Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. by Various

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* * * * *

"Oh Thou, where'er, thy bones at rest,
Thy sprite to haunt delighteth best,
Whether upon the blood-embrued plain--
Or where thou ken'st from far,
The dismal cry of war,
_Or see'st some mountain made of corses slain,_

"Or see'st the war-clad steed
That prances o'er the mead,
And neighs to be among the pointed spears--
Or in black armour stalk around
Embattled Bristol, once thy ground,
Or haunt with lurid glow the castle stairs,

"Or, fiery, round the Minster glare!
Let Bristol still be made thy care;
Guard it from foeman and consuming fire;
Like Avon's stream embrace it round,
Nor let a sparkle harm the ground,
Till in one flame the total world expire."

The quatrains entitled Lydgate's answer, are amply complimentary on the
foregoing song, but otherwise as prosaic as the lines that introduce it.

* * * * *

"Among the Grecians Homer was
A poet much renown'd;
Among the Latins _Virgilius_
Was best of poets found.

"The British Merlin often had
The gift of inspiration;
And Afled to the Saxon men
Did sing with animation.

"In Norman times Turgotus and
Good Chaucer did excel;
Then Stowe, the Bristol Carmelite,
Did bear away the bell.

"Now Rowley, in these murky days,
Sends out his shining lights,
And Turgotus and Chaucer live
In every line he writes."

The next is the Tournament, an interlude. Sir Simon de Burton, its hero,
is supposed to have been the first founder, in accomplishment of a vow
made on the occasion, of a church dedicated to _Our Lady_, in the place
where the church of St Mary Redcliff now stands. There is life and force
in the details of this tourney; and the songs of the minstrel are good,
especially the first, which is a gallant hunting stave in honour of
William the Red King, who hunts the stag, the wolf, and "the _lion_
brought from sultry lands." The sentiment conveyed in the burden of this
spirited chorus sounds oddly considerate, as the command issued by
William Rufus:--

"Go, rouse the lion from his hidden den,
Let thy darts drink the blood of any thing but men."

To the paternity of the next in order--the Bristol Tragedy, or Death of
Sir Charles Baldwin--Chatterton confessed; and such an admission might
have satisfied any one but Dean Milles. The language is modern--the
measure flowing without interruption; and, though the orthography
affects to be antiquated, there is but one word (bataunt) in the whole
series of quatrains, ninety-eight in number, that would embarrass any
reader in his teens; though a boy that could generate such a poem as
that, might well be believed the father of other giants whom he chose to
disown. It is a masterpiece in its kind, almost unexceptionable in all
its parts. The subject is supposed to have been suggested by the fate of
Sir Baldwin Fulford, a zealous Lancastrian, beheaded at Bristol in 1461,
the first year of the reign of Edward IV., who, it is believed, was
actually present at the execution.

Now comes Ella, a tragical interlude, or discoursing tragedy, by Thomas
Rowley, prefaced by two letters to Master Canning, and an introduction.
In the first letter, among various sarcasms on the age, is one,
complaining that

"In holy priest appears the baron's pride."

A proposition, we fear, at least as true in our day as in the fifteenth
century. From the same epistle we would recommend to the consideration
of the Pontius Pilates of our era, the numerous poets who choose none
but awfully perilous themes, and who re-enact tremendous mysteries more
confidently than if they were all Miltons, the annexed judicious
admonition:--

"Plays made from holy tales I hold unmeet;
Let some great story of a man be sung;
When as a man we God and Jesus treat,
In my poor mind we do the Godhead wrong."

And the following piece of advice, from the same letter, would not be
ill bestowed on modern shopocracy:--

"Let kings and rulers, when they gain a throne,
Show what their grandsires and great-grandsires bore;
Let trades' and towns'-folk let such things alone,
Nor fight for sable on a field of ore."

