Chap. XX.] Poetry. 6S 



only the transcriber, and declared that they were 

 written by Rowley, a clergyman of Bristol, more 

 than three centuries before their discovery by him. 

 They consist chiefly of dramatic, lyric, and pasto- 

 ral pieces, and are pronounced by some persons 

 of distinction in the literary world to be the real 

 works of Rowley, to whom they were attributed ; 

 while a greater number of equal discernment and 

 acquaintance with the subject have decided that 

 they are forgeries, and that Chatterton himself 

 was the author *. After much learned, ingenious. 



little more than sixteen when he produced the celebrated poems 

 ascribed to Rowley. These he constantly affirmed he had co-> 

 pied from manuscripts found in an old church in his native 

 city ; but he never could be persuaded to produce any of the 

 originals, except a few fi-agments, which he asserted were among 

 the number, the largest of which was not more than eight inches 

 long, and four or five Avide. Though the more general and pro- 

 bable opinion at present is, tiiat this remarkable youth was the 

 real author of the poems which have passed under Rowley's 

 name ; yet some other works, certainly known to liive been pro- 

 duced by him, place him high in the ranks of genius. Some of 

 his elegies and satires, in patticular, unquestionably display great 

 talents. He died miserably in London, August 25, 1770. His 

 death is ascribed to poison, which he had swallowed in a fit of 

 criminal impatience and overwhelming despair, with the design tp 

 teruiinate his sufferings. He is said to have imbibed (in the two 

 or three last years of his life) principles of the most licentious 

 kind, and to have been very immoral in his practice. His mind 

 was aspiring and ambitious to a degree almost boundless ; and 

 not meeting with that success or those rewards of his talents 

 which he had fondly hoped, he took refuge in a voluntary death, 

 and left a monument of unfortunate degraded genius, of which a 

 parallel will scarcely be again contemplated. 



* Among those who have contended that these poems were 

 written by Rowley, Dr. Milles, dean of Exeter, aad Mr. Bryant, 

 arc the most conspicuous. The principal writers who have con* 



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