ing being found in the copy, and another in the original, when in fact all the Mss. that C. produced were equally originals. What he called originals indeed, were probably in general more perfect than what he called copies; because the former were always produced after the other, and were in truth nothing more than second editions of the same pieces[1].
The inequality of the poems which Chatterton owned as his own compositions, when compared with those ascribed to Rowley, has been much insisted upon. But this matter has been greatly exaggerated. Some of the worst lines in Chatterton's Miscellanies have been selected by Mr. Bryant to prove the point contended for; but in fact they contain the same even and flowing versification as the others, and in general display the same premature abilities[2].—The truth is, the
- ↑ “Bie,” which he wrote inadvertently in the tragedy of Ella, instead of “mie,” (on which Mr. B. has given us a learned dissertation)—“Bie thankes I ever onne you wylle bestowe”—is such a mistake as every man in the hurry of writing is subject to. By had probably occurred just before, or was to begin some subsequent line that he was then forming in his mind. Even the slow and laborious Mr. Capel, who was employed near forty years in preparing and printing an edition of Shakspeare, in a Catalogue which he presented to a publick library at Cambridge, and which he probably had revised for many months before he gave it out of his hands, has written “Bloody Bloody,” as the title of one of Fletcher's Plays, instead of “Bloody Brother.”
- ↑ The observations on this subject, of the ingenious authour of the accurate account of Chatterton, in a book enti-
