r to its enigmatical aspect? Why, that he
_meant_ it, and that all would mean it at his age, who had
his power, his daring, and his hunger. Still it does,
perhaps, make one doubt whether his early death were well or
ill for him. In the matter of Oliver (whom no one
appreciates more than I do), remember that it was impossible
to have more opportunities than _he_ had, or on the other
side _fewer_ than Chatterton had. Chatterton at seventeen or
less said--

"Flattery's a cloak, and I will put it on."

Blake (probably late in life) said--

"Innocence is a winter gown."

... I _have_ read the Chatterton article in the review
mentioned. If Watts had done it, it would have been
immeasurably better. There seems to me, who am very well up
in Chatterton, no point whatever made in the article. Why
does no one ever even allude to the two attributed portraits
of Chatterton--one belonging to Sir H. Taylor, and the other
in the Salford Museum? Both seem to be the same person
clearly, and a good find for Chatterton, but not conceivably
done from him. Nevertheless, I _suspect_ there may be a
sidelong genuineness in them. Chatterton was acquainted with
one Alcock, a miniature painter at Bristol, to whom he
addressed a poem. Had A. painted C. it would be among the
many recorded facts; but it would be singular even if, in
C.'s rapid posthumous fame, A. had never been asked to make
a reminiscent likeness of him. Prom such likeness by the
miniature painter these _portraits might_ derive--both being
life-sized oil heads. There is a savour of Keats in them,
though a friend, taking up the younger-looking of the two,
said it reminded him of Jack Sheppard! And not such a bad
Chatterton-compound either! But I begin to think I have said
all this before.... Oliver, or "Nolly," as he was always
called, was a sort of spread-eagle likeness of his handsome
father, with a conical head like Walter Scott. I must
confess to you, that, in this world of books, the only one
of his I have read, is _Gabriel Denver_, afterwards
reprinted in its original and superior form as _The Black
Swan_, but published with the former title in his lifetime.

Rossetti formed no such philosophic estimate of Chatterton's
contribution to the romantic movement in English poetry as h