Page:Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782).pdf/19

Rh Spenser has composed his Fairy Queen, the sixth line rimes to the final couplet, and the seventh to the fifth: Rowley having added anotber line to the stanza, the eighth rimes with the sixth.”–The upshot of the whole is, that Rowley himself, or rather Chatterton, is at last the only authority to show that such a stanza was employed at the time mentioned. And it is just with this kind of circular proof that we are amused, when any very singular fact is mentioned in Chatterton's verses: “This fact, say the learned Commentators, is also minutely described by Rowley in the, which wonderfully confirms the authenticity of these poems;” i.e. one forgery of Chatterton in prose, wonderfully supports and authenticates another forgery of his in rhyme.–To prevent the Dean from giving himself any farther trouble in searching for authorities to prove that the stanza of the Battle of Hastings (consisting of two quatrains rhyming alternately, and a couplet,) was known to our early writers, I beg leave to inform him, that it was not used till near three centuries after the time of the supposed Rowley; having been, if I remember right, first employed by Prior, who considered it as an improvement on that of Spenser.

II. The second point that I proposed to consider is, the imitations of Pope's Homer, Shakspeare, Dryden, Rowe, &c. with which these pieces abound. And here the cautious conduct of Chatterton's new commentator is very remarkable. All the similies that poor Chatterton 3