No More Learning

123. ]

[Footnote 4: Dean Milles has a delightful account of the reception
accorded to Rowley in the Chatterton household. Neither mother nor
sister would appear to have understood a line of the poems, but
Mary Chatterton (afterwards Mrs. Newton) remembered she had been
particularly wearied with a 'Battle of Hastings' of which her brother
would continually and enthusiastically recite portions. ]

[Footnote 5: Wilson believed that Chatterton never sent the _Ryse_,
&c. , at 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.