I die; I come; my true-love waits.
Thus the damfel spake and died.

The original of Defdemona's fong (" willow, "willow") is in Percy's Reliques, 1. 192. One ftanza(p.193)is not totallyunlike the Minstrell's firft which I have just transcribed

The cold fream ran by him,

His eyes wept apace;

The falt tears fell from him,

Which drowned his face.

What follows is furely rather more than coincidence!

Black his hair as the winter night,
White his cheek as the fummer fnow.

Have I tired you? But pray confefs there is more in the fimilarity of thefe paffages, than if I were to argue that C. wrote all Rowley, because in one of R.'s poems there is a line which is to be found, word for word, in two other poets fince R.

This might happen without even having seen the lines which are so exactly the fame. Then only it is that we can be sure we see the stealing hand of memory, or catch the Proteus form of imitation, when the fame idea is expreffed in the fame words.

Before we go any further, let me just shew you how the account ftands between Chatterton and the Town and Country Magazine for 1769.

January.

January.
February.

March.

April.

"Account of the Tincture of Saxon
"Heralds"; and fome lines on Mr.
"Alcock," which do not from the figna-
ture appear to be C.'s though inferted
in his Mifcellanies

Ethelgar, a Saxon poem ;" and a MS.
by Rowley, on the Court Mantle
"Kenrick, a Saxon poem;" and an
elegy, which does not from the figna-
ture appear to be C.'s though inserted in
his Mifcellanies

·

"Cerdick, a Saxon poem;" Saxon Atchievements, and Elinoure and Juga 3

Some lines to Mr. Holland

May.

- June.

July.
Auguft.

Godred Crovan

Nov.

Dec.

"The Hirlas"; and an elegy, which
does not from the signature appear to be
C.'s though inferted in his Miscellanies,
where I do not find The Hirlas,"
printed in the Magazine, p. 574, with
his usual fignature, D. B.

"The Antiquity of Christmas Games,"
and "The Copernican System"

Supplement. "The Hirlas," an elegy, and fome

lines to Mifs R.

3

You cannot, I am fure, but obferve, and with furprife, how few things he contributed during the space of fome whole months, from May to December. How are we to account for this? Was his active genius unemployed during all this time, and fome of it the most poetical part of the year? Or did his

fpirit haunte

with his loved Rowley by his fide,

Where he might hear the wotie nightlark chaunte?

B. of Hastings, 2. 581.

It is certain that in December (p. 623 of the Magazine) there is a paffage in a short article of C.'s upon the "Antiquity of Christmas Games," which feems clearly meant to prepare the world for Ella, Godwin, and the Apoftate—and who can tell for how many more of Rowley's plays?

"A regifter of the nunnery of Keynsham relates, that William, Earl of Glocefter, entertained two hundred knights with tilts and fortunys, at his great manor of Keynsham, provided thirty pies of the cels of Avon, as a curious dainty; and on the twelvth day began the plays For the knights by the monks: with miracles and maumeies for the henchmen and fervants, by minstrels.

Here is plainly a diftinction made between maumeries and miracles, and the more noble reprefentations comprehended under the name plays. The first were the holiday entertainments of the vulgar; the other of the barons and Hobility. The private exhibitions at the manors of the ba

rons

rons were usually family hiftories, the monk, who reprefented the master of the family, being arrayed in a tabard (or herald's coat without fleeves) painted with all the hatchments of the names. In these domeftic performances abfurdities were unavoidable; and in a play wrote by Sir Tibbet Gonges" (an error of the prefs, certainly, for Rowley's friend Gorges) "Conftance, Countess of Bretagne and Richmond, marries and buries her three husbands in the compass of an hour. Sometimes thefe pieces were merely relations, and had only two characters of this kind, as that in Weever's Funeral Monuments. None but the patrons of monafteries had the fervice of the monks in performing plays on holidays; provided the fame con. tained nothing against God or the church. The public exhibitions were fuperior to the private; the plot generally the life of fome pope, or the founder of the abbey the monks belonged to. I have seen several of these pieces, MOSTLY LATIN, and cannot think our ancestors fo ignonorant of dramatic excellencies as the generality of modern avriters would reprefent; they had a good moral in view : and fome of the maumeries abound with wit, which, though low now, was not fo then."

So much for the Town and Country Magazine, 1769.

Before I leave Rowley I must transcribe you a fhort paffage from the Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1777, p. 363, which accounts for the following extraordinary lines in the Epiftle on Ælla:

Playes made from hallie tale I hold unmeete ; ›
Let fomme great story of a manne be fonge:

Whanne