Yet he who could give this sensible counsel did by no means follow it.
Chatterton, who really could trace back his ancestors for 150 years as a
family of gravediggers, drew out for himself a pedigree which would have
astonished Garter king-at-arms, and almost abashed a Welsh or German
genealogy. He derived his descent from Sire de Chasteautonne, of the
house of Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, who made an incursion on the
coast of Britain in the ninth century, and was driven away by Alfred the
Great! Nine shields, exhibiting the family arms, were carefully prepared
by him, and are preserved, with many other and very various inventions
by the same hand, in the British Museum; and neat engravings of those
Chatterton escutcheons are furnished by Mr Cottle, in his excellent
essays on this tortuous genius. He was equally liberal in providing a
pedigree for his friend Mr Burgham, a worthy and credulous pewterer in
his native town, convincing him, by proofs that were not conclusive at
the Herald's College, that he was descended from the De Burghams, who
possessed the estate and manor of Brougham in the reign of Edward the
Confessor, and so allying the delighted hearer with the forefathers of
an illustrious Ex-Chancellor of our day. No less a personage, too, than
Fitz-Stephen, son of Stephen Earl of Ammerle in 1095, grandson of Od,
Earl of Bloys and Lord of Holderness, was the progenitor gravely
assigned to Chatterton's relative, Mr Stephens, leather-breeches-maker
of Salisbury. Evidence of all sorts was ever ready among the treasures
in the Redcliff muniment room, the Blue-Coat boy's "Open Sesame!"

The plot of Ella may be told in a few words. Ella, a renowned English
warrior, the same who is invoked in the fine song already quoted,
marries Bertha, of whom his friend and fellow warrior, Celmond, is
secretly enamoured. On the wedding-day he is called suddenly away to
oppose a Danish force, which he defeats, but not without receiving
wounds severe enough to prevent his immediate return home. Celmond takes
advantage of this circumstance, and under pretence of conducting Bertha
to her husband, betrays her into a forest that chances to be the covert
of Hurra, the Danish general, and other of the discomfited invaders. Her
shrieks bring Hurra and his companions to her aid. They kill Celmond,
and generously resolve to restore Bertha to her lord. He in the mean
time, impatient to rejoin his bride, has contrived to get home, where,
when he hears of her ill-explained departure, believing her false, he
stabs himself. She arrives only in time to see him die.

Celmond, soliloquizing on the charms of Bertha, exclaims,--

"Ah, Bertha, why did nature frame thee fair?
Why art thou not as coarse as others are?
_But then thy soul would through thy visage shine_;
Like nut-brown cloud when by the sun made red,
So would thy spirit on thy visage spread."

At the wedding-feast, so unexpectedly interrupted by news of the Danes,
the following pretty stanzas are sung by minstrels representing a young
man and woman.

"_Man_.--Turn thee to thy shepherd swain;
Bright sun has not drunk the dew
From the flowers of yellow hue;
Turn thee, Alice, back again.

_Woman_.--No, deceiver, I will go,
Softly tripping o'er the mees,
Like the silver-footed doe
Seeking shelter in green trees.

_Man_.--See the moss-grown daisied bank
Peering in the stream below;
Here we'll sit in dewy dank,
Turn thee, Alice: do not go.

_Woman_.--I've heard erst my grandam say
That young damsels should not be,
In the balmy month of May,
With young men by the greenwood tree.

_Man_.--Sit thee, Alice, sit and hark
How the blackbird chants his note,
The goldfinch and the gray-morn lark,
Shrilling from their little throat.

_Woman_.--I hear them from each greenwood tree
Chanting out so lustily,
Telling lectures unto me,
Mischief is when you are nigh.

_Man_.--See, along the mends so green
Pied daisies, kingcups sweet,
All we see; by none are seen;
None but sheep set here their feet.

_Woman_.--Shepherd swain, you tear my sleeve;
Out upon you! let me go;
Keep your distance, by your leave,
Till Sir Priest make one of two.

_Man_.--By our lady and her bairn,
To-morrow, soon as it is day,
I'll make thee wife, nor be forsworn,
So may I live or die for aye.

_Woman_.--What doth hinder but that now
We at once, thus hand in hand,
Unto a divine do go,
And be link'd in wedlock-band?
(Sensible woman!)

_Man_.--I agree, and thus I plight
Hand and heart and all that's mine.
Good Sir Herbert do us right,
Make us one at Cuthbert's shrine.

_Both_.--We will in a cottage live,
Happy though of no estate;
Every hour more love shall give;
We in goodness will be great."

The two Danish generals, Hurra and Magnus, warm their blood to the
fighting temperature before the battle by quarreling with and abusing
each other, like Grecian heroes. They are both bullies, but Hurra is
brave and Magnus a craven. Chatterton's sarcastic humour plays them off
admirably. The result of the struggle between the two armies is pithily
announced by one of the fugitives:--

"Fly, fly, ye Danes! Magnus the chief is slain;
The Saxons come with Ella at their head:
Fly, fly, _this is the kingdom of the dead_."

