Collier's

“ The whole world lay outside. It opened its mighty arms to him. It spoke of width, of depth, of breadth. It showed him its secrets—hamlets and valleys tucked away in its mighty heart—where a hunted man could hide for ever. It shouted to him to break free—to be free!
Three minutes passed. Collier realized that he was still standing in his place, his heels clamped to the red carpet. He stared at his feet, encased in their tight boots, as though they were objects for curiosity or wonder. Shapeless, unwieldy lumps of leather! Would they never move? ”

“ Collier was prepared to meet any number of antagonists, and defended himself in numerous tracts. The Short View was followed by a Defence (1699) , a Second Defence (1700) , and Mr Collier’s Dissuasive from the Playhouse, in a Letter to a Person of Quality (1703) , and a Further Vindication (1708) . The fight lasted in all some ten years; but Collier had right on his side, and triumphed; his position was, moreover, strengthened by the fact that he was known as a Troy and high churchman, and that his attack could not, therefore, be assigned to Puritan rancour against the stage. ”

“ No third supposition can be reasonably maintained. Mr. Knight's view, for example, gives no account of the immense number of coincidences with the conjectural emendations of the commentators. Whichever of the two hypotheses be the true one, I need hardly say that Mr. Collier's name is a sufficient guarantee for all honorable dealing, so far as he is connected with the MS. corrections. ”

“ Collier's handwriting and that of these pencil-memorandums is identical, but, having some of that gentleman's writing in pencil by us, we are able to see this identity for ourselves. We can discover not the slightest room for doubt that a certain number of the pencil-guides for the corrections upon the margins of this folio were written either by Mr. Collier himself, or in the British Museum by some malicious person who desired to inculpate him in a forgery. The reader who has accompanied us thus far can have no doubt as to which alternative we feel compelled to choose. ”

“ He reminds Collier of his friendship and admiration for Coleridge, and bids him remember that he and all his family attended the poet's lectures five years before. He tells him alluringly that this is a brand-new course, with nothing metaphysical about it, and adds: "There are particular reasons just now, and have been for the last twenty years, why he [Coleridge] should succeed. He will do so with a little encouragement." ”

“ But Collier did so as far as his light enabled him. He appealed to the popular conviction that the proper object of sense is the sole reality, although he despaired of getting men to give up their belief in its externality, and asserted that nothing but prejudice prevented them from doing so; and there is little doubt that, if it had ever occurred to him, as it did to Berkeley, to explain the genesis of the notion of externality, he would have been more hopeful of commending his theory to the popular mind. ”

“ In Collier’s opinion Marvell may have been no better than a dissenter, but in fact he was a Churchman all his life, and it was Collier who lived to become a non-juror and a dissenter, and a schismatical bishop to boot. ”

“ Collier says that his erudition procured for him the title of the ‘Great Dictator of Learning,’ and that he was charitable to a fault, ‘easy of access, wonderfully communicative of his rare learning and knowledge, facetious and pleasant in conversation, never ruffled with passion.’ He adds that he was ‘endued with a strong habit of body made for noble undertakings, of a clean and venerable countenance’ (Dict. Supplement) . ”

“ Collier's better judgment has here given way to his deference for the opinion of his worthy friend; the deviation from the old copy being quite as violent as any that he has ever quarrelled with in others. ”

“ Three Passages in "Measure for Measure."—H. C. K. has a treacherous memory, or rather, what I believe to be the truth, he, like myself, has not a complete Shakspeare apparatus. Collier's first edition surely cannot be in his library, or he would have known that Warburton, long ago, read seared for feared, and that the same word appears in Lord Ellesmere's copy of the first folio, the correction having been made, as Mr. Collier remarks, while the sheet was at press. I however assure H. C. K. that I regard his correction as perfectly original. ”

“ Collier had so positively announced, the poetic sense of the world recoiled from the mass of them when they appeared; and although a few, a very few, of the readings peculiar to this folio were accepted by Shakespearian editors and commentators, they were opposed as a whole with determination, and in one or two instances with unbecoming heat, by Mr. Collier's fellow-laborers. Prominent among these was Mr. Singer, a man of moderate capacity and undisciplined powers, but extensive reading in early English literature,—known, too, for the bitterness with which he habitually wrote. ”

