that appeared
to his companion totally unlike English, that he then held it over a
candle to give it the appearance of antiquity, which changed the colour
of the ink, and made the parchment appear black and contracted. Another
person declares, that he saw him rub a piece of parchment in several
places in streaks with yellow ochre, and then rub it on the ground which
was dirty, and afterwards crumple it in his hand. Having concluded the
operation, he said it would do pretty well, but he could do it better at
home. The first part of the Battle of Hastings, he confessed to Mr.
Barrett, that he had written himself.

Some anachronisms as to particular allusions have been pointed out. The
irregular, or Pindaric measure as it has been called, used in the song
to Aella, in the verses on the Mynster, and in the chorus in Goddwyn,
was not employed till a much later aera. There are also in the Aella
some lines in blank verse, not introduced among us till the time of
Surrey, who adopted it from the Italian.

Another criterion of a more general nature, which has not yet, at least
that I am aware, been applied to those compositions, is, I think, very
strongly against the antiquity of them; and that is, that the intention
and purpose of the writer in the longer pieces is not sufficiently
marked and decisive for the remoter ages to which they are ascribed. In
the early stages of a language, before conventional phrases have been
formed, and a stock of imagery, as it were, provided for the common use,
we find that the plan of a work is often rude and simple indeed, but
that it almost always bears evident signs of having subsisted anteriorly
in the mind of the writer as a whole. If we try Aella, the longest of
the poems, by this test, we shall discover strong evidence of its being
modern. A certain degree of uniformity is the invariable characteristic
of the earlier productions of art; but here is as much desultoriness and
incoherence, as can well he possible in a work that makes any
pretensions to a plan. On this internal proof alone I should not
hesitate in assigning it to Chatterton rather than to Rowley, to the one
who luxuriated in an abundance of poetic materials poured out before him
for his use or his imitation, rather than to the other who had
comparatively but a few meagre models to work upon.

Where he is much inspirited by his subject, being thrown off his guard,
he forgets himself and becomes modern, as in these lines, fro