214 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2»* S. IX. Mar. 24. '60. 



these happy suggestions are the work of one hand, 

 and how important the result would be to Shakspe- 

 rian literature it is needless to insist upon. Surely 

 it would not be difficult to find a sufficient number 

 of scholars and critics, like the Dean of St. Paul's, 

 who have taken no part in the present controversy, 

 to investigate, dispassionately and thoroughly, the 

 value and trustworthiness of the MS. emendations 

 in the Perkins Folio. 



Who can tell what valuable corrections of 

 Shakspeare's text may yet be lying unobserved 

 among the thousands of small corrections scattered 

 through the volume. How trifling appears the 

 change which turned the unmeaning — 



" Who dares no more is none," 

 into the 



" Who dares do more is none:" — 



a correction which, suggested by Piowe, and made 

 in MS. by Southerne, was passed over by_Mr. 

 Collier in the Perkins Folio (I or it is in pale ink), 

 until it was pointed out to him by a gentleman to 

 whom he was showing that Folio when in the pos- 

 session of the Duke of Devonshire, and on whose 

 authority we make this statement. And how is 

 this correction made in the Folio ? Why the "n" 

 is rounded into "o," with a long line on the far- 

 ther side of it to convert it into u d." And thus 

 simply is a passage which was rank nonsense, 

 changed into one which is really a household word. 

 May we not then readily believe that many other 

 such admirable results, effected by similar trifling 

 changes, may be obtained from a careful, thorough, 

 and judicious examination of the Old Corrector's 

 work? 



While we express on the one hand our convic- 

 tion that there is not anything in the appearance 

 of the Perkins Folio to justify a doubt as to its 

 genuineness (for we believe the authenticity of 

 any writings whatever might be frittered away by 

 similar suspicions), we insist that the testimony of 

 Dr. Wellesley, who saw the " abundance of manu- 

 script notes in the margin" of the volume when it 

 was about to pass into Mr. Collier's possession, 

 entirely confirms our views ; while in the admis- 

 sion of the excellence of many of the corrections, 

 as acknowledged by competent critics, we have 

 further confirmatory proof of the justness of the 

 conclusion at which we have arrived as to the 

 genuineness of the Perkins Folio. 



The great fundamental error in this business 

 lies, we think, at the door of the Manuscript 

 Department of the British Museum. When Sir 

 Frederic Madden began to find himself imbibing 

 suspicions against the Perkins Folio, — suspicions 

 which had he trusted entirely to his own calm un- 

 biassed judgment we do not believe he would cer 

 have entertained, — he should instantly have com- 

 municated with Mr. Collier, and have invited him to 

 unite with him in investigation. He did not do so. 

 He, and other gentlemen connected with his De- 



partment, carried on an investigation in the re- 

 sults of which Mr. Collier was deeply interested 

 without communicating with him, and hence it 

 has arisen that what might have been a literary 

 inquiry has been converted into a bitter and en- 

 venomed personal dispute, which, pursued as it 

 has been, can never lead to the discovery of truth. 



THE ENSISHEIM METEORITE OF 1492. 



Among the remarkable series of meteorites 

 exhibited in the Mineralogical Gallery of the 

 British Museum may be seen a fragment of one, 

 described as " a Meteoric Stone which fell at 

 Ensisheim in Alsace, Nov. 7, 1492, in the presence 

 of the Emperor Maximilian, then King of the 

 Romans, when on the point of engaging with the 

 French army." As the fall of this particular 

 aerolite is not mentioned by Humboldt in his 

 elaborate chapter on this subject in the Cosmos, 

 I send a Note, believing that the Ensisheim stone 

 is the earliest of these singular bodies of which 

 specimens remain, and that it possesses, moreover, 

 an especial interest in the fact that its preserva- 

 tion has been due to the Emperor Maximilian I., 

 who it would seem was at the head of his army 

 near the spot where the mass fell, and was pro- 

 bably an eye-witness of the phenomenon. 



The fall of this stone is very circumstantially 

 detailed and authenticated in the Chronicles of 

 the period. Within a very few months after the 

 startling occurrence took place, the German ver- 

 sion of the Fasciculus Temporum was published, 

 in the last entry in which work it is recorded as 

 follows : — 



"A marvellously strange work of nature! A stone 

 weighing 250 pounds fell from the air in the afternoon of 

 St. Florence's day, in the year 1492, at Ensisheim in the 

 Suntgow, Upper Alsace, in King Maximilian's own ter- 

 ritory — and the stone has been preserved and hung up in 

 the Church for public view. An unheard-of operation of 

 nature ! " 



The Nuremberg Chronicle of the following year 

 (1493) confirms the event, and adds that the stone 

 was in the shape of a delta or triangle. The 

 author has here called in the aid of the artist, as 

 a woodcut accompanies the statement. 



Sebastian Brant, the celebrated author of the 

 Ship of Fools, who was at this time professor at 

 the High School of Basle, not far distant from the 

 spot, commemorated- its fall in two poems, one 

 being addressed to Maximilian, in which he por- 

 tends disasters and misfortunes to the Holy 

 Roman Empire, and among others the death of 

 the then reigning Emperor Frederick III., which 

 event happened in August, 1493. (Brant's Car- 

 mina, 4to. Basil. 1498.) Its original appearance 

 is thus described : — 



" Cui species delta? est, aciesque triangula: obustus 

 Est color, et terrse forma metalligeras." 



But I come now to the remarkable allusion to 



