•J!|cr) 'uot>po4S ■ 
 
 "A 'N 'asn^oJ^S 
 M3Q NI8 131HdWVd
 
 LITERARY COOKERY 
 
 WITH REFERENCE TO HATTER ATTRIBUTED TO 
 
 COLERIDGE AND SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 ADDRESSED TO "THE ATHENMM." 
 
 WITH A POSTSCRIPT 
 
 CONTAINING SOME REMARKS UPON 
 THE REFUSAL OF THAT JOURNAL TO PRINT IT. 
 
 SINCERUM EST NISI VAS &c. 
 
 A Hint, from HORACE, on Cooking, 
 
 LONDON : 
 JOHN EUSSELL SMITH, SOHO-SQUA1IE. 
 
 1S55.
 
 -/ LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 E) 7 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 AMERIC A. 
 
 A writer in " Notes and Queries " considers the name of our country 
 faulty, because derived from the Italianized form of the German " Em- 
 merich." 
 
 The latter is, however, evidently a contraction of the Gothic AlR- 
 manareiks, which apparently signifies Most Exalted or Universal 
 Ruler, and, when applied to a country, may likewise be rendered Most 
 Sublime Dominion ! 
 
 As regards its signification, therefore, the name " America " is 
 more appropriate than " Columbia : " for, in the one case, we have only 
 to wait till " this whole boundless continent is ours," but, in the other, 
 until the lion shall lie down with the lamb; for we shall, I fear, hardly 
 be dovelike before the millennium. 
 
 The Mueso-Gothic " Airmana " is the same as the old Saxon " Ir- 
 min " or " Irman " and the Anglo-Saxon " Eormin." " Reich " signified, 
 anciently, both power and dominion, as well as one holding i><m-< r. 
 
 The name " Airmanareiks " was borne as early as the fourth cen- 
 tury by a King of the Goths. In the course of ages it was gradually 
 changed to " Armanarich," " Ermanarich," " Ermenrich," " Emme- 
 rich," &c. 
 
 B. II. I).
 
 The true nature of this pamphlet was entirely misre- 
 presented in the ex parte statement made in support of a 
 rule for a criminal information against the publisher, moved 
 for before the Judges of the Queen's Bench on the 16th 
 inst., but refused by them. 
 
 It is not true that there is any direct charge contained 
 in this pamphlet against Mr. Collier as to a surreptitious 
 preparation of the " Marginal Corrections of Shakespeare :" 
 such a charge would be absurd, because at present incapable 
 of proof. 
 
 But it is stated in this pamphlet, that so long as certain 
 facts, with respect to the preparation of another series of 
 papers, remain unaccounted for, the unfavourable inference 
 thereby created must extend to all Mr. Collier's productions 
 in the same line. 
 
 These facts, although often complained of, had been 
 suffered by Mr. Collier to remain before the public, for 
 upwards of a year, unexplained and uncorrected, until the 
 publication of this pamphlet : and they are shortly 
 these : — 
 
 1 . The reiterated assertion of impossible dates to several 
 distinct documents. 
 
 2. The report of a portion of " the third lecture' after it 
 had been twice most distinctly stated by Mr. Collier that no 
 such report existed. 
 
 2Qd January, 1850.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It is very much the fashion to cry down as unfair 
 and unworthy of attention, charges preferred 
 anonymously against known individuals; but al- 
 though under certain circumstances they may 
 deserve that character — where the charges are of 
 a private nature, sustained only by the opinion or 
 testimony of the accuser — yet there has always 
 been a conventional and well understood exception 
 where accusations are brought forward upon public 
 grounds — against public individuals who by their 
 own acts or from the nature of their functions are 
 open to the criticism of all the world. 
 
 So long as the accusation is of public import, 
 and so long as the acts animadverted upon are of 
 public notoriety or accessible record, they are a 
 fair and legitimate subject for an anonymous 
 writer. He is merely the mouth-piece and pro- 
 claimer of those acts, and if the inference he 
 would draw from them be unjust, there is a well
 
 IV 
 
 known reaction of generosity in the public mind 
 that converts a pointless accusation into an in- 
 crease of confidence. 
 
