A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century Part 27

How early he conceived the idea of making this treasure-trove responsible for the Rowley myth, which was beginning to take shape in his mind, is uncertain. According to the testimony of a schoolfellow, by name Thistlethwaite, Chatterton told him in the summer of 1764 that he had a number of old ma.n.u.scripts, found in a chest in Redcliffe Church, and that he had lent one of them to Thomas Philips, an usher in Colston's Hospital. Thistlethwaite says that Philips showed him this ma.n.u.script, a piece of vellum pared close around the edge, on which was traced in pale and yellow writing, as if faded with age, a poem which he thinks identical with "Elinoure and Juga," afterward published by Chatterton in the _Town and Country Magazine_ for May, 1769. One is inclined to distrust this evidence. "The Castle of Otranto" was first published in December, 1764, and the "Reliques," only in the year following. The latter was certainly known to Chatterton; many of the Rowley poems, "The Bristowe Tragedie," _e.g._, and the ministrel songs in "Aella," show ballad influence[6]; while it seems not unlikely that Chatterton was moved to take a hint from the disguise--slight as it was--a.s.sumed by Walpole in the preface to his romance.[7] But perhaps this was not needed to suggest to Chatterton that the surest way to win attention to his poems would be to ascribe them to some fict.i.tious bard of the Middle Ages. It was the day of literary forgery; the Ossian controversy was raging, and the tide of popular favor set strongly toward the antique. A series of avowed imitations of old English poetry, however clever, would have had small success. But the discovery of a hitherto unknown fifteen-century poet was an announcement sure to interest the learned and perhaps a large part of the reading public. Besides, instances are not rare where a writer has done his best work under a mask. The poems composed by Chatterton in the disguise of Rowley--a dramatically imagined _persona_ behind which he lost his own ident.i.ty--are full of a curious attractiveness; while his acknowledged pieces are naught. It is not worth while to bear down very heavily on the moral aspects of this kind of deception. The question is one of literary methods rather than of ethics. If the writer succeeds by the skill of his imitations, and the ingenuity of the evidence that he brings to support them, in actually imposing upon the public for a time, the success justifies the attempt.

The artist's purpose is to create a certain impression, and the choice of means must be left to himself.

In the summer of 1764 Chatterton was barely twelve, and wonderful as his precocity was, it is doubtful whether he had got so far in the evolution of the Rowley legend as Thistlethwaite's story would imply. But it is certain that three years later, in the spring of 1767, Chatterton gave Mr. Henry Burgum, a worthy pewterer of Bristol, a parchment emblazoned with the "de Bergham," coat-of-arms, which he pretended to have found in St. Mary's Church, furnishing him also with two copy-books, in which were transcribed the "de Bergham," pedigree, together with three poems in pseudo-antique spelling. One of these, "The Tournament," described a joust in which figured one Sir Johan de Berghamme, a presumable ancestor of the gratified pewterer. Another of them, "The Romaunte of the Cnyghte," purported to be the work of this hero of the tilt-yard, "who spent his whole life in tilting," but notwithstanding found time to write several books and translate "some part of the Iliad under the t.i.tle 'Romance of Troy.'"

All this stuff was greedily swallowed by Burgum, and the marvelous boy next proceeded to befool Mr. William Barrett, a surgeon and antiquary who was engaged in writing a history of Bristol. To him he supplied copies of supposed doc.u.ments in the muniment room of Redcliffe Church: "Of the Auntiaunte Forme of Monies," and the like: deeds, bills, letters, inscriptions, proclamations, accounts of churches and other buildings, collected by Rowley for his patron, Canynge: many of which this singularly uncritical historian incorporated in his "History of Bristol,"

published some twenty years later. He also imparted to Barrett two Rowleian poems, "The Parliament of Sprites," and "The Battle of Hastings"

(in two quite different versions). In September, 1768, a new bridge was opened at Bristol over the Avon; and Chatterton, who had now been apprenticed to an attorney, took advantage of the occasion to send anonymously to the printer of _Farley's Bristol Journal_ a description of the mayor's first pa.s.sing over the old bridge in the reign of Henry II.

