al genius, above Dryden, and
perhaps only second to Shakspeare." Mr. Herbert Croft is still more
unqualified in his praises; he asserts, that "no such being, at any
period of life, has ever been known, or possibly ever will be known." He
runs a parallel between Chatterton and Milton; and asserts, that "an
army of Macedonian and Swedish mad butchers fly before him," meaning, I
suppose, that Alexander the Great and Charles the Twelfth were nothing
to him; "nor," he adds, "does my memory supply me with any human being,
who at such an age, with such advantages, has produced such
compositions. Under the heathen mythology, superstition and admiration
would have explained all, by bringing Apollo on earth; nor would the God
ever have descended with more credit to himself."--Chatterton's
physiognomy would at least have enabled him to pass _incognito_. It is
quite different from the look of timid wonder and delight with which
Annibal Caracci has painted a young Apollo listening to the first sounds
he draws from a Pan's pipe, under the tutelage of the old Silenus! If
Mr. Croft is sublime on the occasion, Dr. Knox is no less pathetic. "The
testimony of Dr. Knox," says Dr. Anderson, (Essays, p. 144.), "does equal
credit to the classical taste and amiable benevolence of the writer, and
the genius and reputation of Chatterton." "When I read," says the
Doctor, "the researches of those learned antiquaries who have
endeavoured to prove that the poems attributed to Rowley were really
written by him, I observe many ingenious remarks in confirmation of
their opinion, which it would be tedious, if not difficult, to
controvert."

Now this is so far from the mark, that the whole controversy might
have been settled by any one but the learned antiquaries themselves, who
had the smallest share of their learning, from this single circumstance,
that the poems read as smooth as any modern poems, if you read them as
modern compositions; and that you cannot read them, or make verse of
them at all, if you pronounce or accent the words as they were spoken at
the time when the poems were pretended to have been written. The whole
secret of the imposture, which nothing but a deal of learned dust,
raised by collecting and removing a great deal of learned rubbish, could
have prevented our laborious critics from seeing through, lies on the
face of it (to say nothing of the burlesque air which is scarcely
disguised throughout) in the repetition of a few o