 If ever there was an individual who by his own 
 act and assumption placed himself upon a pinnacle 
 of public suspicion, it was Mr. J. P. Collier, when 
 he took upon himself the triple capacity of dis- 
 coverer — sponsor — and interpreter of the " Mar- 
 ginal Corrections" of the Text of Shakespeare. 
 
 By exacting for these corrections a considera- 
 tion wholly due to their asserted antiquity, he 
 converted them from matter of opinion into matter 
 of faith and credibility — himself the witness : and 
 if from that moment his public acts are subjected 
 to cross-examination with a view to sift the value 
 of his testimony, he must not be offended — the 
 inconvenience is of his own infliction.
 
 A LETTER 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATHENMM 
 
 ON 
 
 LITERARY COOKERY. 
 
 The Athenmum has so frequently and so fearlessly exposed 
 the delinquencies of literary peculators — shewing up in 
 parallel columns the spoiler and the spoiled, to the great 
 amusement of its readers, and, it is to be hoped, to the 
 discouragement of evil doers — that after such just severity 
 towards simple larceny, it can scarcely desire to screen the 
 graver offence, if not of downright forgery, at least of what 
 may be described by that expressive phrase — " cooking.'' 
 
 The charge on the present occasion needs no vouching ; 
 it is a crimen sine teste probatum the facts of which speak 
 for themselves and require only simple inspection. A 
 certain document, alleged to be in existence, either does 
 or does not exist : if existing, it has been falsified ; if not 
 existing, the story of its discovery is untrue. It is a dilemma 
 from which there is no escape. 
 
 Some time in last year Mr. J. P Collier announced with 
 great circumstance (in Notes and Queries, vol. X.) another 
 of his " preposterous discoveries." 
 
 He stutcd that it had very recently been his good 
 fortune to " make a find" of his own original short-hand 
 notes of Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, " delivered 
 by Coleridge so far back as the year 1812 ;" and that among
 
 these notes he had also " luckily found" the original printed 
 prospectus of the course. 
 
 Of that prospectus he then professed to give a literal 
 copy, and its first sentence is this : — 
 
 " Mr. Coleridge will commence on Monday, November 18th (1812), 
 a course" — &c. 
 
 Why the year should be enclosed in brackets does not 
 appear — it might be to draw attention to it — but however 
 that may be, the same date "November 18, 1812," is after- 
 wards forced into notice in a very extraordinary manner. 
 
 Not only is it expressly and pointedly confirmed by 
 several extracts from the alleged contemporary notes, but 
 the year 1812 is reiterated, in one shape or another, twelve 
 or fourteen times in the course of the description ; and there 
 are two of these repetitions which impress the date with such 
 remarkable emphasis, that no reasonable doubt can exist 
 that for some purpose or another, the date was designedly 
 enforced upon the reader's attention. 
 
 In one place Mr. Collier writes (alluding to his notes) — 
 
 " It is singular that I have not marked the date of the day 
 •when any lecture was delivered, excepting the first on Monday, Nov. 
 18, 1812." 
 
 And in another place, in a farewell admonition to his reader, 
 he again insists that there must be no mistake about the 
 date : — 
 
 " It will be borne in mind that all I have written belongs to the 
 end of the year 1812, and the beginning of the year 1813." 
 
 Can any person then, even the most credulous, believe for 
 an instant, that all this deliberate and apparently needless 
 iteration is consistent with accident or inadvertence ? 
 
 It must be recollected that a printed document was all 
 the while before the writer's eyes, and that it is the date of 
 that printed document that is so elaborately confirmed by the 
 manuscript notes.
 
 That two or three independent sources should concur in 
 a mistake of such improbable occurrence as the date of the 
 year in which they were respectively written and printed, is 
 absolutely incredible. 
 
 But then another pi'ofessed copy of this same prospectus 
 has been long before the world in the " Life of Coleridge," 
 by James Gillman, published in 1838. It is in every respect 
 the same as Mr. Collier's, except the date, which in Mr. 
 Gillman's reprint is — 
 
 "Monday, November 18, 1811." 
 
 Hence, with the same printed document before them, either 
 Mr. Gillman or Mr. Collier must have altered the year. 
 
