anguage of that period than of any other. The
spelling of the words is frequently too late, or too bizarre, whilst many
of the words themselves are too archaic or too uncommon."[14] But this
internal evidence, which was so satisfactory to Scott, was so little
convincing to Chatterton's contemporaries that Tyrwhitt felt called upon
to publish in 1782 a "Vindication" of his appendix; and Thomas Warton put
forth in the same year an "Enquiry," in which he reached practically the
same conclusions with Tyrwhitt. And yet Warton had devoted the
twenty-sixth section of the second volume of his "History of English
Poetry" (1778,) to a review of the Rowley poems, on the ground that "as
they are held to be real by many respectable critics, it was his duty to
give them a place in this series": a curious testimony to the uncertainty
of the public mind on the question, and a half admission that the poems
might possibly turn out to be genuine.[15]

Tyrwhitt proved clearly enough that Chatterton wrote the Rowley poems,
but it was reserved for Mr. Skeat to show just _how_ he wrote them. The
_modus operandi_ was about as follows: Chatterton first made, for his
private use, a manuscript glossary, by copying out the words in the
glossary to Speght's edition of Chaucer, and those marked as old in
Bailey's and Kersey's English Dictionaries. Next he wrote his poem in
modern English, and finally rewrote it, substituting the archaic words
for their modern equivalents, and altering the spelling throughout into
an exaggerated imitation of the antique spelling in Speght's Chaucer.
The mistakes that the he made are instructive, as showing how closely he
followed his authorities, and how little independent knowledge he had of
genuine old English. Thus, to give a few typical examples of the many in
Mr. Skeat's notes: in Kersey's dictionary occurs the word _gare_, defined
as "cause." This is the verb _gar_, familiar to all readers of
Burns,[16] and meaning to cause, to make; but Chatterton, taking it for
the _noun_, cause, employs it with grotesque incorrectness in such
connections as these:

"Perchance in Virtue's gare rhyme might be then":
"If in this battle luck deserts our gare."

Again the Middle English _howten_ (Modern English, _hoot_) is defined by
Speght as "hallow," _i.e._, halloo. But Kersey and Bailey misprint this
"hollow"; and Chatterton, entering it so in his manuscript list of old
words, evidently takes it to be the _