Edmond Malone

“ If this had been a mere frolick, what need of this earnest injunction of secrecy?—His friend scrupulously kept his word till the year 1779, when, as the Dean of Exeter informs us, “on the prospect of procuring a gratuity of ten pounds for Chatterton's mother, from a gentleman who sought for information concerning her son's history, he thought so material a benefit to the family would fully justify him for divulging a secret, by which no person living could be a sufferer.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every poetical reader will find instances of modern phraseology in almost every page of these spurious productions. I will only add, before I quit the subject of style, that it is observable, that throughout these poems we never find a noun in the plural number joined with a verb in the singular; an offence against grammar which every ancient poet, from the time of Chaucer to that of Shakespeare, has frequently committed, and from which Rowley, if such a poet had existed, would certainly not have been exempted. ”

“ All the similies that poor Chatterton borrowed from Pope’s or Chapman's Homer, to embellish his Battle of Hastings, are exhibited boldly; but then “they were all clearly copied from the original of the Grecian Bard,” in whom we are taught, that Rowley was better read than any other man, during the preceding or subsequent century: but in the tragedy of Ella, and other pieces, where we in almost every page meet with lines and half-lines of Shakspeare, Dryden, &c. the reverend Antiquarian is less liberal of his illustrations. ”

“ The inequality of the poems which Chatterton owned as his own compositions, when compared with those ascribed to Rowley, has been much insisted upon. But this matter has been greatly exaggerated. Some of the worst lines in Chatterton's Miscellanies have been selected by Mr. Bryant to prove the point contended for; but in fact they contain the same even and flowing versification as the others, and in general display the same premature abilities [15] .—The truth is, the readers of these pieces are deceived insensibly on this subject. ”

“ It is as salse that you have the genuine satire of Petronius in your hands, as it is false that that ancient satire was the work of a consul, and a picture of Nero's conduct. Desist from attempting to deceive the learned; you can only deceive the vulgar. ”

“ To be more particular: In what poet of the time of Edward IV., or for a century afterwards, will the Dean of Exeter find what we frequently meet with in the Battle of Haftings No1, and No2, at the conclusion of speeches–“Thus be;”–“Thus Leofwine;”–“He said; and as,” &c? In none Iam confident. This latter is a form of expression in heroick poetry, that Pope has frequently made use of in his Homer (from whence Chatterton undoubtedly copied it) , and was sometimes employed by Dryden and Cowley; but I believe it will not be easy to trace it to Harrington or Spenser ”

“ In London (as the same writer observes) was to be learned that which even genius cannot teach, the knowledge of life. Extemporaneous bread was to be earned more suddenly than even Chatterton could write poems for Rowley ”

“ If however, after all, a little inferiority should be found in Chatterton's acknowledged productions, it may be easily accounted for. Enjoin a young poet to write verses on any subject, and after he has finished his exercise, show him how Shakspeare, Dryden, and Pope, have treated the same subject. Let him then write a second copy of verses, still on the same theme. This latter will probably be a Cento from the works of the authours that he has just perused. The one will have the merit of originality ”

“ If the learned commentator's book should arrive at a second edition, I recommend it to him to cancel this page (as well as a former, in which he appears not to have known that “happy man be his dole!” is a common expression in Shakspeare, and for his ignorance of which he is forced to make an awkward apology in his Appendix) ; and beg leave to inform him, that Chatterton found the name of Widdeville in a very modern, though now scarce, book, the Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England [11] , by Mr. Walpole, every one of whose works most assuredly Chatterton had read. ”

“ With respect to the stanza that Chatterton has employed in his two poems on the Battle of Hastings, Mr. Bryant and the Dean of Exeter seem to think that they stand on sure ground, and confidently quote Gascoigne, to prove that such a stanza was known to our old English poets. “The greatest part of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (says the latter gentleman, p. 30) , and his Legend of Good Women, are in the decasyllabick couplet; but in general Lidgate's, Occleve's, Rowley's, Spenser's, and a great part of Chaucer's poetry, is written in stanzas of seven, eight, or nine decasyllabick lines ”

“ But the truth is, (as any one may see, who accurately examines the facsimile exhibited originally by Mr. Tyrwhitt in his edition of these poems, and now again by the Dean of Exeter in the new edition of them,) that Chatterton could not accurately and for any continuance, copy the hand-writing of the fifteenth century; nor do the Mss. that be produced exhibit the hand-writing of any century whatever. ”

“ What are we to conclude, if in Chattetton's imitations of Homer, we discover some circumstances that exist in Pope's translation, of which but very faint traces appear in the original Greek? Such, I believe, may be found. It is observable, that in all the similies we meet with many of the very rhymes that Pope has used. Will this Commentator contend, that the learned Rowley not only understood Homer, at a time when his contemporaries had scarcely heard of his name, but also foresaw in the reign of Edward IV. those additional graces with which Mr. ”

“ He, without doubt, wrote his verses in plain English, and afterwards embroidered them with such old words as would suit the sense and metre. With these he furnished himself, sometimes probably from memory, and sometimes from glossaries; and annexed such interpretations as he found or made. When he could not readily find a word that would suit his metre, he invented one [12] If then his old words afford some sense, and yet are sometimes interpreted wrong, nothing more follows than that his glossaries were imperfect, or his knowledge inaccurate ”

“ All these his new editor has inserted in a very curious performance which he is pleased to call a Glossary, with such interpretations as as the context supplied, without even attempting to support them either by analogy or the authority of our ancient writers. ”

“ Bryant much rely. The former, in his Dissertation on Ella, says, “Whatever claim might have been made in favour of Chatterton as the author [of the Battle of Hastings] , founded either on his own unsupported and improbable assertion, or on the supposed possibility of his writing these two poems, assisted by Mr. Pope's translation [of Homer] , no plea of this kind can be urged with regard to any other poem in the collection, and least of all to the dramatick works, or the tragedy of Ella ”

“ Bryant, and the Dean of Exeter; in the modest title of one of which, the authenticity of the poems attributed to Thomas Rowley is said to be ascertained; the other gentleman indeed does not go so far–he only considers and defends their antiquity.–Many persons, no doubt, will be deterred by the size of these works from reading them. It is not, however, so great as they may imagine ”

“ The versification of the poems attributed to Rowley. ⁠2. The imitations of modern authours that are found in them. ⁠3. The anachronisms with which they abound.⁠4. The hand-writing of the Mss.–the parchments, &c.
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. ”

“ The different number of lines contained in the stanza makes no material alteration in the structure of this verse, the stanza always concluding with a couplet: in that of six lines, the four first rime alternately ”

“ So, because these arts are not always completely successfull, and would not deceive a very skilful antiquary, we are to conclude, that Chattetton did not forge a paper which he acknowledged to have forged, and did not in the presence of Mr. ”