This was composed in obsolete language and alleged to have been copied from a contemporary ma.n.u.script. It was the first published of Chatterton's fabrications. In the years 1768-69 he produced and gave to Mr. George Catcott the long tragical interude "Aella," "The Bristowe Tragedie," and other shorter pieces, all of which he declared to be transcripts from ma.n.u.scripts in Canynge's chest, and the work of Thomas Rowley, a secular priest of Bristol, who flourished about 1460. Catcott was a local book-collector and the partner of Mr. Burgum. He was subsequently nicknamed "Rowley's midwife."

In December, 1768, Chatterton opened a correspondence with James Dodsley, the London publisher, saying that several ancient poems had fallen into his hands, copies of which he offered to supply him, if he would send a guinea to cover expenses. He inclosed a specimen of "Aella." "The motive that actuates me to do this," he wrote, "is to convince the world that the monks (of whom some have so despicable an opinion) were not such blockheads as generally thought, and that good poetry might be wrote in the dark days of superst.i.tion, as well as in these more enlightened ages." Dodsley took no notice of the letters, and the owner of the Rowley ma.n.u.scripts next turned to Horace Walpole, whose tastes as a virtuoso, a lover of Gothic, and a romancer might be counted on to enlist his curiosity in Chatterton's find. The doc.u.ment which he prepared for Walpole was a prose paper ent.i.tled "The Ryse of Peyncteynge yn Englande, wroten by T. Rowleie, 1469, for Mastre Canynge," and containing _inter alia_, the following extraordinary "anecdote of painting" about Afflem, an Anglo-Saxon gla.s.s-stainer of Edmond's reign who was taken prisoner by the Danes. "Inkarde, a soldyer of the Danes, was to slea hym; onne the Nete before the Feeste of Deathe hee founde Afflem to bee hys Broder Affrighte chanynede uppe hys soule. Gastnesse dwelled yn his Breaste.

Oscarre, the greate Dane, gave hest hee shulde bee forslagene with the commeynge Sunne: no tears colde availe; the morne cladde yn roabes of ghastness was come, whan the Danique Kynge behested Oscarre to arraie hys Knyghtes eftsoones for Warre. Afflem was put yn theyre flyeynge Battailes, sawe his Countrie ensconced wyth Foemen, hadde hys Wyfe ande Chyldrenne brogten Capteeves to hys Shyppe, ande was deieynge wythe Soorowe, whanne the loude blautaunte Wynde hurled the battayle agaynste an Heck. Forfraughte wythe embolleynge waves, he sawe hys Broder, Wyfe and Chyldrenne synke to Deathe: himself was throwen onne a Banke ynne the Isle of Wyghte, to lyve hys lyfe forgard to all Emmoise: thus moche for Afflem."[8]

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 ma.n.u.scripts, 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 ma.n.u.scripts, 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 p.r.o.nounces 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 pa.s.sages 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 h.e.l.le 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 a.s.sist 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 ma.n.u.scripts to his friends Gray and Mason, who promptly p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.s current only in the parish of Parna.s.sus," 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 ma.n.u.scripts." Chatterton then wrote for his ma.n.u.scripts, and after some delay--Walpole having been absent in Parish for several months--they were returned to him.

In 1769 Chatterton had begun contributing miscellaneous articles, in prose and verse, to the _Town and Country Magazine_, a London periodical.

Among these appeared the eclogue of "Elinoure and Juga,"[10] the only one of the Rowley poems printed during its author's lifetime. He had now turned his pen to the service of politics, espousing the side of Wilkes and liberty. In April, 1770, he left Bristol for London, and cast himself upon the hazardous fortunes of a literary career. Most tragical is the story of the poor, unfriended lad's struggle against fate for the next few months. He scribbled incessantly for the papers, receiving little or no pay. Starvation confronted him; he was too proud to ask help, and on August 24 he took poison and died, at the age of seventeen years and nine months.

