Page:Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782).pdf/36

Rh What has been said already concerning forged compositions, cannot be too often repeated. If these Mss. or any part of them exist, why are they not deposited in the British Museum, or some publick library, for the examination of the curious? Till they are produced, we have a right to use the language that Voltaire tells us was used to the Abbé Nodot. “Show us your Ms. of Petronius, which you say was found at Belgrade, or consent that nobody shall believe you. 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.”

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 3