An essay on the evidence, external and internal, relating to the poems attributed to Thomas Rowley. Containing a general view of the whole controversy. By Thomas James Mathias

Bound with: Edward Burnaby Greene, Strictures Upon a pamphlet intitled, Cursory observations on the poems attributed to Rowley, A Priest of the Fifteenth Century. With a Postscript on Mr. Thomas Warton's Enquiry into the same subject (London : Printed for J[ohn] Stockdale, 1782, pp. 84, [4], f. [1] (blank); see Bib# 4103387/Fr# 441 in this collection). 

8vo. f. [1] (blank), pp. viii, 118, [6]. Signatures: [A]⁴ B-H⁸ I⁴ K1. Half morocco. Gilded spine on 5 bars, marbled boards, edges spread in red. 

In 1782, spurred by Milles’s imposing fourth edition of the “Rowley” poems forged by Thomas Chatterton (see Bib# 4103366/Fr# 418 in this collection), and Jacob Bryant’s Observations upon the Poems of Thomas Rowley, in which the Authenticity of those Poems is Ascertained (1781, see Bib# 712041/Fr# 434), the scholarly and pseudo-scholarly world saw either the need for a negative consensus on the “Rowley” poems, or the opportunity for further mischief. Edward Burnaby Greene, bound in, obstinately espoused the Rowleian cause in the present work. (See also ESTC, T48750, which erroneously omits a poem addressed to Bishop Percy in mock-Chaucerian English on p. [87]). In the present work, Thomas Mathias gives the inevitable ‘overview’ of the various publications upon the subject of Rowley's poems, for and against their authenticity. See also ESTC, T33365. 

Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record of Mathias; Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record of Greene.