 But Mr. Gillman's date is possible and consistent, while 
 Mr. Collier's is imjjossible ; so that the only inference is, 
 that Gillman's is the true copy: and Mr. Collier is left in this 
 dilemma — either a document, which he alleged he had just 
 found, was not in his possession at all, or if in his possession, 
 it had been knowingly and intentionally altered to serve a 
 purpose. 
 
 What that purpose may have been, it is, of course, im- 
 impossible for another person to aver, but it must not merely 
 on that account be doubted that the alteration was intentional, 
 where evidence of design is so apparent : but if it should 
 still be considered that the suggestion of some possible 
 motive is essential to the completeness of the charge, the 
 following hypothetical case might not be far wrong. 
 
 Supposing an ingenious person wished to confer upon 
 -certain MS. notes, purporting to have been written at such 
 and such a time, an extraneous title to credit — and supposing 
 that person had imbibed an idea that a new and more 
 correct date might be ascribed to an occurrence which had 
 hitherto been (as he might suppose) erroneously dated : there 
 can be no doubt that if the new date could be supported, and 
 the old date shown to be wrong, a very extraordinary pre- 
 sumption of truth would thereby accrue to the alleged
 
 contemporary notes from which the new date might appear 
 to he obtained. 
 
 Now, although the new date ascribed by Mr. Collier to 
 Coleridge's lectures can not be sustained, because it is an 
 impossible date, and inconsistent with itself, yet it by no 
 means follows that the adopter of that date may not for a 
 time have been led into an implicit though mistaken confi- 
 dence in it. 
 
 Because the date " Monday, November 18, 1812," happens 
 to be a correct and consistent date according to old style : so 
 that all that is required to account for the whole affair, is the 
 easy supposition that a person desirous of ascertaining a back 
 date had got hold by mistake of an old-style almanac ! 
 
 Now by a singular coincidence there happens to be a well 
 known book of reference wherein old-style almanacs are 
 attached to years of the present century. 
 
 And by a stdl more singular coincidence, it is the book 
 of all others the most likely to be consulted by a writer in 
 Notes and Queries, since it had been advertised and frequently 
 alluded to in that publication, and editorially mentioned in 
 terms of special recommendation for the " ready test it affords 
 as to accuracy of dates .'" 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that the book alluded to 
 is De Morgan's " Book of Almanacs," wherein the first and 
 most observable table of years extends to A.D. 1900, and is 
 for old style. 
 
 A person, then, desirous of ascertaining a back date, and 
 not very well up to the distinction between old and new 
 style — or perhaps unobservant that the first table was exclu- 
 sively for the former, might very easily and very unwittingly 
 search therein for A.D. 1811 (with a view perhaps to verify 
 Gillman's date of the Coleridge prospectus). 
 
 Kunning his eye along the columns of years he would 
 come to A.D. 1811 in the penultimate column of page 3, 
 with an annexed direction to Almanac 12. Here he would 
 find the 18th of November attributed to Saturday, and he
 
 would immediately rejoice in the fancied discovery that 
 Gillman's date was wrong. He would then refer to the 
 following year, 1812, and receiving a similar direction to 
 Almanac 31, he would find the 18th of November therein 
 set down to Monday. Whereupon, if not very conversant 
 with chronology, he would naturally place the most implicit 
 reliance upon " Monday, November 18, 1812," as a true and 
 defensible date. 
 
 But whether this be or be not the true explanation of the 
 delusion by which Mr. Collier's anomalous report of the 
 Coleridge lectures was brought about, it is undoubtedly true 
 that he has alleged the existence of a printed prospectus, 
 bearing not only an impossible date, but a date differing from 
 other published copies of the same document: and it is no 
 less true that he has confirmed and supported that erroneous 
 date by extracts from alleged private notes, purporting to 
 Lavr been written at the time, but, nevertheless, most un- 
 accountably impressed with dates equally impossible. 
 
 Consequently the case, as against Mr. Collier, amounts 
 to this : — 
 
 The printed prospectus, if it had the date of the year 
 upon it at all. (and that it had, may be presumed from 
 Gillman's verbatim copy) must have been originally impressed 
 " 1811." 
 