With Chatterton's acknowledged writings we have nothing here to do; they include satires in the manner of Churchill, political letters in the manner of Junius, squibs, lampoons, verse epistles, elegies, "African eclogues," a comic burletta, "The Revenge"--played at Marylebone Gardens shortly after his death--with essays and sketches in the style that the _Spectator_ and _Rambler_ had made familiar: "The Adventures of a Star,"

"The Memoirs of a Sad Dog," and the like. They exhibit a precocious cleverness, but have no value and no interest today. One gets from Chatterton's letters and miscellanies an unpleasant impression of his character. There is not only the hectic quality of too early ripeness which one detects in Keats' correspondence; and the defiant swagger, the affectation of wickedness and knowingness that one encounters in the youthful Byron, and that is apt to attend the stormy burst of irregular genius upon the world; but there are things that imply a more radical unscrupulousness. But it would be harsh to urge any such impressions against one who was no more than a boy when he perished, and whose brief career had struggled through cold obstruction to its bitter end. The best traits in Chatterton's character appear to have been his proud spirit of independence and his warm family affections.

The death of an obscure penny-a-liner, like young Chatterton, made little noise at first. But gradually it became rumored about in London literary coteries that ma.n.u.scripts of an interesting kind existed at Bristol, purporting to be transcripts from old English poems; and that the finder, or fabricator, of the same was the unhappy lad who had taken a.r.s.enic the other day, to antic.i.p.ate a slower death from hunger. It was in April, 1771, that Walpole first heard of the fate of his would-be _protege_.

"Dining," he says, "at the Royal Academy, Dr. Goldsmith drew the attention of the company with an account of a marvelous treasure of ancient poems lately discovered at Bristol, and expressed enthusiastic belief in them; for which he was laughed at by Dr. Johnson, who was present. I soon found this was the _trouvaille_ of my friend Chatterton, and I told Dr. Goldsmith that this novelty was known to me, who might, if I had pleased, have had the honor of ushering the great discovery to the learned world. You may imagine, sir, we did not all agree in the measure of our faith; but though his credulity diverted me, my mirth was soon dashed; for, on asking about Chatterton, he told me he had been in London and had destroyed himself."

With the exception of "Elinour and Juga," already mentioned, the Rowley poems were still unprinted. The ma.n.u.scripts, in Chatterton's handwriting, were mostly in the possession of Barrett and Catcott. They purported to be copies of Rowley's originals; but of these alleged originals, the only specimens brought forward by Chatterton were a few sc.r.a.ps of parchment containing, in one instance, the first thirty-four lines of the poem ent.i.tled "The Storie of William Canynge"; in another a prose account of one "Symonne de Byrtonne," and, in still others, the whole of the short-verse pieces, "Songe to Aella" and "The Accounte of W.

Canynge's Feast." These sc.r.a.ps of vellum are described as about six inches square, smeared with glue or brown varnish, or stained with ochre, to give them an appearance of age. Thomas Warton had seen one of them, and p.r.o.nounced it a clumsy forgery; the script not of the fifteenth century, but unmistakably modern. Southey describes another as written, for the most part, in an attorney's regular engrossing hand. Mr. Skeat "cannot find the slightest indication that Chatterton had ever seen a MS.

of early date; on the contrary, he never uses the common contractions, and he was singularly addicted to the use of capitals, which in old MSS.

are rather scarce."

Boswell tells how he and Johnson went down to Bristol in April, 1776, "where I was entertained with seeing him inquire upon the spot into the authenticity of Rowley's poetry, as I had seen him inquire upon the spot into the authenticity of Ossian's poetry. Johnson said of Chatterton, 'This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things.'"

In 1777, seven years after Chatterton's death, his Rowley poems were first collected and published by Thomas Tyrwhitt, the Chaucerian editor, who gave, in an appendix, his reasons for believing that Chatterton was their real author, and Rowley a myth.[11] These reasons are convincing to any modern scholar. Tyrwhitt's opinion was shared at the time by all competent authorities--Gray, Thomas Warton, and Malone, the editor of the _variorum_ Shakspere, among others. Nevertheless, a controversy sprang up over Rowley, only less lively than the dispute about Ossian, which had been going on since 1760. Rowley's most prominent champions were the Rev. Dr. Symmes, who wrote in the _London Review_; the Rev. Dr. Sherwin, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_; Dr. Jacob Bryant,[12] and Jeremiah Milles, D.D., Dean of Exeter, who published a sumptuous quarto edition of the poems in 1782.[13] These a.s.serters of Rowley belonged to the cla.s.s of amateur scholars whom Edgar Poe used to speak of as "cultivated old clergymen." They had the usual cla.s.sical training of Oxford and Cambridge graduates, but no precise knowledge of old English literature.

