Edmond Malone

“ I had not then undertaken to publish an edition of Shakspeare, nor regularly collated a single play of that author with the authentick copies. When my admiration of his innumerable beauties led me to undertake an edition of his works, I then thought it my duty to exert every faculty to make it as perfect as I could; and in order to ensure a genuine text, to collate word by word every line of his plays and poems with the original and authentick copies; a task equally new and arduous. By this laborious process I obtained one thousand six hundred and fifty four emendations of the text ”

“ While they are perusing the poems of the fictitious Rowley, they constantly compare them with the poetry of the fifteenth century; and are ready every moment to exclaim, how much he surpasses all his contemporaries. While the verses that Chatterton acknowledged as his own, are passing under their eyes, they still recollect that they are the productions of a boy of seventeen; and are slow to allow them even that merit which they undoubtedly possess. ”

“ I will not stay to take notice of the impotent attempts that Chatterton’s new commentators have made to overturn the very satisfactory and conclusive reasoning of Mr. Tyrwhitt’s Appendix to the former edition of the fictitious Rowley’s Poems. That most learned and judicious critick wants not the assistance of my feeble pen: Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis——. If he should come into the field himself (as I hope he will) , he will soon silence the Anglo-Saxon batteries of his opponents. ”

“ If an editor in exhibiting his works has religiously adhered to the original and authentick copies, admitting with the greatest caution occasional corrections of manifest errors, he has done his duty, as far as concerns the text; and need give himself little concern about the illiberal censures of those who, like the present hypercritick, from ignorance of the poet's metre arraign his editor, for not having in various instances "endeavoured to help it by a word of his own," or by that which would have been equally improper, an interpolation of Pope or Hanmer, or the editor of the second folio. ”

“ Such is the account of one of Chatterton's intimate friends. And how is this decisive proof of his abilities to imitate ancient English handwriting, and his exercise of those abilities, evaded? Why truly, we are told, “the contraction of the parchment is no discriminating mark of antiquity; the blackness given by smoke appears upon trial to be very different from the yellow tinge which parchment acquires by age; the ink does not change its colour, as Mr. Ruddall seems to apprehend.” ”

“ Why is not fraud always uniform and consistent, and armed at all points? Happily for mankind it scarcely ever is. Perhaps (as Mr. Ruddall's account seems to state the matter) he did not think at first that he should be called upon for the original: perhaps he was limited in a point of time, and could not fabricate it by the day that the new bridge was opened at Bristol.—But there is no end of such speculations. Facts are clear and incontrovertible. Whatever might have been the cause of his delay, it is not denied that he acknowledged this forgery to his friend Mr. Ruddall ”

“ Any quotation from particular parts of old poetry is liable to suspicion, and may be thought to be selected by the advocates on one side as remarkably harmonious, or by those on the other as uncommonly rugged and uncouth. I will therefore transcribe the first four lines of as many ancient poems as are now lying before me; and I request that they may be compared 5 with the opening of the Battle of Hastings, No 1, the piece which happens to stand first in the new quarto edition of Chatterton’s works. ”

“ I cannot, however, conclude, without noticing one other charge brought against the late editor of Shakspeare, which is perfectly novel. "The reciprocal good opinion" (we are told) "which the publick and Mr. Malone appear to entertain of each other, does both parties infinite honour." It is, I believe, the first time that the good opinion of the publick has ever been stated as a matter of reproach to him who has had the good fortune to obtain it. ”

“ If such a man as Rowley had existed, who could troul off whole verses of Shakspeare, Dryden, and Pope, in the middle of the fifteenth century, he would have had half the parchment in the kingdom at his command; statues would have been erected to him as the greatest prodigy that the world had ever seen; and in a few years afterwards, when printing came to be practised, the presses of Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde would have groaned with his productions.
Much stress is laid upon Chatterton's having been seen frequently writing, with old crumpled parchments before him. No doubt of the fact. ”

“ George Hardinge’s Rowley and Chatterton in the Shades brilliantly depicts various scenes in the other world after news of the Rowley controversy is carried there. The most hilarious performance of the year—indeed, of the entire controversy—was the Archaeological Epistle to Dean Milles, published by John Nichols at the end of March,29 which turned the language of the Rowley poems ingeniously against the two fumbling historians. Such pieces would have appeared whether or not Malone had written the Cursory Observations. ”

“ It is, I trust, unnecessary to assure you, who have known me so long, that it is the last subject which I should have chosen; it has, as you will see, been forced upon me. However, though from the nature of the disquisition it is impossible for me to keep where I wish to remain, in the back ground, I will promise not to detain you long from much more important and interesting topicks. ”

“ Beside the marks of forgery already pointed out, these poems bear yet another badge of fraud, which has not, I believe, been noticed by any critick. Chatterton's verses have been shown to be too smooth and harmonious to be genuine compositions of antiquity: they are liable at the same time to the very opposite objection, they are too old for the era to which they are ascribed. This sounds like a paradox; yet it will be found to be true. The versification is too modern; the language often too ancient. It is not the language of any particular period of antiquity, but of two entire centuries. ”

“ I. It is very obvious, that the first and principal objection to the antiquity of these poems is the smoothness of the versification. A series of more than three thousand lines, however disfigured by old spelling, flowing for the most part as smoothly as any of Pope’s—is a difficult matter to be got over. Accordingly the learned Mythologist, Mr. Bryant, has laboured hard to prove, either, that other poets of the fifteenth century have written as smoothly, or, if you will not allow him this, that Rowley was a prodigy, and wrote better than all his contemporaries ”

“ With respect to the other part of the charge, it is certainly true that while almost every page of the second folio is disfigured by printer's blunders, and arbitrary and capricious deviations from the original copy, the editor of that book has in a few places corrected such manifest errors of the press in the elder copy, as could not escape a person of the most ordinary capacity, who had been but one month conversant with a printing-house. ”

“ If by my humble labours I had any title to suppose the publick had been pleased and benefited, I should consider myself as having obtained the best reward which it has to bestow, or the sons of literature ought to aspire to.—To have merited publick approbation, must to an ingenuous mind ever afford a pleasure which the cavils of criticism cannot diminish ”

“ After his arrival in London, if his forgeries had met with any success, he would undoubtedly have produced ancient poetry without end; but perceiving that the gentleman in whom he expected 50 to find at once a dupe and a patron, was too clear-sighted to be deceived by such evident fictions, and that he could earn a livelihood by his talents, without fabricating old Mss. in order to gain a few shillings from Mess. Barrett and Catcott, he deserted his original plan, and we hear little more of Rowley’s verses. ”