No More Learning

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.