in the English language and used "no French idiom or particles,
like Chaucer." In a letter from Jane Porter to Keats about the reviews
of his "Endymion," she wrote: "Had Chatterton possessed sufficient
manliness of mind to know the magnanimity of patience, and been aware
that great talents have a commission from Heaven, he would not have
deserted his post, and his name might have been paged with Milton."

Keats was the poetic child of Spenser, but some traits of manner--hard to
define, though not to feel--he inherited from Chatterton. In his
unfinished poem, "The Eve of St. Mark," there is a Rowleian accent in the
passage imitative of early English, and in the loving description of the
old volume of saints' legends whence it is taken, with its

"--pious poesies
Written in smallest crow-quill size
Beneath the text."

And we cannot but think of the shadow of St. Mary Redcliffe falling
across another young life, as we read how

"Bertha was a maiden fair
Dwelling in th' old Minster-square;
From her fireside she could see,
Sidelong, its rich antiquity,
Far as the Bishop's garden-wall";

and of the footfalls that pass the echoing minster-gate, and of the
clamorous daws that fall asleep in the ancient belfry to the sound of the
drowsy chimes. Rossetti, in so many ways a continuator of Keats'
artistry, devoted to Chatterton the first of his sonnet-group, "Five
English Poets,"[29] of which the sestet runs thus:

"Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton;
The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace
Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed space
Thy gallant sword-play:--these to many an one
Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown
And love-dream of thine unrecorded face."

The story of Chatterton's life found its way into fiction and upon the
stage. Afred de Vigny, one of the French romanticists, translator of
"Othello" and "The Merchant of Venice," introduced it as an episode into
his romance, "Stello ou les Diables Bleus," afterward dramatized as
"Chatterton," and first played at Paris on February 12, 1835, with great
success. De Vigny made a love tragedy out of it, inventing a sweetheart
for his hero, in the person of Kitty Bell, a role which became one of
Madame Dorval's chief triumphs. On the occasion of the revival of De
Vigny's drama in December, 1857, Theophile Gautier gave, in the
_Moniteur_,[30] some reminiscences of its firs