the skirt of her robe sweeping through the sky (and not with her gloves on), is complete.

In the next page "fonnis" is noted as a word of unknown origin. Bailey tells you that "fonnes” are devices, and that to "fonne" is to be foolish. Chatterton uses it in this sense. I will venture a query ::-Is not "" fun derived from this word ?-Manca, a Saxon coin, is found in Bailey. Chalmers notes "asterte" as unintelligible; Chatterton interprets it "neglected.' Bailey gives "astert" to let go; and in this sense Chatterton uses it. "Almer," a beggar, unintelligible and contrary to analogy, says the note in Chalmers. Not at all so : Chatterton forms alm-er from alms, as palm-er is from palm.

"Glommed: A person of some note in the literary world is of opinion that glom and glum are modern cant words; and from this circumstance doubts the authenticity of Rowley's manuscripts. Glommong in the Saxon signifies twilight; and the modern word 'gloomy' is from Saxon origin." This is the note by Chalmers; I suppose quoted from Chatterton— one of Chatterton's fonnes. See Bailey.

"Aluste:" Mr. Bryant and Mr. Tyrwhitt agree that this word has been used by a mistake of Chatterton's for ajuste:

And on him laie the racer's lukewarm corse,

That Alured could not hymself aluste." Chatterton, in more than one instance, has coined words by affixing a letter or a syllable, or rather has made new coins appear old by addition of a little rust. In Bailey we find "lust;" a ship is said when it leans, to have a "lust" to one side or other; and I venture to conjecture that Chatterton formed the word to signify that the knight could not alust himself; that is, could not move to one side or the other. His struggles to get clear would exactly resemble a ship lusting. Here Chatterton makes a verb from a substantive root: sometimes he did reversely. In Bailey he found "bestoike," to betray; from which he formed bestoiker (see Ella), a betrayer. To future editor of Chatany terton, Bailey is absolutely indispensable. I could add many words to

my present list, but these are sufficient.

When I took up my pen I had not seen Chalmers's edition; and when I referred to it, by the recommendation of a friend, and perused in his preface the reference to Bailey, I imagined that my observations had been anticipated, and any remarks of mine would be useless, nay, ridiculous. Imagine my surprise in finding in an edition of Chatterton's poems, prefaced by such an acknowledgment of his acquaintance with Bailey;-an edition which, from its nature, does not admit of any extraneous matter which the editor does not deem to be of essential consequence ;—imagine, I repeat, my surprise, in finding the notes on "Adventayle" and "Aumere." I began with Mr. Dix's book, and instead of being stopped in my course by Chalmers, I shall proceed under the idea that I may be in some instances turning up new ground; or, at least, if Mr. Dix or any other person (O Southey! have you time?-I know you have will for the task,) should publish a new edition of Chatterton's poems, that he may find the ground better sifted than it had been before.

Now, then, in Chatterton's first and acknowledged production, the opening of the Old Bridge, there is only one word of antiquity, which is not to be found in Bailey.

Alb, ealdermen, dight, chaperon, (the escutcheon on the foreheads of horses,) as given exactly by Chatterton, citriale, guitar, anlace, forloyne. Congean is the only word not to be found in Bailey.

In the Romaunte of the Knight, we have rounce, dribblet, astert, morglaie, swyth, merk, enchafed, din or dyn, fuir, wote. All in Bailey.

In his letter to Walpole on the Ryse of Peynetinge, his own undoubted invention—(let us drop the word forgery -hateful word! we do not talk of Walpole's forging Otranto)—in this letter we have auntlers, (I suspect aunter in Mr. Dix's book to be a misprint,) inhyld, kyste, blac, wark, paraments, maint, slear, forslagen, forgard, emmoise. All these in Bailey.

We find in the same book, vert, semblable, neders, nempt, shepster, geason,

quaint (skilful), bement, ribible, swote, vernage.

Now let us refer to Ecca Bishop of Hereford, "a goode poet whom I (Chatterton in person of Rowlie) thus Englyshe." Here we have faytours, mees, neders, levin, shepster, besprenged, merk, immenged.

After this, in verses by Abbot John, whom Rowlie thus Englysheth, we have forwyned, bement, unseliness, and vernage. All in Bailey.

Last of all, let me give Chatterton's letter to his friend William Smith before he had quitted Mr. Lambert's office. See Dix's Life, p. 244.

"Infallible Doctor,-Let this apologize for long silence: your request would have been long since granted, but I know not what it is best to compose, a hendecasyllabon carmen hexastichon, ogdastich, tetrametrum, or septennarius. You must know that I have been long troubled with a poetical cephalophonia; for I no sooner begin an acrostic, but I wander into a threnodia. The poem runs thus: The first line an acatalectos; the second an otislogia of the first; the third an acyrologia; the fourth an epanalepsis of the third; fifth, a diapytosis of beauty; sixth, a diaporesis of success; seventh, a brachy cutalecton; eighth, an ecphonesis of explexis. In short, an enpynion could not contain a greater synchysis of such accidents without syzigia. I am resolved to forsake the Parnassian Mount, and would advise you to do so too, and attain the mystery of composing smegma. Think not I make a mysterismus in mentioning smegma. No! my Mnemosyne will let me see (unless I have an amblyopia) your great services, which shall be always remembered by

"FLASMOT EYCHAORITT.' 11* No, Chatterton! there is no mysterismus in thy mentioning smegma, for thou didst find it, and fourteen out of seventeen of these hard words, in Bailey's Dictionary!