In this drama is the exquisite melody, "O, sing unto my roundelay!" with
which every one is familiar, as it is introduced into all our popular
selections from the poets.

Here is a cunning description of dawn.

"The morn begins along the east to sheen,
_Darkling the light doth on the waters play_;
The faint red flame slow creepeth o'er the green,
To chase the murkiness of night away,
Swift flies the hour that will bring out the day.
The soft dew falleth on the greening grass;
The shepherd-maiden, dighting her array,
_Scarce sees her visage in the wavy glass_."

Such extracts do not, and are not intended to, convey any notion of
Chatterton's dramatic power in this play. Mere extracts would not do
justice to that, and therefore we confine ourselves to selections of a
few out of many passages that can stand independent of plot or action,
without detriment to their effect. The same remark will not apply to the
next piece, or rather fragment. Godwin, a Tragedy, by Thomas Rowley. It
is short, and the dramatic interest weak. In the following noble chorus,
however, we recognise the genius of Chatterton:--

"When Freedom, drest in blood-stained vest,
To every knight her war-song sung,
Upon her head wild weeds were spread,
A gory broadsword by her hung.
She paced along the heath,
She heard the voice of death.

"Pale-eyed Affright, his heart of silver hue,
In vain essay'd her bosom to congeal:
She heard inflamed the shrieking voice of Woe,
And cry of owls along the sadden'd vale.
She shook the pointed spear,
On high she raised her shield;
Her foemen all appear,
And fly along the field.

"Power, with his head uplifted to the skies,
His spear a sunbeam and his shield a star,
Like two bright-burning meteors rolls his eyes,
Stamps with his iron feet, and sounds to war.
She sits upon a rock,
She bends before his spear,
She rises from the shock,
Wielding her own in air.

"Hard as the thunder doth she drive it on;
Keen wit, cross muffled, guides it to his crown;
His long sharp spear, his spreading shield are goe;
He falls, and falling rolleth thousands down."

A short prologue by Master William Canning, informs us that this tragedy
of Godwin was designed to vindicate the Kentish earl's memory from
prejudices raised against him by monkish writers, who had mistaken his
character, and accused him of ungodliness "for that he gifted not the
church." There are but three scenes in the play. In the first, Godwin
and Harold confer together on the distressed state of the nation, and
the weakness of the king, whose court is overrun with Norman favourites
to the exclusion of the English knights, and the great oppression of the
people. Harold, young and impetuous, is for instant rebellion; but the
father tries to moderate his rage, recommending patience and calm
preparation.

"_Godwin_.--What tidings from the king?
_Harold_.-- His Normans know.
_Godwin_.--What tidings of the people?
_Harold_.--Still murmuring at their fate, still to the king
They roll their troubles like a surging sea.
Has England, then, a tongue but not a sting?
Do all complain, yet will none righted be?
_Godwin_.--Await the time when God will send us aid.
_Harold_.--Must we, then, drowse away the weary hours?
I'll free my country, or I'll die in fight.
_Godwin_.--But let us wait until some season fit.
_My_ Kentishmen, _thy_ Somertons shall rise,
Their prowess warmer for the cloak of wit,
Again the argent horse shall prance in skies."

An allusion, says Chatterton, to the arms of Kent, a horse salient,
argent. As to the cloak of wit, it may possibly be preserved in
Somersetshire; but the mantle certainly was not tied as an indefeasible
heirloom over the broad shoulders of the county of Kent. No ancient
Saxons, or even Britons, ever displayed prowess so stolid as those brave
wild-wood savages of Boughton Blean, near Canterbury, who recently fell
in battle with her Majesty's 45th regiment, opposing sticks to balls and
bayonets, under their doughty leader Sir William Courtenay, Earl of
Devonshire, Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, and much more. And there
were other blockheads, substantial dunces, of respectable station in
East Kent, among this ignorant and ambitious madman's supporters; men
who had been at school to little purpose. Such an insurrection of
satyrs, and such a Pan, in the middle of the nineteenth century, within
earshot of the bells of Christchurch! But this by the bye.

The next poem is styled English Metamorphosis, by T. Rowley. It consists
of eleven stanzas of ten lines each, all fluent and spirited, and some
of very superior merit. It is the fable of Sabrina, Milton's "daughter
of Locrine," transliquefied to the river Severn, while her mother,
Elstrida, was changed to the ridge of stones that rises on either side
of it, Vincent's rocks at Clifton, and their enemy, the giant, was
transformed to the mountain Snowdon. This giant was a very Enceladus.