They had the benevolent curiosity of Mr. Pickwick, and the gullibility--the large, easy swallow--which seems to go with the clerico-antiquarian habit of mind.

Nothing is so extinct as an extinct controversy; and, unlike the Ossian puzzle, which was a harder nut to crack, this Rowley controversy was really settled from the start. It is not essential to our purpose to give any extended history of it. The evidence relied upon by the supporters of Rowley was mainly of the external kind: personal testimony, and especially the antecedent unlikeliness that a boy of Chatterton's age and imperfect education could have reared such an elaborate structure of deceit; together with the inferiority of his acknowledged writings to the poems that he ascribed to Rowley. But Tyrwhitt was a scholar of unusual thoroughness and acuteness; and, having a special acquaintance with early English, he was able to bring to the decision of the question evidence of an internal nature which became more convincing in proportion as the knowledge necessary to understand his argument increased; _i.e._, as the number of readers increased, who knew something about old English poetry. Indeed, it was nothing but the general ignorance of the spelling, flexions, vocabulary, and scansion of Middle English verse, that made the controversy possible.

Tyrwhitt pointed out that the Rowleian dialect was not English of the fifteenth century, nor of any century, but a grotesque jumble of archaic words of very different periods and dialects. The orthography and grammatical forms were such as occurred in no old English poet known to the student of literature. The fact that Rowley used constantly the possessive p.r.o.nominal form _itts_, instead of _his_; or the other fact that he used the termination _en_ in the singular of the verb, was alone enough to stamp the poems as spurious. Tyrwhitt also showed that the syntax, diction, idioms, and stanza forms were modern; that if modern words were subst.i.tuted throughout for the antique, and the spelling modernized, the verse would read like eighteenth-century work. "If anyone," says Scott, in his review of the Southey and Cottle edition, "resists the internal evidence of the style of Rowley's poems, we make him welcome to the rest of the argument; to his belief that the Saxons imported heraldry and gave armorial bearings (which were not known till the time of the Crusades); that Mr. Robert [_sic_] Canynge, in the reign of Edward IV., encouraged drawing and had private theatricals." In this article Scott points out a curious blunder of Chatterton's which has become historic, though it is only one of a thousand. In the description of the cook in the General Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," Chaucer had written:

"But gret harm was it, as it thoughte me, That on his schyne a mormal hadde he, For blankmanger he made with the beste."

_Mormal_, in this pa.s.sage, means a cancerous sore, and _blankmanger_ is a certain dish or confection--the modern _blancmange_. But a confused recollection of the whole was in Chatterton's mind, when among the fragments of paper and parchment which he covered with imitations of ancient script, and which are now in the British Museum,--"The Yellow Roll," "The Purple Roll," etc.,--he inserted the following t.i.tle in "The Rolls of St. Bartholomew's Priory," purporting to be old medical prescriptions; "The cure of mormalles and the waterie leprosie; the rolle of the blacke mainger"; turning Chaucer's innocent _blankmanger_ into some kind of imaginary _black mange_.

Skeat believes that Chatterton had read very little of Chaucer, probably only a small portion of the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales." "If he had really taken pains," he thinks, "To _read_ and _study_ Chaucer of Lydgate or any old author earlier than the age of Spenser, the Rowley poems would have been very different. They would then have borne some resemblance to the language of the fifteenth century, whereas they are rather less like the language of that period than of any other. The spelling of the words is frequently too late, or too bizarre, whilst many of the words themselves are too archaic or too uncommon."[14] But this internal evidence, which was so satisfactory to Scott, was so little convincing to Chatterton's contemporaries that Tyrwhitt felt called upon to publish in 1782 a "Vindication" of his appendix; and Thomas Warton put forth in the same year an "Enquiry," in which he reached practically the same conclusions with Tyrwhitt. And yet Warton had devoted the twenty-sixth section of the second volume of his "History of English Poetry" (1778,) to a review of the Rowley poems, on the ground that "as they are held to be real by many respectable critics, it was his duty to give them a place in this series": a curious testimony to the uncertainty of the public mind on the question, and a half admission that the poems might possibly turn out to be genuine.[15]

