1858) he gives it,--
"To brook _reproof_ without the use of anger,"
and hereupon Dr. Ingleby asks,--"Is it not possible that here Mr.
Collier's remarkable memory is too retentive, and that, though second
thoughts may be best, first thoughts are sometimes inconveniently
remembered to the prejudice of the second?"[N] Here we see a palpable
slip of memory or of the pen, by which an old man substituted one word
for another of similar import, as many a younger man has done before
him, tortured into evidence of forgery. Such an objection is worthy of
notice only as an example of the carping, unjudicial spirit in which
this subject is treated by some of the British critics.
[Footnote N: _The Shakespeare Fabrications_, p. 45.]
Mr. Collier is accused at least of "inaccuracy" and "ignorance" on
account of some of these variations. Thus, in Mrs. Alleyn's Letter, she
says that a boy "would have borrowed x's." (ten shillings); and this Mr.
Collier reads "would have borrowed x'li." (ten pounds). Whereupon Mr.
Duffus Hardy, Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, produces this as
one of "the most striking" of Mr. Collier's inaccuracies in regard to
this letter, and says that it "certainly betrays no little ignorance,
as 10_l_. in those days would have equalled about 60_l_.
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