readers of these pieces are deceived insensibly on this subject. While they are perusing the poems of the fictitious Rowley, they constantly compare them with the poetry of the fifteenth century; and are ready every moment to exclaim, how much he surpasses all his contemporaries. While the verses that Chatterton acknowledged as his
tuled Love and Madness, are too pertinent to be here omitted. “It may be asked why Chatterton's own Miscellanies are inferior to Rowley? Let me ask another question: Are they inferior? Genius, abilities, we may bring into the world with us; these rare ingredients may be mixed up in our compositions by the hand of Nature. But Nature herself cannot create a human being possessed of a complete knowledge of our world almost the moment he is born into it. Is the knowledge of the world which his Miscellanies contain, no proof of his astonishing quickness in seizing every thing he chose? Is it remembered when, and at what age, Chatterton for the sirst time quitted Bristol, and how few weeks he lived afterwards? Chatterton's Letters and Miscellanies, and every thing which the warmest advocate for Rowley will not deny to have been Chatterton's, exhibit an insight into men, manners, and things, for the want of which, in their writings, authors who have died old men, with more opportunities to know the world, (who could have less than Chatterton?) have been thought to make amends by other merits.”—“In London (as the same writer observes) was to be learned that which even genius cannot teach, the knowledge of life. Extemporaneous bread was to be earned more suddenly than even Chatterton could write poems for Rowley; and, in consequence of his employments, as he tells his mother, publick places were to be visited, and mankind to be frequented.”—Hence, after “he left Bristol, we see but one more of Rowley's poems, The Ballad of Charitie, and that a very short one.”
