“My noble liege,” good Canynge saide,
      “Leave justice to our God;
    And lay the iron rule aside,
      Be thine the olyve rodde.”

The king is inexorable, and Sir Charles dies amid tears and loud weeping around the scaffold.

Among the other Rowlie poems are the Tragical Interlude of Ella, “plaied before Master Canynge, and also before Johan Howard, Duke of Norfolk;” Godwin, a short drama; a long poem on The Battle of Hastings, and The Romaunt of the Knight, modernized from the original of John de Bergham.

THE VERDICT.—­These poems at once became famous, and the critics began to investigate the question of their authenticity.  From this investigation Chatterton did not shrink.  He sent some of them with letters to Horace Walpole, and, as Walpole did not immediately answer, he wrote to him quite impertinently.  Then they were submitted to Mason and Gray.  The opinion of those who examined them was almost unanimous that they were forgeries:  he could produce no originals; the language is in many cases not that of the period, and the spelling and idioms are evidently factitious.  A few there were who seemed to have committed themselves, at first, to their authenticity; but Walpole, the Wartons, Dr. Johnson, Gibbon the historian, Sheridan, and most other literary men, were clear as to their forgery.  The forged manuscripts which he had the hardihood afterwards to present, were totally unlike those of Edward the Fourth’s time; he was entirely at fault in his heraldry; words were used out of their meaning; and, in his poem on The Battle of Hastings, he had introduced the modern discoveries concerning Stone Henge.  He uses the possessive case yttes, which did not come into use until long after the Rowlie period.  Add to these that Chatterton’s reputation for veracity was bad.

The truth was, that he had found some curious scraps, which had set his fancy to work, and the example of Macpherson had led to the cheat he was practising upon the public.  To some friends he confessed the deception, denying it again, violently, soon after; and he had been seen smoking parchment to make it look old.  The lad was crazy.

HIS SUICIDE.—­Keeping up appearances, he went to London, and tried to get work.  At one time he was in high spirits, sending presents to his mother and sisters, and promising them better days; at another, he was in want, in the lowest depression, no hope in the world.  He only asks for work; he is entirely unconcerned for whom he writes or what party he eulogizes; he wants money and a name, and when these seem unattainable, he takes refuge from “the whips and scorns of time,” the burning fever of pride, the gnawings of hunger, in suicide.  He goes to his little garret room,—­refusing, as he goes, a dinner from his landlady, although he is gaunt with famine,—­mixes a large dose of arsenic in water, and—­“jumps the life to come.”  He was just seventeen years and nine months old!  When his room was forced open, it was found that he had torn up most of his papers, and had left nothing to throw light upon his deception.