Yet the Truth they might fancy beneath all my Lumber:
But your stupid Jargon is seen through instanter,
And your Works give the Wits new Subjects for Banter.
Such cler-obscure Aid may I meet again never!
For now Milles and I will be laugh’d at for ever.[28]
Greene’s criticisms are frequently absurd, but probably even Malone was ready to acknowledge that humor was not the outstanding feature of the Cursory Observations. His purpose was not to satirize but to refute.
Other writers in 1782, however, exerted their risible muscles much more vigorously than Malone did. William Julius Mickle wrote The Prophecy of Queen Emma; An Ancient Ballad lately discovered, written by Johannes Turgotus, Prior of Durham, in the Reign of William Rufus, to which he added a long satirical postscript about the discovery of the poem. 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. The general reader was likely to find ridiculous the sober effort to document Rowley’s existence. As a contributor to the St. James’s Chronicle said, “To mistake the Apprentice of a modern Attorney for an ancient Priest, too nearly resembles an Incident in the new Pantomime at Covent-Garden, where a Bailiff, intent on arresting an old Beau, is imposed on by a Monkey dressed in his Clothes, and employed in an awkward Imitation of his Manners.”[30] But ridicule could hurt the Rowleians only if their confidence had been penetrated already. Malone delivered his strokes two months before any of the others, and the strength of his diversified attack made it possible for the wits to strike home.
Throughout 1782, the Cursory Observations remained at the forefront of the reaction to Milles and Bryant. In March, William Mason wrote Walpole that he understood “a Mr. Malone” was “the proto-antagonist” of the Rowleians.[31] As late as the August issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine appeared an “Ode, Addressed to Edmond Malone, Esq. on his presuming to examine the learned and unanswerable Arguments urged by Jacob Bryant, Esq. and the Rev. Dr. Milles....”[32] Perhaps the fairest contemporary appraisal of Malone’s work was given in the June issue of the Critical Review. Although the reviewer felt that some of Malone’s proofs, such as the anachronism of “knitting white hosen,”[33] were as elusive as those of the antiquaries, he found the method of comparing “Rowley” and other poets illuminating, and the “miscellaneous observations” he considered “frequently important, and often decisive.” On the whole, the reviewer said, “Mr. Malone deserves much praise for his very clear and comprehensive view” of the controversy.[34]
In their replies to Bryant and Milles, both Warton and Tyrwhitt referred appreciatively to the Cursory Observations. Warton found that he had duplicated Malone’s method of rewriting Chatterton’s acknowledged poetry. In a footnote, he said: “The ingenious author of Cursory Observations on the Poems of Rowley, has been beforehand with me in this sort of tryal. But mine was made, before I had seen his very sensible and conclusive performance.”[35] Tyrwhitt went so far as to let Malone speak for him: “From the Language, I might go on to examine the Versification of these Poems; but I think it sufficient to refer the reader, who may have any doubts upon this point, to the specimens of really ancient poetry, with which the verses of the pretended Rowley have lately been very judiciously contrasted. Whoever reads those specimens, if he has an ear, must be convinced, that the authors of them and of the Poems did not live within the same period.”[36] A century after Tyrwhitt, in a re-examination of the Rowley poems which is in many ways the final word on the subject, W. W. Skeat recommended Tyrwhitt’s Vindication, the chapter in Warton’s History, and the Cursory Observations as the three contemporary analyses of the poems which a reader should consult.[37] The pamphlet is now offered to twentieth-century readers as an illustration of the mature and versatile critical powers of one of the eighteenth-century’s great scholars.