The admitted poems are much below the
standard
of Rowley.
Thomas Chatterton - Rowley 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.
5. Plagiarisms from modern authors may in some cases have been
introduced by Chatterton but in others they are the commonplaces of
poetry.
_Against Rowley_.
1. No writings or chest deposited in Redcliffe Church are mentioned in
Canynge's Will.
2. The Bristol library was in Chatterton's time of general access, and
Chatterton was introduced to it by Rev. A. Catcott (Warton).
3. Facts about Canynge may be found in his epitaph in Redcliffe
Church; and the account of Redcliffe steeple--(which had been
destroyed by fire before Chatterton's time) came from the bottom of an
old print published in 1746.