“ Collier's Poetical Decameron, in two volumes, was published in 1820: a series of imaginary conversations on curious and little-known books. His "Twelfth Night" discoveries will be found in the Eighth Conversation; Collier deduces the play from Barnaby Rich's Farewell to Military Profession, 1606. He also describes Thomas Lodge's "Rosalynde," the forerunner of "As You Like It," in which is the character Rosader, whom Lamb calls Osrades. ”

“ We shall not be suspected of regarding either the politics or the theology of Collier with partiality; but we believe him to have been as honest and courageous a man as ever lived. We will go further, and say that, though passionate and often wrongheaded, he was a singularly fair controversialist, candid, generous, too high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the most exciting disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. ”

“ Subsequent to the affair of Guetaria, Sir George Collier served on shore with a detachment of seamen and marines landed to co-operate with a guerilla regiment in an attack upon the castle of St. Ano, and received a wound when pursuing the French garrison from thence towards Santander [9] . In the following year he was appointed Commodore of the squadron employed in that quarter, where he contributed iii no small degree to the success of Lord Wellington’s army, then approaching the French frontier. ”

“ With the rapid advance in the general improvement which has been going on, the collier's position in society has become greatly elevated; and his deeply-rooted superstitious feelings have been, to a great extent, dissipated. ”

“ Collier's eldest son, John, was settled for many years as a coachmaker at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and there published ' An Essay on Charters, in which are particularly considered those of Newcastle, with remarks on its constitution, customs, and franchises' (1777, 8vo, pp. vi, 108) , and 'An Alphabet for Grown-up Grammarians,' 1778, 8vo. His second son, Thomas, printed at Penrith in 1792 a pamphlet entitled 'Poetical Politics,' but the whole impression was seized and burnt with the exception of a single copy. Charles, his third son, was a portrait painter. ”

“ Collier replied, and managed the point with so much learning, wit, and keenness, that in the opinion of many, he had the better of his antagonists, especially Mr. Congrove, whose comedies it must be owned, though they are admirably written, and the characters strongly marked, are so loose, that they have given great offence: and surely we pay too dear for pleasure, when we have it at the expence of morality. ”

“ Collier's opponents, who have followed his tracks page by page with microscopes and chemical tests, who hang their case upon pot-hooks and trammels, and lash themselves into palaeographic fury with the tails of remarkable g-s, have certainly made public the strongest evidence against him that they could discover.
Among many old books, defaced after the fashion of old times with writing upon their blank leaves and spaces, in the possession of the present writer, is a copy of the second edition of Bartholomew Young's translation of Guazzo's "Civile Conversation," London, 4to., 1586. ”

“ Hopkins turned his face toward the window, and bit his thumb some time, without speaking a word.
"I suppose you will take it unkind," observed Collier, interrupting the silence. "But what could be done in such a case?"
"Talk to me no more about it," replied the disappointed suitor. "I am not the man to break my heart about a foolish damsel. If she pleases to shape her course in this way, I can assure her there is no love lost between us. But after all, Collier, this is a confounded unfriendly job, on your part; and I shall state as much to the church." ”

“ Collier's folio having substituted—
"That enemies eyes may wink,"
Mr. Dyce, in his recent Few Notes, properly rejects that reading, and submits another conjecture of his own, founded on the supposition that the word roving having been written illegibly, roavinge was mistaken for run-awayes, and proposes to read—
"That roving eyes may wink." ”

“ In the homes and small social circles where their influence could be felt was being prepared a body of moral indignation, a desire for uprightness and purity of life, that gave to Jeremy Collier's attack on the stage in 1698 so overwhelming a response, and that was the sustaining force back of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. ”

“ In spite of all criticism, Collier's own faith in his folio remained unshaken. In a new edition of his annotated Shakespeare, 6 vols. 1858, he adopted most of its manuscript readings, and avowed his conviction that the great majority ' were made not from better manuscripts, still less from unknown printed copies but from the recitations of actors.' While this work was in the press he lost his wife, who : died, aged 70, on 10 Dec. 1857. His patron, the Duke of Devonshire, died soon after, 17 Jan. ”

