or as models and inspirations to later poets.
I cannot help 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