Tyrwhitt proved clearly enough that Chatterton wrote the Rowley poems, but it was reserved for Mr. Skeat to show just _how_ he wrote them. The _modus operandi_ was about as follows: Chatterton first made, for his private use, a ma.n.u.script glossary, by copying out the words in the glossary to Speght's edition of Chaucer, and those marked as old in Bailey's and Kersey's English Dictionaries. Next he wrote his poem in modern English, and finally rewrote it, subst.i.tuting the archaic words for their modern equivalents, and altering the spelling throughout into an exaggerated imitation of the antique spelling in Speght's Chaucer.

The mistakes that the he made are instructive, as showing how closely he followed his authorities, and how little independent knowledge he had of genuine old English. Thus, to give a few typical examples of the many in Mr. Skeat's notes: in Kersey's dictionary occurs the word _gare_, defined as "cause." This is the verb _gar_, familiar to all readers of Burns,[16] and meaning to cause, to make; but Chatterton, taking it for the _noun_, cause, employs it with grotesque incorrectness in such connections as these:

"Perchance in Virtue's gare rhyme might be then": "If in this battle luck deserts our gare."

Again the Middle English _howten_ (Modern English, _hoot_) is defined by Speght as "hallow," _i.e._, halloo. But Kersey and Bailey misprint this "hollow"; and Chatterton, entering it so in his ma.n.u.script list of old words, evidently takes it to be the _adjective_ "hollow" and uses it thus in the line:

"Houten are wordes for to telle his doe," _i.e._, Hollow are words to tell his doings.

Still again, in a pa.s.sage already quoted,[17] it is told how the "Wynde hurled the Battayle"--Rowleian for a small boat--"agaynste an Heck."

_Heck_ in this and other pa.s.sages was a puzzle. From the context it obviously meant "rock," but where did Chatterton get it? Mr. Skeat explains this. _Heck_ is a provincial word signifying "rack," i.e., "hay-rack"; but Kersey misprinted it "rock," and Chatterton followed him.

A typical instance of the kind of error that Chatterton was perpetually committing was his understanding the "Listed, bounded," _i.e., edged_ (as in the "list" or selvage of cloth) for "bounded" in the sense of _jumped,_ and so coining from it the verb "to liss"=to jump:

"The headed javelin lisseth here and there."

Every page in the Rowley poems abounds in forms which would have been as strange to an Englishman of the fifteenth as they are to one of the nineteenth century. Adjectives are used for nouns, nouns for verbs, past participles for present infinitives; and derivatives and variants are employed which never had any existence, such as _hopelen_=hopelessness, and _anere_=another. Skeat says, that "an a.n.a.lysis of the glossary in Milles's edition shows that the genuine old English words correctly used, occurring in the Rowleian dialect, amount to only about _seven_ per cent, of all the old words employed." It is probable that, by constant use of his ma.n.u.script glossary, the words became fixed in Chatterton's memory and he acquired some facility in composing at first hand in this odd jargon. Thus he uses the archaic words quite freely as rhyme words, which he would not have been likely to do unless he had formed the habit of thinking to some degree, in Rowleian.

The question now occurs, apart from the tragic interest of Chatterton's career, from the mystery connected with the incubation and hatching of the Rowley poems, and from their value as records of a very unusual precocity--what independent worth have they as poetry, and what has been the extent of their literary influence? The dust of controversy has long since settled, and what has its subsidence made visible? My own belief is that the Rowley poems are interesting princ.i.p.ally as literary curiosities--the work of an infant phenomenon--and that they have little importance in themselves, or as models and inspirations to later poets.

I cannot help thinking that, upon this subject, many critics have lost their heads. Malone, _e.g._, p.r.o.nounced Chatterton the greatest genius that England had produced since Shakspere. Professor Ma.s.son permits himself to say: "The antique poems of Chatterton are perhaps as worthy of being read consecutively as many portions of the poetry of Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, or Keats. There are pa.s.sages in them, at least, quite equal to any to be found in these poets."[18] Mr. Gosse seems to me much nearer the truth: "Our estimate of the complete originality of the Rowley poems must be tempered by a recollection of the existence of 'The Castle of Otranto' and 'The Schoolmistress,' of the popularity of Percy's 'Reliques' and the 'Odes' of Gray, and of the revival of a taste for Gothic literature and art which dates from Chatterton's infancy. Hence the claim which has been made for Chatterton as the father of the romantic school, and as having influenced the actual style of Coleridge and Keats, though supported with great ability, appears to be overcharged. So also the positive praise given to the Rowley poems, as artistic productions full of rich color and romantic melody, may be deprecated without any refusal to recognize these qualities in measure.

