able; but they are understood to consist of ancient ecclesiastical deeds, as unconnected with poetry, as they are with galvanisni. The most determined advocate of Rowley will hardly contend, in the face of these objections, that the poetical train of writers, brought forward by Chatterton, wrote all the various poems ascribed to them; men who, though possessing claims to distinction when writers were few, and commendation was cheap, intensely slept for ages, and then suddenly burst from their cemeteries, like stars, to form a new constellation in the regions of poetry. In this dilemma, the inference becomes unavoidable, that, if these compositions were not written by the respective men to whom they are ascribed, who could have been their author but Chatterton? and if Chatterton composed these, who shall deny to him the whole of Rowley? seeing there is a perfect uniformity between all the writers, in the harmony, the language, and the train of their sentiment? The author will be pardoned for once more adverting to this argument, as it is the strong hold of the question. It rests on no subtle and equivocal train of reasoning, but derives its efficacy from an incontrovertible fact, the These old deeds, or a large proportion of them, found their way into the hands of a gentleman in Cambridge, who lately bequeathed them to Mr. Cumberland, who will, doubtless, soon have them examined, and it will then be ascertained, whether parchments, expressing often Rowley's name, and referring to Rowley's period, contain any thing more than points of local history. Whoever expects to find in this antiquated assemblage another Ella, or a counterpart of the Battle of Hastings, will prove to be as much disappointed as the man who waits till the fire ceases to warm, or the brook to flow. Somewhat less conclusive evidence of the same fact, (which no sober inquirer could have doubted,) has been obtained by the writer also. 'full force of which is perceivable by all capacities. Let the dispassionate enquirer ask himself, whether he thinks it possible for men, living in distant ages, when our language was unformed, and therefore its variations the greater, to write in the same style? Whether it was possible for the Abbatte John, composing in the year 1186, (when the amalgamation of the Saxon and the Norman, formed an almost inexplicable jargon,) to write in a manner, as to its construction, intimately resembling that now in vogue. On the contrary, how easy is the solution, when we admit that the person who wrote the first part of the Battle of Hastings, and the death of Syr Charles Bawdin, wrote also all the rest. Does it not appear marvellous, that the learned advocates of Rowley should not have regarded the ground on which they stood as somewhat instable, when they found Chatterton readily avow that he wrote the first part of the Battle of Hastings, and discovered the second, as composed three hundred years before, by Thomas Rowley? This was indeed an unparalleled coincidence. A boy writes the commencement of a narrative poem, and then finds in the Muniment-Room, the second part, or a continuation, by an old secular priest, with the same characters, written in the same style, and even in the same metre! Had Chatterton found the first part, he might have imitated the original, with some plausibility, but to believe that the circumstances, as they are now stated, could have taken place, manifests a degree of credulity, over which, out of respect for the dead, we would fain draw a permanent veil. Another extraordinary feature in the question, is the following: there are preserved in the British Museum, numerous deeds and proclamations, by Thomas Rowley, (in Chatterton's writing,) relating to the antiquities of |