"He tore a ragged mountain from the ground;
Hurried up nodding forests to the sky:
Then with a fury that might earth astound,
To middle air he let the mountain fly,
_The flying wolves sent forth a yelling cry_."

In illustration of Elstrida's beauty,--

"The morning tinge, the rose, the lily flower,
In ever-running race on her did paint their power."

The most vulgar and outworn simile is refreshed with a grace by the
touch of Chatterton.

Of the next poem--An excellent ballad of Charity, by the good priest,
Thomas Rowley, 1454--it is clear that the young author thought highly,
by a note that he transmitted with it to the printer of the "Town and
Country Magazine," July 4, 1770, the month preceding that of his death.
Unlike too many bearers of sounding appellations, it has certainly
something more than its title to recommend it.

The octosyllabic lines--twenty only--on Redcliff Church, by T.R., show
what nice feeling Chatterton had for the delicacies of that florid
architecture:--

"The cunning handiwork so fine,
Had wellnigh dazzled mine eyne.
Quoth I, some artful fairy hand
Uprear'd this chapel in this land.
Full well I know so fine a sight,
Was never raised by mortal wight."

Of its majesty he speaks in another measure:--

"Stay, curious traveller, and pass not by
Until this festive pile astound thine eye.
Whole rocks on rocks, with iron join'd, survey;
And oaks with oaks that interfitted lie;
This mighty pile that keeps the winds at bay,
And doth the lightning and the storm defy,
That shoots aloft into the realms of day,
Shall be the record of the builder's fame for aye.
Thou see'st this mastery of a human hand,
The pride of Bristol, and the western land.
Yet is the builder's virtue much more great;
Greater than can by Rowley's pen be scann'd.
Thou see'st _the saints and kings in stony state,
As if with breath and human soul expand_.
Well may'st thou be astounded--view it well;
Go not from hence before thou see thy fill,
And learn the builder's virtues and his name.
Of this tall spire in every country tell,
And with thy tale the lazy rich men shame;
Show how the glorious Canning did excel;
How he, good man, a friend for kings became,
And glorious paved at once the way to heaven and fame."

The "Battle of Hastings" is the longest of Chatterton's poems, and the
reader who arrives at its abrupt termination will probably not grieve
that it is left unfinished. The whole contains about 1300 lines in
stanzas of ten, describing archery fights and heroic duels that are
rather tedious by their similarity, and offensive from the smell of the
shambles; and which any quick-witted stripling with the knack of rhyming
might perhaps have done as well, and less coarsely, after reading
Chapman's or Ogilby's Homer, or the fighting scenes in Spenser, the
Border Ballads, &c. But even this composition is not unconscious of the
true afflatus, such as is incommunicable by learning, not to be inhaled
by mere imitative powers, and which might be vainly sought for in
hundreds of highly elaborated prize poems.

There is nothing more interesting in British history than the subject;
and it is one which Chatterton, with all his genius, was much too young
to treat in a manner at all approaching to epic completeness. Yet a few
specimens might show that he is not deficient in the energy of the
Homeric poetry of action. But here is metal more attractive, a young
Saxon wife:--

"White as the chalky cliffs of Britain's isle,
Red as the highest-coloured Gallic wine,
Gay as all nature at the morning smile,
Those hues with pleasance on her lips combine;
Her lips more red than summer evening's skies,
Or Phoebus rising in a frosty morn;
Her breast more white than snow in fields that lies,
Or lily lambs that never have been shorn,
Swelling like bubbles in a boiling well,
Or new-burst brooklets gentling whispering in the dell,

* * * * *

"Brown as the filbert dropping from the shell,
Brown as the nappy ale at Hocktide game--
So brown the crooked rings that neatly fell
Over the neck of that all-beauteous dame.
Grey as the morn before the ruddy flame
Of Phoebus' chariot rolling through the sky;
Grey as the steel-horn'd goats Conyan made tame--
So grey appear'd her featly sparkling eye.

* * * * *

"Majestic as the grove of oaks that stood
Before the abbey built by Oswald king;
Majestic as Hibernia's holy wood,
Where saints, and souls departed, masses sing--
Such awe from her sweet look far issuing,
At once for reverence and love did call.
Sweet as the voice of thrushes in the spring,
So sweet the words that from her lips did fall.

