarity which was noticed in our previous article as characterizing other marginal changes in the same volume, and which it is impossible to reconcile with the purpose of a forger who knew enough to make the body of the corrections on these margins, and who meant to obtain authority for them as being, in the words of Mr. Collier, "Early Manuscript Corrections in the Folio of 1632." That peculiarity is a modernization of the text absolutely fatal to the "early" pretensions of the readings; and it appears in the regulation of the loose spelling prevalent at the publication of this folio, and for many years after, by the standard of the more regular and approximately analogous fashion of a later period, and also in the establishment of grammatical concords, which, entirely disregarded in the former period, were observed by well-educated people in the latter.

Thus we find "He smot" changed to "He smote"; "Some sayes" to "Some say"; "veyled lids" to "vayled lids"; "Seemes to me all the uses" to "Seem to me all the uses"; "It lifted up it head" to "It lifted up its head"; "dreins his draughts" to "drains his draughts"; "fast in fiers" to "fast in fires"; "a vild phrase, beautified is a vild phrase," to "a vile phrase, beautified is a vile phrase"; "How in my words somever she be shent" to "How in my words soever," etc.; "currants of this world" to "currents," etc.; "theres matters" to "theres matter"; "like some oare" to "like some ore"; "this vilde deed" to "this vile deed"; "a sword unbaited" to "a sword unbated"; "a stoape liquor" to "a stoop liquor"; and "the stopes of wine" to "the stoopes of wine." Of corrections like these we have discovered twenty-eight among the collations of "Hamlet" alone, and there are probably more. We may safely assume that in this respect "Hamlet" fairly represents the other plays in Mr. Collier's folio; for we have not only Dr. Ingleby's assurance that it is a "just sample" of the volume, but in the four octavo sheets of fac-similes privately printed by Mr. Collier we find these instances of like corrections: "Betide to any creature" to "Betid," etc.; "Wreaking as little" to "Wrecking as little"; "painted cloathes" to "painted clothes"; "words that shakes" to "words that shake." Twenty-eight such corrections for the thirty-one pages of "Hamlet" give us about eight hundred and fifty for the nine hundred pages of the whole volume,—eight hundred and fifty instances in which the alleged forger, who wished to obtain for his supposed fabrication the consideration due to antiquity, modernized the text, though he obtained thereby only a change of form, and not a single new reading, in any sense of the term!