The Rowley Poems | Page 9

all (see page 173 of his Chatterton: A Biographical Study), but this is
disposed of by the fact that the Ryse of Peyncteyning is the only piece
of Chatterton's which contains Saxon words.]
[Footnote 6: March 28th, 1769.]
[Footnote 7: _An account of Master William Canynge written by Thos.
Rowlie Priest in_ 1460. Skeat, Vol. III, p. 219; W. Southey's edition,
Vol. III, p. 75. See especially the last paragraph.]
[Footnote 8: See Letters of Horace Walpole, edited by Mrs. Paget
Toynbee (Clarendon Press), Vol. XIV, pp. 210, 229; Vol. XV, p. 123.]
[Footnote 9: But attorneys are seldom 'in regrate' with the friends of
Poetry.]
[Footnote 10: Masson's reconstruction of the scene between Chatterton
and the editor of the Freeholder's Magazine is very convincing (see his
Chatterton: a Biography, p. 160).]
[Footnote 11: Almost everything that we know of Chatterton in London
was ascertained by Sir H. Croft and printed in his Love and Madness
(see Bibliography).]
II. THE VALUE OF ROWLEY'S POEMS--PHILOLOGICAL
AND LITERARY
As imitations of fifteenth-century composition it must be confessed the
Rowley poems have very little value. Of Chatterton's method of
antiquating something has already been said. He made himself an

antique lexicon out of the glossary to Speght's Chaucer, and such
words as were marked with a capital O, standing for 'obsolete' in the
Dictionaries of Kersey and Bailey. Now even had his authorities been
well informed, which they were not by any means, and had Chatterton
never misread or misunderstood them, which he very frequently did, it
was impossible that his work should have been anything better than a
mosaic of curious old words of every period and any dialect. Old
English, Middle English, and Elizabethan English, South of England
folk-words or Scots phrases taken from the border ballads--all were
grist for Rowley's mill. It is only fair to say that he seldom invented a
word outright, but he altered and modified with a free hand. Professor
Skeat indeed estimates that of the words contained in Milles' Glossary
to the Rowley Poems only seven percent are genuine old words
correctly used. The Professor in his modernized edition is continually
pointing out with kindly reluctance that such and such a word never
bore the meaning ascribed to it--that because, for instance, Bailey had
explained Teres major as a smooth muscle of the arm it was not
therefore any legitimate inference of Chatterton's that tere (singular
form) meant a muscle and could be translated 'health'. Only
occasionally does one find the note (written with an obviously sincere
pleasure) 'This word is correctly used.' Of course it was impossible that
Chatterton should have produced even a colourable imitation of
fifteenth-century poetry at a time when even Malone--for all his
acknowledged reputation as an English Scholar--could not quote
Chaucer so as to make his lines scan. The Rowley Poems_ and Percy's
_Reliques mark the beginning of that renascence of our older poetry so
conspicuous in the time of Lamb and Hazlitt. Before this epoch was the
Augustan age, much too well satisfied with its own literature to concern
itself with an unfashionable past.
But, after all, however absurd from any historical point of view the
language and metres of the boy-poet may be, at least he invented a
practicable language which admirably conveyed his impression of the
latest period of the middle ages--that after-glow which began with the
death of Chaucer. Chatterton's poetry is a pageant staged by an
impressionist. It cannot be submitted to a close examination, and it is
all wrong historically, yet it presents a complete picture with an artistic

charm that must be judged on its own merits. An illusion is
successfully conveyed of a dim remote age when an idle-strenuous
people lived only to be picturesque, to kill one another in tourneys, to
rear with painful labour beautiful elaborate cathedrals, and yet had so
much time on their hands that they could pass half their lives cracking
unhallowed sconces in the Holy Land and, in that part of their ample
leisure which they devoted to study, spell 'flourishes' as 'Florryschethe'.
But if any one still anxious for literal truth should insist--'Is not the
impression as false as the medium that conveys it? Were the middle
ages really like that? Is it not a fact that the average baron stayed at
home in his castle devising abominable schemes to wring money or its
equivalent from miserable and half-starved peasants?'--such a one can
only be answered with another question: 'Is Pierrot like a man, and has
it been put beyond question that Pontius Pilate was hanged for beating
his wife?' The Rowley writings are--properly considered--entirely
fanciful and unreal. They have many faults, but are seen at their worst
when Chatterton is trying to exhibit some eternal truth. There is a
horrible (but perfectly natural) didacticism--the inevitable