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.—This is easily accounted for. Chatterton had no other means of writing old language, but by applying to glossaries and dictionaries, and these comprise all the antiquated words of preceding times; many provincial words used perhaps by a northern poet, and entirely unknown to a southern inhabitant; many words also, used in a singular sense by our ancient bards, and perhaps by them only once. Chatterton drawing his stores from such a copious source, his verses must necessarily contain words of various and widely-distant periods. It is highly probable, for this reason, that many of his lines would not have been understood by one who lived in the fifteenth century.—That the diction of these poems is often too obsolete for the era to which they are allotted[G*], appears clearly from hence; many of them are much more difficult to a reader of this day, without a glossary, than any one of the metrical compositions of the age of Edward IV. Let any person, who is not very profoundly skilled in the language of our elder poets, read a few pages of any of the poems of the age of that king, from whence I have already given short extracts, without any glossary or assistance whatsoever; he will doubtless meet sometimes with words he does not understand, but he will find much fewer difficulties of this kind, than while he is perusing the poems attributed to Rowley. The language of the latter, without a perpetual comment, would in most places be unintelligible to a common reader. He might, indeed, from the context, guess at something like the meaning; but the lines, I am confident, will be found, on examination, to contain twenty times more obsolete and obscure words than any one poem of the age of king Edward IV, now extant.
[ G* ] Mr. Bryant seems to have been aware of this objection, and thus endeavours to obviate it. “Indeed in some places the language seems more obsolete than could be expected for the time of king Edward the Fourth; and the reason is, that some of the poems, however new modelled, were prior to that æra. For Rowley himself [i.e. Chatterton] tells us that he borrowed from Turgot; and we have reason to think that he likewise copied from Chedder.” This same Chedder, he acquaints us in a note, was “a poet mentioned in the Mss., [that is, in Chatterton’s Mss., for I believe his name is not to be found elsewhere.] who is supposed to have flourished about the year 1330. He is said [by Chatterton] to have had some maumeries at the comitating the city.” Observations, p. 553. I wonder the learned commentator did not likewise inform us, from the same unquestionable authority, what wight Maistre Chedder copied.
Before I conclude, I cannot omit to take notice of two or three particulars on which the Dean of Exeter and Mr. 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; which required not only an elevation of poetic genius far superior to that possessed by Chatterton, but also such moral and mental qualifications as never entered into any part of his character or conduct, and which could not possibly be acquired by a youth of his age and inexperience.” “Where (we are triumphantly asked) could he learn the nice rules of the Interlude, by the introduction of a chorus, and the application of their songs to the moral and virtuous object of the performance?”—Where?—from Mr. Mason’s Elfrida and Caractacus, in which he found a perfect model of the Greek drama, and which doubtless he had read. But Ella “inculcates the precepts of morality;” and Chatterton, it is urged, was idle and dissolute, and therefore could not have been the authour of it. Has then the reverend editor never heard of instances of the purest system of morality being powerfully enforced from the pulpit by those who in their own lives have not been always found to adhere rigidly to the rules that they laid down for the conduct of others? Perhaps not; but I suppose many instances of this kind will occur to every reader. The world would be pure indeed, if speculative and practical morality were one and the same thing. “That knowledge of times, of men, and manners,” without which, it is said, Ella could not have been written, I find no difficulty in believing to have been possessed by this very extraordinary youth. Did he not, when he came to London, instead of being dazzled and confounded by the various new objects that surrounded him, become in a short time, by that almost intuitive faculty which accompanies genius, so well acquainted with all the reigning topicks of discourse, with the manners and different pursuits of various classes of men, with the state of parties, &c. as to pour out from the press a multitude of compositions on almost every subject that could exercise the pen of the oldest and most experienced writer[H*]? He who could do this, could compose the tragedy of Ella[I†]: (a name, by the by, that he probably found in Dr. Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Vol. I. p. xxiv.)
[ H* ] The following notices, which Mr. Walpole has preserved, are too curious to be omitted. They will give the reader a full idea of the professed authorship of Chatterton. In a list of pieces written by him, but never published, are the following:
5. “To Lord North. A Letter signed the Moderator, and dated May 26, 1770, beginning thus: “My Lord—It gives me a painful pleasure, &c.—This (says Mr. W.) is an encomium on administration for rejecting the Lord Mayor Beckford’s Remonstrance.
6. A Letter to Lord Mayor Beckford, signed Probus, dated May 26, 1770.—This is a violent abuse of Government for rejecting the Remonstrance, and begins thus: “When the endeavours of a spirited people to free themselves from an insupportable slavery”——. On the back of this essay, which is directed to Chatterton’s friend, Cary, is this indorsement:
“Accepted by Bingley—set for and thrown out of The North Briton, 21 June, on account of the Lord Mayor’s death.
| Lost by his death on this Essay | 1 11 6 |
| Gained in Elegies | 2 2 0 |
| ———–in Essays | 3 3 0 |
| Am glad he is dead by | 3 13 6” |
[ I† ] Chatterton wrote also “a Monks Tragedy,” which, if his forgeries had met with a more favourable reception than they did, he would doubtless have produced as an ancient composition. With the ardour of true genius, he wandered to the untrodden paths of the little Isle of Man for a subject, and aspired
petere inde coronam,