Collier's folio. The writing
varies from a cursive hand which might almost have been written at the
present day to (in Mr. Duffus Hardy's phrase) "the cursive based on an
Italian model,"--that is, the "sweet Roman hand" which the Countess
Olivia wrote, as became a young woman of fashion when "Twelfth Night"
was produced; and from this again to the modified chancery hand which
was in such common use in the first half of the century 1600, and again
to a cramped and contracted chirography almost illegible, which went out
of general use in the last years of Elizabeth and the first of James I.
All these varieties of handwriting, except the last, were in use from
1600 to the Restoration. They will be found in the second edition of
Richard Gethinge's "Calligraphotechnia, or The Arte of Faire Writing,
1652." This, in spite of its sounding name, is nothing more than a
writing-master's copper-plate copy-book; and its republication in
1652, with these various styles of chirography, is important accessory
evidence in the present case.[Z]
[Footnote Z: Lowndes mentions no other edition than that of 1652; and
Mr. Bohn in his new edition of the Bibliographer has merely repeated the
original in this respect. But if Lowndes had seen only the edition of
1652, he might have found in it evidence of the date of the publication
of the book.
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