was before he could write full Man. Besides, considering he has left us six and thirty Plays, which are avow'd to be genuine; (to throw out of the Question those Seven, in which his Title is disputed: tho' I can, beyond all Controversy, prove some Touches in every one of them to come from his Pen :) and considering too, that he retir'd from the Stage, to spend the latter Part of his Days at his own native Stratford; the Interval of Time, necessarily required for the finishing so many Dramatic Pieces, obliges us to suppose he threw himself very early upon the Play-house. And as he could, probably, contract no Acquaintance with the Drama, while he was Driving on the Affair of Wool at home; some Time must be lost, even after he had commenc'd Player, before he could attain Knowledge enough in the Science to qualify himself for turning Author.

It has been observ'd by Mr. Rowe, that, amongst other Extravagancies which our Author has given to his Sir John Falstaffe, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, he has made him a Deer-stealer; and that he might at the same time remember his Warwickshire Prosecutor, under the Name of Justice Shallow, he has given him very near the same Coat of Arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that County, describes for a Family there. There are two Coats, I observe, in Dugdale, where three Silver Fishes are borne in the Name of Lucy; and another Coat, to the Monument of Thomas Lucy, son of Sir William Lucy, in which are quarter'd in four several Divisions, twelve little Fishes, three in each Division, probably Luces. This very Coat, indeed, seems alluded to in Shallow's giving the Dozen White Luces, and in Slender saying, he may quarter. When I consider the exceeding Candour and Good-nature of our Authour, (which inclin'd all the gentler Part of the World to love him; as the Power of his Wit obliged the Men of the most delicate Knowledge and polite Learning to admire him ;) and that he should throw this humorous Piece of Satire at his Prosecutor, at least twenty Years after the Provocation given, I am confidently persuaded it must be owing to an unforgiving Rancour on the Prosecutor's side; but if This was the Case, it were Pity but the Disgrace of such an Inveteracy should remain as a lasting Reproach and Shallow stand as a Mark of Ridicule to stigmatize his Malice.

TO BE CONTINUED.

T is impossible to overestimate the literary value of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's Plays. In all the range of English literature no book is to be compared with it. While it is true that it was "printed from inaccurate quarto editions and mutilated stage copies"; † that sixteen of the thirty-six plays it contains are rejected or doubtful; that there are many typographical errors in it; that so great an authority as Gervinus says it is "of uncertain and unwarranted value," ‡ it still remains the most important book in English literature. "When it is mentioned," writes Halliwell-Phillipps, "that this volume is the sole authority for the texts of such master-pieces as the Tempest, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Timon

• Read before the New York Shakespeare Society, Jan. 26, 1888. + Shakespeare Hermaneutics, Dr. Ingleby, p. 9.

↑ Shakespeare's Commentaries. Translation of F. E. Bunnett. 1877. Intro., p. 9. In Much Ado about Nothing, Actus Quartus, pp. 116, 117 of the Comedies, the names, not of the characters but of the actors, are given. For Dogberry, is printed Kemp; for Verges, Cowley. The list of "Names of the Principall Actors in all these Plays" on one of the Preliminary leaves contains

William Kempt,
Richard Cowly.

This proves that the printer had before him the stage copy, and from it took these

of Athens, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, As You Like It, and Winter's Tale-were the rest of the book waste paper, enough will have been said to confirm its unrivalled importance.

*

In his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare he writes: "It is either in this book, or in the entry of it on the register of the Stationers' Company, that we hear indisputably for the first time of The Taming of the Shrew, Henry VIII, All's Well that Ends Well, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, and Coriolanus. †

Dr. Furness thinks it necessary when studying the Plays to have before us "Shakespeare's own words," "Shakespeare's own text," "the original text." "This original text," he continues, "is to be found in the first edition of his works, published in 1623, and usually known as the First Folio, which was presumably printed from the words written by Shakespeare's own hand, or from stage copies adapted from his manuscripts. Be it that the pages of the First Folio are little better than proof-sheets, lacking supervision of the Author, or of any other, yet those who had Shakespeare's manuscript before them were more likely to read it right than we who read it only in imagination,' as Dr. Johnson said. Even grant that the First Folio is, as has been asserted, one of the most carelessly printed books ever issued from the press, it is, nevertheless, the only text that we have for at least sixteen of the plays, and, condemn it as we may, 'still is its name in great account, it still hath power to charm for all of them.'"

Of this remarkable book-" the great intellectual heritage of our race"§-there are thirteen copies in the city of New York. My object in this paper is simply to describe as accurately as I can, those copies which are in this city.

The Lenox Library is especially rich in the possession of Folios. It is probable that no one institution in the world, with the single exception of the British Museum, || owns so large and valuable a collec

Halliwell-Phillipps' Reduced Fac-simile First Folio. Preface, p. v.

