This paper was accompanied with notes explaining queer words and giving short biographical sketches of Canynge, Rowley, and other imaginary characters, such as John, second abbot of St. Austin’s Minster, who was the first English painter in oils and also the greatest poet of his age.  “Take a specimen of his poetry, ‘On King Richard I.’: 

    “’Harte of Lyone!  Shake thie Sworde,
      Bare this mortheynge steinede honde,’ etc.”

The whole was inclosed in a short note to Walpole, which ran thus: 

“Sir, Being versed a little in antiquitys, I have met with several curious manuscripts, among which the following may be of Service to you, in any future Edition of your truly entertaining Anecdotes of Painting.[9] In correcting the mistakes (if any) in the Notes, you will greatly oblige
                Your most humble Servant,
                        Thomas Chatterton.”

Walpole replied civilly, thanking his correspondent for what he had sent and for his offer of communicating his manuscripts, but disclaiming any ability to correct Chatterton’s notes.  “I have not the happiness of understanding the Saxon language, and, without your learned notes, should not have been able to comprehend Rowley’s text.”  He asks where Rowley’s poems are to be found, offers to print them, and pronounces the Abbot John’s verses “wonderful for their harmony and spirit.”  This encouragement called out a second letter from Chatterton, with another and longer extract from the “Historie of Peyncteynge yn Englande,” including translations into the Rowley dialect of passages from a pair of mythical Saxon poets:  Ecca, Bishop of Hereford, and Elmar, Bishop of Selseie, “fetyve yn Workes of ghastlienesse,” as ecce signum: 

    “Nowe maie alle Helle open to golpe thee downe,” etc.

But by this time Walpole had begun to suspect imposture.  He had been lately bitten in the Ossian business and had grown wary in consequence.  Moreover, Chatterton had been incautious enough to show his hand in his second letter (March 30).  “He informed me,” said Walpole, in his history of the affair, “that he was the son of a poor widow . . . that he was clerk or apprentice to an attorney, but had a taste and turn for more elegant studies; and hinted a wish that I would assist him with my interest in emerging out of so dull a profession, by procuring him someplace.”  Meanwhile, distrusting his own scholarship, Walpole had shown the manuscripts to his friends Gray and Mason, who promptly pronounced them modern fabrications and recommended him to return them without further notice.  But Walpole, good-naturedly considering that it was no “grave crime in a young bard to have forged false notes of hand that were to pass current only in the parish of Parnassus,” wrote his ingenious correspondent a letter of well-meant advice, counseling him to stick to his profession, and saying that he “had communicated his transcripts to much better judges, and that they were by no means satisfied with the authenticity of his supposed manuscripts.”  Chatterton then wrote for his manuscripts, and after some delay—­Walpole having been absent in Parish for several months—­they were returned to him.