thinking that, upon this subject, many critics have lost their heads.  Malone, e.g., pronounced Chatterton the greatest genius that England had produced since Shakspere.  Professor Masson permits himself to say:  “The antique poems of Chatterton are perhaps as worthy of being read consecutively as many portions of the poetry of Byron, Shelley, or Keats.  There are passages in them, at least, quite equal to any to be found in these poets."[18] Mr. Gosse seems to me much nearer the truth:  “Our estimate of the complete originality of the Rowley poems must be tempered by a recollection of the existence of ’The Castle of Otranto’ and ‘The Schoolmistress,’ of the popularity of Percy’s ‘Reliques’ and the ‘Odes’ of Gray, and of the revival of a taste for Gothic literature and art which dates from Chatterton’s infancy.  Hence the claim which has been made for Chatterton as the father of the romantic school, and as having influenced the actual style of Coleridge and Keats, though supported with great ability, appears to be overcharged.  So also the positive praise given to the Rowley poems, as artistic productions full of rich color and romantic melody, may be deprecated without any refusal to recognize these qualities in measure.  There are frequent flashes of brilliancy in Chatterton, and one or two very perfectly sustained pieces; but the main part of his work, if rigorously isolated from the melodramatic romance of his career, is surely found to be rather poor reading, the work of a child of exalted genius, no doubt, yet manifestly the work of a child all through."[19]

Let us get a little closer to the Rowley poems, as they stand in Mr. Skeat’s edition, stripped of their sham-antique spelling and with their language modernized wherever possible; and we shall find, I think, that tried by an absolute standard, they are markedly inferior not only to true mediaeval work like Chaucer’s poems and the English and Scottish ballads, but also to the best modern work conceived in the same spirit:  to “Christabel” and “The Eve of St. Agnes,” and “Jock o’Hazeldean” and “Sister Helen,” and “The Haystack in the Flood.”  The longest of the Rowley poems is “Aella,” “a tragycal enterlude or discoorseynge tragedie” in 147 stanzas, and generally regarded as Chatterton’s masterpiece.[20] The scene of this tragedy is Bristol and the neighboring Watchet Mead; the period, during the Danish invasions.  The hero is the warden of Bristol Castle.[21] While he is absent on a victorious campaign against the Danes, his bride, Bertha, is decoyed from home by his treacherous lieutenant, Celmond, who is about to ravish her in the forest, when he is surprised and killed by a band of marauders.  Meanwhile Aella has returned home, and finding that his wife has fled, stabs himself mortally.  Bertha arrives in time to hear his dying speech and make the necessary explanations, and then dies herself on the body of her lord.  It will be seen that the plot is sufficiently melodramatic; the sentiments and dialogue