No More Learning

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 priggishness of a clever
boy--which occasionally intrudes itself on his best work. Thus that
charming fanciful fragment which begins--

As onn a hylle one eve fittynge
At oure Ladie's Chyrche mouche wonderynge

embodies this truism fit for a bread-platter--or to be the 'Posy of a
ring'--'Do your best. '

Canynges and Gaunts culde doe ne moe.

And the poet's boyishness demands still further consideration. He
has a crude violence of expression which is apt to shock the mature
person--some of the descriptions of wounds in the two Battles of
Hastings would sicken a butcher; while in another vein such a phrase
as

Hee thoughte ytt proper for to cheese a wyfe,
And use the sexes for the purpose gevene.
(_Storie of William Canynge_)

has an absurd affectation of straightforward good sense divested of
sentiment which could not appeal to any one on a higher plane of
civilization than a medical student.

And this is easily explicable if only it is borne in mind that the
Rowley poems were written by a boy, and that such lovely things as
the Dirge in _AElla_ suggest a maturity that Chatterton did not by any
means perfectly possess. In some respects he was as childish (to use
the word in no contemptuous sense) as in others he was precocious. And
it is a thousand pities that the difficulties of Chatterton's language
and the peculiar charm and invention of his metrical technique cannot
be appreciated till the boyish love of adventure, delight in imagined
bloodshed, and ignorance of sentimental love, have generally been left
behind. Nothing--to give an example--could be more frigid than the
description of Kennewalcha--

White as the chaulkie clyffes of Brittaines isle,
Red as the highest colour'd Gallic wine

(an unthinkable study in burgundy and whitewash, _Battle of Hastings_,
II, 401); nothing, on the other hand, more vivid, more obviously
written with a pen that shook with excitement, than

The Sarasen lokes _owte_: he doethe feere, &c.
(_Eclogue the Second_, 23.
)

Soe wylle wee beere the Dacyanne armie downe,
And throughe a storme of blodde wyll reache the champyon crowne.
(_AElla_, 631. )

Loverdes, how doughtilie the tylterrs joyne!
(_Tournament_, 92. ).

In fine, there is no poet, one may boldly declare,
whose pages are so filled with battle, murder and sudden death, as
Chatterton's are; and this is perhaps the clearest indication he gives
of immaturity.

But if his ideas were sometimes crude and boyish they were not by any
means always so; he has flashes of genius, sudden beauties that take
away the breath. A better example than this of what is called the
sublime could not be found:

See! the whyte moone sheenes onne hie;
Whyterre ys mie true loves shroude;
Whyterre yanne the mornynge skie,
Whyterre yanne the evenynge cloude.
(_AElla_, 872. )

and, from the _Songe bie a Manne and Womanne_,

I heare them from eche grene wode tree,
Chauntynge owte so blatauntlie,
Tellynge lecturnyes to mee,
Myscheefe ys whanne you are nygh.
(_AElla_, 107. )

Did ever shepherd's pipe play a prettier tune?
He has some fine martial sounds, as for instance:
Howel ap Jevah came from Matraval
(_Battle of Hastings_, I, 181. )

He rarely employs personifications, but no poet used the figure more
convincingly. The third Mynstrelle's description of Autumn is a
lovely thing, and one will not easily forget his Winter's frozen blue
eyes--though unfortunately that is not in Rowley.