interpretations as he found or made. When he could not readily find a word that would suit his metre, he invented one[1] If then his old words afford some sense, and yet are sometimes interpreted wrong, nothing more follows than that his glossaries were imperfect, or his knowledge inaccurate; (still however he might have had a confused, though not complete, idea of their import:) if, as the commentator asserts, the words that he has explained not only suit the places in which they stand, but are often more apposite than he imagined, and have a latent and significant meaning, that never occurred to him, this will only show, that a man's book is sometimes wiser than himself; a truth of which we have every day so many striking instances, that it was scarcely necessary for this learned antiquarian to have exhibited a new proof of it.
Let it be considered too, that the glossary and the text were not always written at the same time; that Chatterton might not always remember the precise sense in which he had used antiquated words; and from a confused recollection, or from the want of the very same books that he had consulted while he was writing his poems, might add sometimes a false, and sometimes an
- ↑ In Chatterton's poems many words occur, that were undoubtedly coined by him; as mole, dolce, droke, glytted, aluste, &c. All these his new editor has inserted in a very curious performance which he is pleased to call a Glossary, with such interpretations as as the context supplied, without even attempting to support them either by analogy or the authority of our ancient writers.
