antiquitize

— I have an hypothesis of my own concerning those poems which I think I could make out to be at least highly probable: viz. that they were originally all written in modern English and antiquitized after. Had I his modernisms now published, I would take one of them and antiquitize it in two manners, à la Chaucer, and à la Chatterton, and I am persuaded that these two specimens would prove the matter clearer than all the critical arguments that either have or will be produced; and yet I think that T. Warton has done enough in that way to convince even the president of the Antiq. society (if such president were ever capable of conviction) that he was of all forgerers the most palpable; all this however no more detracts from his poetical abilities than Rousseau’s insanity does from his oratorical.