Page:Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782).pdf/20

Rh 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. Indeed when the fraud is so manifest as not to be concealed, the passage is produced. Thus in Ella we meet

and here we are told, “the burthen of this roundelay very much resembles that in Hamlet:”

But when we meet—“Why thou art all that pointelle can bewreen”–evidently from Rowe–“Is she not more than painting can exprefs?”–the editor is very prudently silent.

So also in the Battle of Hastings we find Rh