 If this had been altered to 1812 previously to coming into 
 Mi*. Collier's possession, such an alteration in a printed 
 document must have been apparent, and ought to have excited 
 investigation and remark. 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Collier is found silently quoting 
 it as '• 1812," that circumstance is of itself suspicious; but 
 when 1812 is again corroborated by private notes and memo- 
 randa, for which Mr. Collier is alone responsible, the inference 
 is irresistible that the dates of both prospectus and notes had 
 a common origin, and were subjected to one common self- 
 convicting blunder. 
 
 All this may seem slight and unimportant, but it almost
 
 invariably happens, that it is precisely by such ill-considered 
 trifles that deception is betrayed and unmasked. What 
 reader of Miss Edgeworth's tale of " Patronage" but must 
 recollect the venerable and white-headed old man who is 
 suborned to testify to the false will ? There has been an 
 old defaced sixpence enclosed within the seal, and the old 
 man is to swear that he saw it placed there many years 
 before when the will was sealed. The cause is on the point 
 of being decided in favour of the forgers — the old man seems 
 so thoroughly respectable in his mildness and grey hairs 
 that not a breath against his truth will be listened to : — but 
 the old witness is so enamoured of the clever device of the 
 sixpence, and has got himself so well up in the story relating 
 to it, that he is loth to relinquish it — he stoops down to his 
 counsel and whispers that the sixpence has been forgotten 
 — thereupon the seal is broken, the coin is found just as 
 described, and the old man's triumph is for a while complete. 
 But alas ! the acute counsel on the opposite side has at 
 length succeeded in decyphering the date upon the coin, 
 and, to the utter confusion of the forgers, it proves to be long 
 subsequent to the alleged date of the will. 
 
 Verily, chronology is a useful servant, but a most dan- 
 gerous accomplice ! 
 
 But it must not be imagined that all this trouble would 
 have been taken merely for the purpose of proving that Mr. 
 Collier must have tampered with the Coleridge prospectus. 
 Certainly not : the object in view is far higher and mox'e 
 important. 
 
 It is to rescue the outraged spirit of Shakespeare from 
 the incubus of those " marginal corrections," which, to the 
 shame of the nineteenth century, have been permitted, like 
 the unclean birds of old, to settle down upon his text, tearing 
 and mangling, and befouling where they could not destroy. 
 
 There is a strong family resemblance between the dis- 
 covery of these marginal corrections and the find of the 
 Coleridge notes : but, unfortunately for the ends of justice,
 
 the edge-tool of chronology was not meddled with in the 
 former case, so that the same sort of direct proof could not 
 be brought against it as is now shown to be so fatally 
 damaging to the notes. 
 
 There are some persons whose minds are so constituted 
 that nothing sbort of direct and undeniable proof of dis- 
 honesty in the witness will induce to admit the possibility 
 of his deceiving them — the more especially if the witness be 
 what is considered " competent authority." 
 
 The presumption — the plagiarism — the vulgarity — the 
 imbecility — of those wretched libels on the text of Shakes- 
 peare were as nothing to convince of their hxrposture; but 
 had the prestige of their sponsor being less — had they really 
 been dependent solely on their own merits — they would have 
 been at once cried to scorn. 
 
 To dispel that prestige, by laying bare the taint of 
 contrivance, is the real object of this exposure ; if the scent 
 now opened be effectively followed up, it may, perhaps, at 
 length extort a second confession, similar to Ireland's, of 
 Shakespearean forgeries. 
 
 The AihmcBum, although it was soon left far behind by 
 more enthusiastic admirers of the marginal corrections, was 
 the first to " stamp the leasing" with the currency of its 
 approval. Will it now assist in undoing the mischief? Will 
 it, at the least, give publicity to this impeachment? The 
 name of Shakespeare ought to be as sacred an appeal to all 
 true adherents, as that of the Sovereign to all loyal subjects, 
 for aid and furtherance to 
 
 A DETECTIVE. 
 
