Now
the amazing credulity of these learned people is one of the least
comprehensible circumstances of our poet's strange life. For on being
asked how he had come by his MSS. he refused at first to give any
answer. Then he said he was employed to transcribe some old writings
by 'a gentleman whom he had supplied with poetry to send to a lady the
gentleman was in love with'--the excuse being suggested no doubt by
the case of Miss Hoyland and his friend Baker. Finally when, as we
can only conclude, this explanation was disproved or disbelieved, he
announced that the account was copied from a manuscript his father
had taken from Rowley's chest. And this explanation was considered
perfectly satisfactory.
Yet it seemed obvious that the antiquaries would demand to see the
manuscript, and Chatterton, contrary to his usual practice of secrecy,
called upon his friend Rudhall and, having made him promise to tell
nothing of what he should show him, took a piece of parchment
'about the size of a half sheet of foolscap paper,' wrote on it in
a character which the other did not understand, for it was 'totally
unlike English,' and finally held what he had written over a candle
to give it the 'appearance of antiquity,' which it did by changing the
colour of the ink and making the parchment appear 'black and a little
contracted.
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