Note 10 — THOMAS CHATTERTON.

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 by Strutt, to the edition of Rowley's Poems, 1777. The writing is generally bolder than Barrett's fac-simile; and that gentleman, in endeavoring to revive the faded ink, has greatly injured the originals, which are now in some cases almost indistinguishable. The drawings of pretended ancient coins and heraldry are absurdly inventive: and the representations of buildings exactly such as a boy without knowledge of drawing or architecture would fabricate; yet they imposed on Barrett who engraved them for his history of Bristol. Many of his transcripts show the shifts the poor boy was put to for paper; torn fragments and backs of law bills are frequently employed. Among the rest is a collection of extracts from Chaucer to aid him in the fabrication of his MSS. The whole is exceedingly instructive and curious.