Page:Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782).pdf/37

Rh 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 fource, 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, appears clearly from hence; many of them are much more difficult to a reader of this day, without a glossary, than anyone of the metrical compositions of the age of Edward IV. Let any person, who is not very Rh