• MR. coul - ER AND TILE BRITISH MUSEUM.
Sir Frederick Madden has addressed the following letter to the Times, dated British Museum, March 19.
"I should feel much obliged by the insertion of the present letter, in case the pressure of more important public business will admit of it. Mr. J. P. Collier, in his 'reply' to Mr. Hamilton's 'inquiry' into the Shake- speare forgeries, has not contented himself with using legitimate weapons of defence, but has made such insinuations touching the treatment of the folio Shakespeare during the time it was intrusted to my care by his Grace the Duke of Devonshire that I feel compelled, on behalf of myself and col- leagues, to give the most unqualified denial to such calumnies. Mr. Col- lier has insinuated, in no obscure terms, that the recent pencillings ' on the margins of this folio were inserted at the British Museum, and, further, that if these pencillings should be thought to resemble his own handwriting, it is only to be ascribed to the fact that his hand must have been familiar to many in the Museum. I feel it, therefore' due to the Duke of Devon- shire and to the Museum to declare that during the time the folio Shakespeare was committed to my charge, it was kept strictly under my own custody and responsibility, and I deny most positively that any note, either in pen- cil or ink, was made in the volume. As to the question of the genuineness of the manuscript notes, I would propose that Mr. Collier should consent to the appointment of a proper tribunal of competent persons, who should de- finitively pronounce upon it. Mr. Collier also makes a charge against the department of manuscripts of having abstracted a fly-leaf from the folio Shakespeare. I answer that there was no fly-leaf in the volume. Mr. Hamilton, in his letter to the Times on the 1st of August last, spoke of the water-mark of the leaves pasted inside the covers. Mr. Collier in his reply,' chooses to convert these leaves into a 'fly-leaf,' and having thus made a foolish blunder, concludes by charging the manuscript de- partment with the crime of having abstracted a leaf which in reality had no existence !
"As to the offensive personalities of Mr. Collier towards myself, they ap- pear to be designed only to divert attention from the real points at issue, and I shall not notice them here further than to declare that Mr. Collier has knowingly misrepresented the facts."
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