I have a conception that I can trace in the same book the origin of thy pseudo-name Rowley. No such name is found in the Annals of Bristol, nor has any one attempted to trace the origin of it. By any other name his poems would have smelt as sweet; but it may be curious to trace the pro

*This signature, we have little doubt, is a misprint for HASMOT ENCHAORETT, in which words the letters of the writer's own two names are contained. EDIT.

bable cause of his choosing. The truth of my conjecture cannot ever be verified. True; and therefore it may be said that the inquiry is idle and vain ; but when we have seen what use he made of Bailey's Dictionary as a glossary, it may not be uninteresting to trace from the same source not only the dress of his poetry but the title of it. We know Chatterton's fondness for the old-English character, and that his eye was likely to be attracted by it. There is no doubt that Bailey's Dictionary was a source of instruction and amusement to him generally, independent of his particular aim in referring to it. It is not improbable that Bailey's Dictionary first gave him the idea of disguise, before he borrowed Chaucer and other helps, as we know he did. But to the point: in Bailey's Dictionary, the thirteenth edition, published in 1748, the edition then in use when Chatterton was a boy, at the top of one particular column (each page is divided into two columns) is a proverb in the old-English character, and it is the only column in the whole book which is so headed. It caught my eye, as I have no doubt it did the eye of Chatterton, who was induced to peruse the whole of the column, as it contains the history of Rowena the daughter of Hengist the Saxon. It is under the letters RO, and at the bottom of the page is a humorous story why King Charles was nicknamed Rowley. The particular reason for the name was not unlikely to fix itself on Chatterton's memory, and was perhaps associated in his mind with the proverb itself at the top of the page, the purport of which corresponded with the scheme then in his mind, viz. "To look one way and row another;" i. e. to practise a disguise. His mother's friend, Mrs. Edkins, seems familiarly to have called his parchments his "old Rowleys," and Chatterton perhaps smiled inwardly when he heard her use the expression, and when the nickname and all its associations were thus recalled to his recollection.

Once more let me repeat that I know not how far I am treading on beaten ground. If Chalmers could publish such notes in 1810, surely Bailey has been rather hinted at than examined. Here I give sufficient guid

the brilliant pages of the French author, ever existed, is more than dubious; for it rests on the very slight contemporaneous authority of a letter from a Frenchman then resident at Venice, dated the 21st of May 1618, and inserted in the Mercure de France for that year (tom. v. p. 38); and slender indeed are the materials which that solitary original document supplies for the elegant but frail superstructure so ingeniously raised on it. "Quæ bene et eximie quamvis disposta ferantur,

Longe sunt tamen a verâ ratione repulsa." Lucret. lib. ii. 643.

"On est fâché," says the editor of Saint-Réal's Work, (Paris, 1781), "de ne plus trouver qu'une fable où l'on aimoit à voir un événement réel." Nor does any distinct advertence to the event occur, I apprehend, in any native writer, before J. B. Nani published his "Historia della Republica Veneta (1676, 2 vols. 4to)," where it is first mentioned, lib. iii. p. 156; but this work, though undertaken by desire of the Senate, and estimable for its general accuracy, exhibits little evidence that the secrets of state-the mysterious doings of that body—were unreservedly revealed to the chosen annalist. Besides, except the first part, (embracing the early periods of the republic, which had originally appeared in 1662,) it is posterior in date to Saint-Réal's narration, published in 1674, and of which it consequently could not have formed the groundwork. The Spanish historians of that æra are not more explanatory of the transaction, of which, like the English, the later writers seem to have derived their information almost exclusively from the French author, whom Watson, or his continuator, (Life of Philip III. book v.) implicitly follows, or rather transcribes.

Of a subject so involved in obscurity, the truth must be of difficult attainment; and doubt is the necessary result "Che non men che saver, dubbiar m'aggrata"-(Dante, Inferno xi. 93); but it opened, of course, a wide scope for hypothesis and conjecture. Among those, however, whose attention has been most laboriously directed to its elucidation, Monsieur J. P. Grosley, a learned advocate of Troyes (the capital of Champagne), and equally esteemed as a citizen and a writer, was the first who produced FRA-PAOLO on the stage, and assigned to him a prominent part on the occasion. In 1756, this gentleman published a refutation of Saint-Réal's story, which, after some controversy, and a second journey to Italy for the purpose of local investigation, he considerably enlarged and appended to his work, "Observations de deux Gentilshommes Suédois sur l'Italie"* (Lond. 1775, 4 vols. 12mo.), under the title of" Discussion Historique et Critique sur la Conjuration de Venise.” His chief guide, as well as inducement, in undertaking the inquiry, was a manuscript, composed of contemporaneous documents, in the library of the Marquis de Paulmy, whose ancestor, Réné d'Argenson (Voyer de Paulmy), had amassed these vouchers, while ambassador at Venice, where he died in 1653. This precious manuscript, as the editor of Saint-Réal designates it, is now, I believe, in the library of the Arsenal at Paris, with the general collection of the Marquis's books, which, on his death in 1785, were bought by the late Charles X. then Comte d'Artois. A copy is also in the Royal Library.

From this mass of original evidence, so viewed at least by M. Grosley, he arrived at the conclusion, that the conspiracy had no real existence, but