* * * * *

"Taper as candles laid at Cuthbert's shrine,
Taper as silver chalices for wine,
So were her arms and shape.--
As skilful miners by the stones above
Can ken what metal is inlaid below,
So Kennewalcha's face, design'd for love,
The lovely image of her soul did show.
Thus was she outward form'd; the sun, her mind,
Did gild her mortal shape and all her charms refined."

The next poem, and the last of the _modern-antiques_ that it may be
worth while to note, is the story of William Canning, the illustrious
founder of Redcliff Church, and is worthy of the author and his subject.

"Anent a brooklet as I lay reclined,
Listening to hear the water glide along,
Minding how thorough the green meads it twined,
While caves responded to its muttering song,
To distant-rising Avon as it sped,
Where, among hills, the river show'd his head.

Engarlanded with crowns of osier-weeds,
And wreaths of alders of a pleasant scent.

"Then from the distant stream arose a maid,
Whose gentle tresses moved not to the wind.
Like to the silver moon in frosty night,
The damsel did come on so blithe and bright.
No broider'd mantle of a scarlet hue,
No peaked shoon with plaited riband gear,
No costly paraments of woaden blue;
Nought of a dress but beauty did she wear;
Naked she was, and looked sweet of youth,
And all betoken'd that her name was Truth."

The few words then spoken by this angelical lady--who unhappily favoured
Chatterton but with "angel visits, short and far between"--throw him
into a reverie on the life of William Canning, whose boyhood was more
fortunate than the poet's; for it is here reported of Canning, that

"He ate down learning with the wastlecake."

Chatterton, poor fellow, had neither fine bread to eat, nor fine
learning within the possibility of his acquisition. Yet even the worthy
Corporation of his native city will, we doubt not, be willing to allow
that the Blue-Coat Charity boy might be entitled to the praise he gives
Canning in the next couplet: that he--

"As wise as any of the Aldermen,
Had wit enough to make a Mayor at ten."

We have limited these slight notices to the Rowley Poems; and such
readers of our extracts as have been repelled from the perusal of those
poems, by the formidable array of uncouth diction and strange spelling,
may enquire what has become of the hard words. Here are long quotations,
and not an obsolete term or unfamiliar metre among them. Chatterton took
great pains to encrust his gold with verd-antique; it requires little to
remove the green rubbish from the coin. By the aid of little else than
his own glossary, "the Gode Preeste Rowleie, Aucthoure," is restored to
his true form and pressure, and is all the fairer for the renovation.

We have no space for examination of the "numerous verse," and verses
numerous, that Chatterton left undisguised by barbarous phraseology. His
modern poems, morally exceptionable as is much of the matter, are
affluent of the genius that inspired the old. African Eclogues, Elegies,
Political Satires, Amatory Triflings, Lines on the Copernican System,
the Consuliad, Lines on Happiness, _Resignation_, The Art of Puffing,
and Kew Gardens--to say nothing of his equally remarkable prose
writings--attest the versatility of his powers, and the variety of his
perception of men and manners. His knowledge of the world appears to
have been almost intuitive; for surely no youth of his years ever
displayed so much. Bristol, it is true, was, of all great towns in
England, one of the most favourable to the development of his peculiar
and complicated faculties. His passion for antiquarian lore, and his
poetical enthusiasm, found a nursing mother in a city so rich in ancient
architecture, heraldic monuments, and historical interest; his caustic
humour was amply fed from the full tide of human life, with all its
follies, in that populous mart; and his exquisite sensibility to the
beautiful and magnificent in nature, was abundantly ministered to by the
surrounding country. We are told that he had been by some odd chance
taught his alphabet, and his first lesson in "reading made easy," out of
a black-letter Bible! That accident may have had its share in forming
his taste for old-fashioned literature. But he was an attorney's clerk!
The very name of a lawyer's office seems to suggest a writ of ejectment
against all poetical influences in the brain of his indented apprentice.
Yet Chatterton's anomalous genius was in all likelihood fostered by that
dark, yet subtle atmosphere. His duty of copying precedents must have
initiated him in many of the astute wiles and twisted lines of reasoning
that lead to what is termed sharp practice, and so may have confirmed
and aided his propensities to artifice; while the mere manual operation
tutored his fingers to dexterity at quaint penmanship. He had much
leisure too; for it is recorded that his master's business seldom
occupied him more than two hours a-day. He was left to devote the rest
of his time unquestioned to all the devices of an inordinate
imagination.

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