Chatterton
would never have had time to write so much.
Thomas Chatterton - Rowley Poems
_For Rowley_.
1. Chatterton's assertion that they were Rowley's, his sister having
represented him as a 'lover of truth from the earliest dawn of
reason. '
2. Catcott's assertion that Chatterton on their first acquaintance had
mentioned by name almost all the poems which have since appeared in
print (Bryant).
3. Smith had seen parchments in the possession of Chatterton, some as
broad as the bottom of a large-sized chair. (Bryant. )
4. Even Mr. Clayfield and Rudhall believed Chatterton incapable of
composing Rowley's poems.
5. Undoubtedly there were ancient MSS. in the 'cofre'.
6.
Chatterton would never have had time to write so much. He did not
neglect his work in the attorney's office and he read enormously.
7. Chatterton made many mistakes in his transcription of Rowley and in
his notes to the poems. (Bryant's main contention. )
8. If Leland never mentioned Rowley it is equally true he says nothing
of Canynge, Lydgate, or Occleve.
_For Rowley_.
1. The poems contain much historical allusion at once true and
inaccessible to Chatterton.
2. The admitted poems are much below the standard of Rowley.
3. The old octave stanza is not far removed from the usual stanza of
Rowley.
4. If Rowley's language differs from that of other fifteenth
century writers, the difference lies in provincialisms natural to an
inhabitant of Bristol.