There are frequent flashes of brilliancy in Chatterton, and one or two very perfectly sustained pieces; but the main part of his work, if rigorously isolated from the melodramatic romance of his career, is surely found to be rather poor reading, the work of a child of exalted genius, no doubt, yet manifestly the work of a child all through."[19]

Let us get a little closer to the Rowley poems, as they stand in Mr.

Skeat's edition, stripped of their sham-antique spelling and with their language modernized wherever possible; and we shall find, I think, that tried by an absolute standard, they are markedly inferior not only to true mediaeval work like Chaucer's poems and the English and Scottish ballads, but also to the best modern work conceived in the same spirit: to "Christabel" and "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "Jock o'Hazeldean" and "Sister Helen," and "The Haystack in the Flood." The longest of the Rowley poems is "Aella," "a tragycal enterlude or discoorseynge tragedie"

in 147 stanzas, and generally regarded as Chatterton's masterpiece.[20]

The scene of this tragedy is Bristol and the neighboring Watchet Mead; the period, during the Danish invasions. The hero is the warden of Bristol Castle.[21] While he is absent on a victorious campaign against the Danes, his bride, Bertha, is decoyed from home by his treacherous lieutenant, Celmond, who is about to ravish her in the forest, when he is surprised and killed by a band of marauders. Meanwhile Aella has returned home, and finding that his wife has fled, stabs himself mortally. Bertha arrives in time to hear his dying speech and make the necessary explanations, and then dies herself on the body of her lord.

It will be seen that the plot is sufficiently melodramatic; the sentiments and dialogue are entirely modern, when translated out of Rowleian into English. The verse is a modified form of the Spenserian, a ten-line stanza which Mr. Skeat says is an invention of Chatterton and a striking instance of his originality.[22] It answers very well in descriptive pa.s.sages and soliloquies; not so well in the "discoorseynge"

parts. As this is Chatterton's favorite stanza, in which "The Battle of Hastings," "G.o.ddwyn," "English Metamorphosis" and others of the Rowley series are written, an example of it may be cited here, from "Aella."

_Scene_, Bristol. Celmond, _alone_.

The world is dark with night; the winds are still, Faintly the moon her pallid light makes gleam; The risen sprites the silent churchyard fill, With elfin fairies joining in the dream; The forest shineth with the silver leme; Now may my love be sated in its treat; Upon the brink of some swift running stream, At the sweet banquet I will sweetly eat.

This is the house; quickly, ye hinds, appear.

_Enter_ a servant.

_Cel._ Go tell to Bertha straight, a stranger waiteth here.

The Rowley poems include, among other things, a number of dramatic or quasi-dramatic pieces, "G.o.ddwyn," "The Tournament," "The Parliament of Sprites"; the narrative poem of "The Battle of Hastings," and a collection of "eclogues." These are all in long-stanza forms, mostly in the ten-lined stanza. "English Metamorphosis" is an imitation of a pa.s.sage in "The Faerie Queene," (book ii. canto x. stanzas 5-19). "The Parliament of Sprites" is an interlude played by Carmelite friars at William Canynge's house on the occasion of the dedication of St. Mary Redcliffe's. One after another the _antichi spiriti dolenti_ rise up and salute the new edifice: Nimrod and the a.s.syrians, Anglo-Saxon ealdormen and Norman knights templars, and citizens of ancient Bristol. Among others, "Elle's sprite speaks":

"Were I once more cast in a mortal frame, To hear the chantry-song sound in mine ear, To hear the ma.s.ses to our holy dame, To view the cross-aisles and the arches fair!

Through the half-hidden silver-twinkling glare Of yon bright moon in foggy mantles dressed, I must content this building to aspere,[23]