Page:Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782).pdf/8

Rh of the Armoury to queen Elizabeth. These having not the smallest relation to the present question, I shall take no notice of them. He then cites some verses of blind Harry, (who knows not blind Harry?) written in the time of King Edward IV.; and some from the Pilgrimage of the Soul, printed by Caxton in 1483. I will not encumber my page by transcribing them; and will only observe, that they do not at all prove the point for which they are adduced, being by no means harmonious. But were these few verses ever so smooth, they would not serve to decide the matter in controversy. The question is not, whether in Chaucer, or any other ancient English poet, we can find a dozen lines as smooth as

but whether we can find three thousand lines as smooth as these; containing the same rythm, the very collocation and combination of words used in the eighteenth century.

Let us bring this matter to a very fair test. Any quotation from particular parts of old poetry is liable to suspicion, and may be thought to be selected by the advocates on one side as remarkably harmonious, or by those on the other as uncommonly rugged and uncouth. I will therefore transcribe the first four lines of as many ancient poems as are now lying before me; and I request that they may be compared Rh