+ Second Edition, pp. 156, 157.

Variorum Edition of Othello. Preface, pp. v and vi.

R. G. White's Edition of the Plays, vol. 1, p. celxxx.

Chatto & Windus. 1876.

The British Museum in 1877 possessed five copies of the First Follo, two of the Second, four of the Third and four of the Fourth.

tion. Not to speak of original Quartos, of which there are many, it can boast of two copies of the First Folio, seven of the Second, two of the Third, and two of the Fourth. In addition to these, it has two copies of the first reproduction of the First Folio on rice paper, printed in 1807. Of these Mr. Lenox writes:

My copies are of large size, and in fine condition; every leaf of them is genuine.*

One of the First Folios is known as the "Lichfield-Baker" copy. It was purchased at the Baker sale, at Sotheby's, in May, 1885, for £163 16s.† It has a title-page with the date 1622, followed by another title-page dated 1623. It has two cancelled leaves in the play of As You Like It. It is 12 in. tall, 8 in. wide; is bound by Chas. Lewis in maroon morocco, with gilt margins, edges and back. There are two copies of the leaf with Ben. Jonson's verses; one is a perfect leaf without any watermark, the other has the verses perfect and with the water-mark of a crown, but the verses are inlaid. Each title-page contains a portrait, which is genuine. ‡

The distinguishing feature of this copy is the title-page with the date 1622. Considerable difference of opinion exists among Shakespearians as to the genuineness of the date 1622. Some accept it -others reject it. Many are undecided.

Dibdin describes one copy of the First Folio as

Mr. Justin Winsor, in a letter to the writer, Jan. 16, 1888, says, "I don't think they have added any copies since then " (1877).

The Bodleian, at Oxford, in its last catalogue (1843), reports only one copy of the First Folio, and none of the other Folios. This Library is famous for its Quartos.

* American Bibliopolist, June and July, 1870.

+ Dr. Allibone has called my attention to the fact that the two highest prices yet paid have been by women. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts gave for the Daniel Moore copy £716 2s.

To one of our country women belongs the honor of having exceeded this price. Messrs. Ellis & White, of London, bought, in 1884, a copy for Miss Abby E. Hanscom (now Mrs. Pope), of Brooklyn, for which they paid £750. With commissions and freight charges added it cost Mrs. Pope £795 9s. 6d.

Lowndes says (Bibliographers' Manual, 1863, p. 2255), "The Portrait by Droeshout served for the first four editions. The genuine state, as it occurs in the first three editions, is distinguishable from subsequent impressions by the shading on the left of the forehead (as it stands before you), which is expressed by single lines, curving inwards from left to right, without any crossing whatever, while in the repaired state, as it occurs in the fourth edition, the lines are strongly crossed and bend outwards. Besides this, the hair is crossed in the repaired state, while in the original it is in single lines."

not large, with no verses opposite, and bound in morocco; has the unique distinction of having the date 1622 on the title-page-which is genuine.

Mr. Joseph Lilly, who, in the opinion of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, is a very high authority, says :

:

There is no copy with the date 1622, the figure 3 being imperfectly worked (or battered) in that particular copy in which it appears. †

Mr. Winsor writes of one title-page with "seemingly the date 1622."

Dr. Ingleby says:

Of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare but one copy is known to be extant bearing the date 1622; all the other known copies bear the date 1623, and the edition is generally quoted as of the latter year.

In a letter to Dr. Allibone, Dr. Ingleby writes :

Tho' I can't find the place, I know that I have mentioned the copy of Shakespeare Folio 1622-3 in some other book of mine besides the Complete View. . . My theory was that the book was partly printed in 1622, with a title-page having that date: revised once in 1623, before Mrs. S.'s death; and once again immediately after her death. . . . This I take to be the copy in the Lenox library.||

Mr. Lenox says:

The title-page with the date 1622 is inlaid at the bottom, below the imprint: if by this means the last figure has been tampered with, the alteration is very successfully concealed. ¶

Mr. Appleton Morgan doubts the authenticity of the date. In his last book, Shakespeare in Fact and in Criticism, page 60, he says:

But the wonderful thing about this particular copy is that it appears to bear on its title-page the date-not 1623, as it should, but 1622. Of course its history, through all its various owners, down to Mr. Lenox, is well known, and of course there have been theories and theories. But the only

* Literary Companion. 1824, p. 814.

+ Literary Gazette, March 8, 1862.

Bibliography of the Original Quartos and Folios, pp. 87, 88. A Complete View of the Shakespeare Controversy, 1861, p. 16. "Catalogue of Lenox Lib. Works of Shakespeare," p. 33. ¶ Idem, p. 36.