 3rd October, 1855.
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 The foregoing letter was sent to the Editor of the Athenaum 
 on the 3d of this month, accompanied by a note to the 
 following effect : — 
 
 "This letter is sent to the Athenaum for 'publication under this 
 condition : that if published at all, it shall be intact and entire, 
 without addition or curtailment. 
 
 " Should this condition not be complied with, or should publication 
 be altogether refused, it is the writer's intention to have the letter 
 immediately printed for diffusion through the post-office." 
 
 To this an answer appeared in the Athenaum of the 6th, as 
 follows : — 
 
 "A Detective is declined. His manuscript is left for him at our 
 office. The insertion of the year within a parenthesis is a clear 
 intimation that it was not printed on the document from which the 
 writer was copying, and therefore was conjectural : Detective's com- 
 ment is therefore a mere waste of words." 
 
 The Editor doubtless thought that this dictum would 
 quite settle the matter, and leave " A Detective" in a pre- 
 dicament, to exclaim with Charles, in the " Elder Brother" — 
 "My head is broken with a parenthesis." 
 
 But the parenthesis which encloses the year in Mr. 
 Collier's copy of the Coleridge prospectus is not, by any 
 means, such a plain proof as the Editor of the Athenaum 
 would assume, that there was no year printed in the original 
 document ; especially in the face of the direct evidence to the 
 contrary afforded by Mr. Gillman's reprint. (Life of 
 Coleridge, vol. I. p. 262.) In that reprint there is no 
 parenthesis, nor any other indication that the year had been 
 an addition of Mr. Gillman's own.
 
 9 
 
 Besides, even in Mr. Collier's version, the manner in 
 which the parenthesis is inserted, within an including comma, 
 and with no break in the quotation-marks, is certainly 
 much more indicative of a singling out (by brackets) for the 
 purpose of future comment, than of the intrusion of new 
 matter extraneous to the original. 
 
 But admitting that the fact is as the Editor of the 
 Athemeum assumes, and that there really was no year printed 
 in the original prospectus, how does that alter the complexion 
 of the manoeuvre? It merely changes the modus operandi from 
 substitution to interpolation. The charge is that the pros- 
 pectus is altered, and the Editor of the Athenaum seems to 
 forget that alteration may be effected as well by interlopatiou 
 as by substitution. 7s it not, in fact, an altered document as 
 it stands ? "" 
 
 The statement of Mr. Collier was, that certain long lost 
 notes — short-hand notes — had been found, which, when all 
 written out, " extend to from ten to forty sides of letter- 
 paper for each lecture ;"' that is, to sufficient for the 
 manufacture of an octavo volume of matter to be attributed 
 to Coleridge. The date of these notes is asserted in the 
 most positive and unequivocal manner ; and is apparently 
 confirmed by a printed document found with them, but 
 mis-quoted with the addition of a fictitious, or, as the Editor 
 of the Athencmm delicately terms it, a conjectural date to suit. 
 If not as a corroborative, why was this date add< d at all ? 
 Mr. Collier was repeating the year 1812 in almost every 
 sentence of his own remarks upon the subject; where, then, 
 could be the necessity of introducing it surreptitiously into 
 a professed verbatim copy of another document, in contra- 
 diction to the date that had previously been attributed to 
 that document ? 
 
 But there was a third mutual corroborative, which also 
 turned up at the same time, in the shape of a journal or 
 diary, in which every thing seems to be fragmentary, except: 
 ing tb^ various dates: they are perfect enough, and all
 
 10 
 
 concur in supporting this same date which we are now to 
 look upon as merely conjectural. Nay, this diary is so 
 precise that it gives the date of an allusion by Coleridge 
 himself to another series of lectures delivered by him the 
 -preceding year. (? ) 
 
 " Coleridge himself mentioned them in a conversation at my father's 
 on the 21st October, 1812. It was on the same occasion that he 
 announced to us his intention of giving the lectures, of seven of which 
 I have notes, and which commenced on the 18th Nov. following." 
 
 But the Editor of the AtheW&um now assumes that the 
 date of the year common to all these documents was con- 
 jectural ! Conjecture implies doubt, and if Mr. Collier really 
 wished to verify his date there was a ready means of so doing 
 by a glance at obvious sources of information, such as Gillman's 
 Life of Coleridge, or the Coleridge Lectures, in both of 
 which the very prospectus he was copying is to be found. 
 