“ Collier in the Athenæum,—sufficient at once to excite interest and to gratify curiosity,—some of the corrections appear to be of that nature that no conjecture could have supplied, while all are good enough to command a deferential consideration.
Your correspondent A. E. B. has attempted a defence of the original reading of two passages amended in Mr. Collier's folio. For the reason above given I shall neither answer your correspondent, nor even say whether I think him right or wrong ”

“ Collier had public opinion on his side. Men of the stricter sort were especially delighted, and, enraged as they had been at his conduct in the matter of the absolution, many of them considered that this pamphlet atoned even for that crime. Several of the wealthy among them sent him money ”

“ Collier was a very vain man who had made his fortune in the South Sea year, and having been originally a merchant, was very fond after he had retired to live upon his fortune, of a great deal of display and parade. ”

“ Captain Collier’s next appointment was, Sept. 1818, to the Mersey 26, in which ship he served the usual period of three years, on the Halifax station, and afterwards formed part of his Majesty’s escort from Calais. The Mersey was paid off at Portsmouth, Nov. 30, 1821.
Agents.– Messrs. Maude & Co. ”

“ If Collier be right, Rebecca Knell was the actor's second wife. In 1601 a player named Nill lived in Southwark, and had a child, Alice, baptised on 13 Aug.
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Newcourt's Repert. i. 317, 505, 620; Collier's Reg. of the Stationers' Company, ii. 3, &c.; Collier's Bibl. Cat. art. ‘Knell;’ Collier's Lives of the Actors (Shakesp. Soc.) , p. 63; Heywood's Apol. for Actors, ed. Collier (Shakesp. Soc.) , pp. 43, 64; Nashe's Works, ed. Grosart, ii. 93; Ritson's Bibl. Angl. Poet. p. 263; Devereux's Lives of the Earls of Essex, i. 140, 146.] ”

“ What are those men in the camp to you, they and their rules? You will not drink. . . . yet I give you. . . . this. . . ."
Her lips met his in an eternity of giving and taking.
"No" he said again, but his voice quivered and broke, with the plain message of surrender.
With a little cry, she knelt at the edge of the pool, her arms still about him so that he was forced to kneel with her. She plunged her hands into the water, and lifted them to him with their silver freight. ”

“ The indications of the pencilled words in modern cursive writing are strengthened by the short-hand stage-direction in "Coriolanus," Act V., Sc. 2, "Struggles or instead noise," in the characters of Palmer's system, which was promulgated in 1774. This system is one which a man of Mr. Collier's years would be likely to use, and the purport of the memorandum is obvious. Would Mr. Collier have us believe that this also was introduced in the British Museum?
We have chosen the word "begging" for fac-simile not merely because of the marked character of its chirography. It has other significance. Mr. ”

“ As a politician, John Collier was considerably ahead of the time he lived in, and especially of the simple, slow-minded race of people dwelling, then, in that remote nook of Lancashire, at the foot of Blackstone Edge. Among such people, and in such a time, he spoke and wrote things, which few men dared to write and speak. ”

“ When a preacher denounces the wicked, his sermons seem to be thrown away because the wicked don't come to church. Collier could not convert his antagonists; he could only make them more timid and careful to avoid giving palpable offence. But he could express the growing sentiment which made the drama an object of general suspicion and dislike, and induced the ablest writers to turn to other methods for winning the favour of a larger public.
The natural result, in fact, was the development of a new kind of literature, which was the most characteristic innovation of the period. ”

“ Not in the "Newcastle Programme."—Last week Sir Charles Freemantle, K.C.B., was presented with his portrait painted by Hon. John Collier, in Hon. John's best style; and so, for this work, Collier cannot be "hauled over the coals." À propos, evidently the artist to paint the present Ministry should be a Collier, as it is a Coalition Cabinet. If the Collier were a Radical, how coal-black the portraits would come out! ”