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⁂ [asterism] œ [“oe” ligature] Ἕκτορος ἀντικρὺ, βαλέειν δὲ ἑ ἵετο θυμός·
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Publication Number 123 William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California, Los Angeles 1966
George Robert Guffey, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Earl Miner, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Robert Vosper, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_
Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_ Ralph Cohen, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Everett T. Moore, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_
Edna C. Davis, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_
Edmond Malone’s _Cursory Observations_ was the most timely publication in the Rowley controversy. His work appeared just as the debate over the authenticity of the poems attributed to a fifteenth-century priest was, after twelve years, entering its most crucial phase.[1] These curious poems had come to the attention of the reading public in 1769, when Thomas Chatterton sent several fragments to the _Town and Country Magazine_. The suicide of the young poet in 1770 made his story of discovering ancient manuscripts all the more intriguing. When Thomas Tyrwhitt published the first collected edition in March of 1777,[2] speculation about whether the poems were the work of Rowley or Chatterton began in earnest. Malone arrived in London two months later to take up permanent residence, and very likely he soon became in private “a professed anti-Rowleian.”[3] But during the late 1770’s, although anonymous writers filled the periodicals with pronouncements on both sides of the question, there was no urgent need to demonstrate that the poems were spurious. The essay which Tyrwhitt appended to the third edition of Rowley poems in 1778[4] and Thomas Warton’s chapter in his _History of English Poetry_[5] seemed to show with sufficient authority that the poems could not have been written in the fifteenth century. The Rowleians, however, were diligently preparing their arguments,[6] and late in 1781 they at last came forward with massive scholarly support for the Rowley story.