“Wincing she was, as is a jolly colt, “Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt--”
but whether we can find _three thousand_ lines as smooth as these; containing the same rythm, the very collocation and combination of words used in the eighteenth century.
Let us bring this matter to a very fair test. Any quotation from particular parts of old poetry is liable to suspicion, and may be thought to be selected by the advocates on one side as remarkably harmonious, or by those on the other as uncommonly rugged and uncouth. I will therefore transcribe the first four lines of as many ancient poems as are now lying before me; and I request that they may be compared with the opening of _the Battle of Hastings_, No. 1, the piece which happens to stand first in the new quarto edition of Chatterton’s works.
Divested of its old spelling, which is only calculated to mislead the reader, and to assist the intended imposition, it begins thus:
“O Christ, it is a grief for me to tell “How many a noble earl and val’rous knight “In fighting for king Harold nobly fell, “All slain in Hastings’ field, in bloody fight.”
Or, as Chatterton himself acknowledged this to be a forgery, perhaps it will be more proper to quote the beginning of _the Battle of Hastings_, No. 2, which he asserted to be a genuine, ancient composition:
“O Truth! immortal daughter of the skies, “Too little known to writers of these days, “Teach me, fair saint, thy passing worth to prize, “To blame a friend, and give a foeman praise.”
The first four lines of _the Vision of Pierce Plowman_, by William (or Robert) Langland, who flourished about the year 1350, are as follows: [I quote from the edition printed in 1561.]
“In a summer season, when set was the sunne, “I shope me into shroubs, as I a shepe were, “In habit as an hermet, unholye of werkes, “Went wide in the werlde, wonders to here.”
Chaucer, who died in 1400, opens thus: [Tyrwhitt’s edit. 1775.]
“Whanne that April with his shoures sote “The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, “And bathed every veine in swiche licour, “Of whiche vertue engendred is the flour--.”
The _Confessio Amantis_ of Gower, who died in 1402, begins thus: [Berthelette’s edit. 1532.]
“I maye not stretche uppe to the heven “Myn honde, ne set al in even “This worlde, whiche ever is in balaunce, “It stant not in my suffisaunce----.”