 It is almost incredible that any person would sit down 
 to write matter to be attributed to Coleridge, and yet omit 
 to consult at least the indexes of previous collections. Or 
 was it with intention that Mr. Collier apparently provokes 
 the inference that he had done so ? It is difficult to banish 
 such a suspicion, when he is found reprinting the well known 
 prospectus of 1818 with this preliminary remark : — 
 
 "As I cannot find that the prospectus of Coleridge's lectures in 1818, 
 (they began on 27th January, and finished on 13 th March,) was ever 
 reprinted, and as I happen to know that it cost him no little trouble 
 and reflection, I venture, though it is somewhat long, to subjoin the 
 introduction to what is called the syllabus of the course," &c. 
 
 Ever reprinted ! Why it occupies a conspicuous place in 
 the " Remains," published in 1836; — it is reprinted at length 
 in the " Life," published In 1838 ; — and it is the very first 
 article in the 2d vol. of the "Lectures," published in 1849, 
 being an obvious and indispensable portion of the lectures 
 themselves. 
 
 Oue, at least, of these books Mr. Collier appears to be 
 acquainted with ; since he quotes it, volume and page, in his
 
 11 
 
 Notes and Emendations: and yet the expression "cannot find" 
 would seem to imply a search ; aud if so, surely the books 
 just enumerated are precisely those in which a search would 
 be made. 
 
 But it is singular that this should be the second time 
 that Mr. Collier considered it necessary to make the same 
 disavowal. In a previous part of his communication he had 
 said : — 
 
 "I had carefully preserved Coleridge's printed 'Prospectus' of his 
 lectures in 1818 (I know not if it has been reprinted)," &c. 
 
 By the w r ay, there certainly is a word peculiar to Mr. 
 Collier's copy of this Prospectus of 1818, which does distin- 
 guish it from other versions, viz. : — 
 
 " The acquisitions and attainments of the intellect ought, indeed, to 
 hold a very inferior rank in our estimation, opposed to moral worth, 
 or even to professional and scientific skill, prudence, and industry." 
 (Keprint in Notes and Queries, vol. x. p. 22.) 
 
 The word scientific, in all reprints save this of Mr. Collier's, 
 is printed specific ; and it is needless to say, that all other 
 reprints are unquestionably right : but perhaps this may be 
 an emendation! — it has, indeed, a wondrous smack of the Old 
 Corrector — 
 
 Although the print be little, the whole matter 
 And copy oj the father — 
 
 But to return to the lectures of " 1812" — there is another 
 circumstance, perhaps of not much importance in itself, but 
 significant in aggravation of the other discrepancies in 
 these revelations. 
 
 Mr. Collier states that he had recovered his notes of 
 seven out of the fifteen lectures which constituted the course : 
 and these seven he enumerates as " the first, second, sixth, 
 seventh, eighth, ninth, and twelfth. " 
 
 And yet, in the very next page to this enumeration, we 
 read — 
 
 " These were the concluding words of Coleridge's second lecture. In 
 his third he thus" — &c.
 
 12 
 
 And then follows half a page of matter, reported in the first 
 person, as though taken down from the lips of Coleridge, 
 whose third lecture was not one of those of which the notes 
 had been so fortunately recovered. 
 
 But if ever there was positive assertion, untinctured by the 
 slightest appearance of doubt, hesitation, or conjecture, it 
 assuredly is the assertion by Mr. Collier of every particular 
 relative to his alleged date of Coleridge's Lectures " of 1812." 
 A Detective cannot therefore agree with the Editor of the 
 Athenceum, that it is "a mere waste of words" to draw public 
 attention to the impossibility of that date, and consequently 
 to the extreme improbability of its having been obtained from 
 any bona fide or really contemporary source ; and, as a 
 corollary to that conclusion, that no faith ought to be placed 
 in any other antiquities that may have been issued from the 
 same laboratory. , 
 
 10th October, 1855.
 
 " [| ]Mii i ii mil 1 1 iii in! ill Id 
 
 o 1^05 03059 0820 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A A 001 425 223