reveries within it.

[9] The house said to be that of Canynge is situated in Redcliffe
Street, not very far from the church. It is now occupied by a
bookseller, who uses the fine hall seen in our cut, as a storehouse for
his volumes. Chatterton frequently mentions this "house nempte the rodde
lodge;" and in Skelton's "Etchings of Bristol Antiquities" is an
engraving of this building, there called "Canynge's chapel or Masonic
Hall," showing the painting in the arch at the back, representing the
first person of the Trinity, supporting the crucified Saviour, angels at
each side censing, and others bearing shields. This was "the Rood" with
which Chatterton was familiar, and which induced him to give the name to
Canynge's house in his fabrications. This painting is now destroyed, but
we have restored it from Skelton's plate in our engraving.

[10] The monk Rowley was altogether an imaginary person conjured up by
Chatterton as a vehicle for his wonderful forgeries. He was described by
him as the intimate friend of Canynge, his constant companion, and a
collector of books and drawings for him. It has been well remarked, that
although it was _extraordinary_ for a lad to have written them in the
18th century, it was _impossible_ for a monk to have written them in the
15th. Indeed, it seems now both curious and amusing that his forgeries
should have deceived the learned. When Rowley talks of purchasing his
house "on a repayring lease for ninety-nine years." We at once smile,
and remember his fellow-forger Ireland's Shaksperian _Promissory_ note,
before such things were invented. Our fac-simile of the pretended
Rowley's writing is obtained from the very curious collection of
Chatterton's manuscripts in the British Museum. It is written at the
bottom of some drawings of monumental slabs and notes, stated to have
been "collected ande gotten for Mr. William Canynge, by mee, Thomas
Rowley." There are, however, other autographs of Rowley in the
collection, so entirely dissimilar in the formation of the letters, that
it might be expected to have induced a conviction of forgery. Many of
the manuscripts too are still more dissimilar; and the construction of
the letters totally unlike any of the period. Some are written on little
fragments not more than three inches square, the writing sometimes neat
and clean, at other times bad, rambling and unintelligible. The best is
the account of Canynge's feast, which has been engraved in fac-simile