CHAPTER VI.
Rossetti’s primary interest in Chatterton dates back to an early period, as I find by the date, 1848, in the copy he possessed of the poet’s works. But throughout a long interval he neglected Chatterton, and it was not until his friend Theodore Watts, who had made Chatterton a special study, had undertaken to select from and write upon him in Ward’s English Poets, that he revived his old acquaintance. Whatever Rossetti did he did thoroughly, and hence he became as intimate perhaps with the Rowley antiques as any other man had ever been. His letters written during the course of his Chatterton researches must, I think, prove extremely interesting. He says:
Glancing at your Keats MS., I notice (in a series of
parallels) the names of Marlowe and Savage; but not the less
“marvellous” than absolutely miraculous Chatterton. Are you
up in his work? He is in the very first rank! Theod. Watts
is “doing him” for the new selection of poets by Arnold and
Ward, and I have contributed a sonnet to Watts’s article....
I assure you Chatterton’s name must come in somewhere in
the parallel passage. He was as great as any English poet
whatever, and might absolutely, had he lived, have proved
the only man in England’s theatre of imagination who could
have bandied parts with Shakspeare. The best way of getting
at him is in Skeat’s Aldine edition (G. Bell and Co., 1875).
Read him carefully, and you will find his acknowledged work
essentially as powerful as his antiques, though less evenly
successful—the Rowley work having been produced in Bristol
leisure, however indigent, and the modern poetry in the very
fangs of London struggle. Strong derivative points are to be
found in Keats and Coleridge from the study of Chatterton. I
feel much inclined to send the sonnet (on Chatterton) as you
wish, but really think it is better not to ventilate these
things till in print. I have since written one on Blake. Not
to know Chatterton is to be ignorant of the true day-
spring of modern romantic poetry.... I believe the 3d vol.
of Ward’s Selections of English Poetry, for which Watts is
selecting from Chatterton, will soon be out,—but these
excerpts are very brief, as are the notices. The rendering
from the Rowley antique will be much better than anything
formerly done. Skeat is a thorough philologist, but no hand
at all when substitution becomes unavoidable in the text....
Read the Ballad of Charity, the Eclogues, the songs in
Ælla, as a first taste. Among the modern poems Narva and
Mared, and the other African Eclogues. These are alone in
that section poetry absolute, and though they are very
unequal, it has been most truly said by Malone that to throw
the African Eclogues into the Rowley dialect would be at
once a satisfactory key to the question whether Chatterton
showed in his own person the same powers as in the person of
Rowley. Among the satirical and light modern pieces there
are many of a first-. rate order, though generally unequal.
Perfect specimens, however, are The Revenge, a Burletta,
Skeat, vol i; Verses to a Lady, p. 84; Journal Sixth, p. 33;
The Prophecy, p. 193; and opening of Fragment, p. 132. I
would advise you to consult the original text.
Mr. Watts, it seems, with all his admiration of Chatterton, finding that he could not go to Rossetti’s length in comparing him with Shakspeare, did not in the result consider the sonnet on Chatterton referred to in the foregoing letter, and given below, suitable to be embodied in his essay:
With Shakspeare’s manhood at a boy’s wild heart,—
Through Hamlet’s doubt to Shakspeare near allied,
And kin to Milton through his Satan’s pride,—
At Death’s sole door he stooped, and craved a dart;
And to the dear new bower of England’s art,—
Even to that shrine Time else had deified,
The unuttered heart that soared against his side,—
Drove the fell point, and smote life’s seals apart.
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.
Some mention was made in this connection of Rossetti’s young connection, Oliver Madox Brown, who wrote Gabriel Denver (otherwise The Black Swan) at seventeen years of age. I mentioned the indiscreet remark of a friend who said that Oliver had enough genius to stock a good few Chattertons, and thereupon Rossetti sent me the following outburst:
You must take care to be on the right tack about Chatterton.
I am very glad to find the gifted Oliver M. B. already an
embryo classic, as I always said he would be; but those who
compare net results in such cases as his and Chatterton’s
cannot know what criticism means. The nett results of
advancing epochs, however permanent on accumulated
foundation-work, are the poorest of all tests as to relative
values. Oliver was the product of the most teeming hot-beds
of art and literature, and even of compulsory addiction to
the art of painting, in which nevertheless he was rapidly
becoming as much a proficient as in literature. What he
would have been if, like the ardent and heroic Chatterton,
he had had to fight a single-handed battle for art and bread
together against merciless mediocrity in high places,—what
he would then have become, I cannot in the least
calculate; but we know what Chatterton became. Moreover, C.
at his death, was two years younger than Oliver—a whole
lifetime of advancement at that age frequently—indeed
always I believe in leading cases. There are few indeed whom
the facile enthusiasm for contemporary models does not
deaden to the truly balanced claims of successful efforts in
art. However, look at Watts’s remodelled extracts when the
vol comes out, and also at what he says in detail as to
Chatterton, Coleridge, and Keats.
Of course Rossetti was right in what he said of comparative criticism when brought to bear in such cases as those of Chatterton and Oliver Madox Brown. Net results are certainly the poorest tests of relative values where the work done belongs to periods of development. We cannot, however, see or know any man except through and in his work, and net results must usually be accepted as the only concrete foundation for judging of the quality of his genius. Such judgment will always be influenced, nevertheless, by considerations such as Rossetti mentions. Touching Chatterton’s development, it were hardly rash to say that it appears incredible that the African Eclogues should have been written by a boy of seventeen, and, in judging of their place in poetry, one is apt to be influenced by one’s first feeling of amazement. Is it possible that the Rowley poems may owe much of their present distinction to the early astonishment that a boy should have written them, albeit they have great intrinsic excellencies such as may insure them a high place when the romance, intertwined with their history, has been long forgotten? But Chatterton is more talked of than read, and this has been so from the first. The antiques are all but unknown; certain of the acknowledged poems are remembered, and regarded as fervid and vigorous, and many of the lesser pieces are thought slight, weak, and valueless. People do not measure the poorer things in Chatterton with his time and opportunities, or they would see only amazing strength and knowledge of the world in all he did. Those lesser pieces were many of them dashed off to answer the calls of necessity, to flatter the egotism of a troublesome friend, or to wile away a moment of vacancy. Certainly they must not be set against his best efforts. As for Chatterton’s life, the tragedy of it is perhaps the most moving example of what Coleridge might have termed the material pathetic. Pathetic, however, as his life was, and marvellous as was his genius, I miss in him the note of personal purity and majesty of character. I told Rossetti that, in my view, Chatterton lacked sincerity, and on this point he wrote:
I must protest finally about Chatterton, that he lacks
nothing because lacking the gradual growth of the emotional
in literature which becomes evident in Keats—still less its
excess, which would of course have been pruned, in Oliver.
The finest of the Rowley poems—Eclogues, Ballad of
Charity, etc., rank absolutely with the finest poetry in
the language, and gain (not lose) by moderation. As to what
you say of C.‘s want of political sincerity (for I cannot
see to what other want you can allude), surely a boy up to
eighteen may be pardoned for exercising his faculty if he
happens to be the one among millions who can use grown men
as his toys. He was an absolute and untarnished hero, but
for that reckless defying vaunt. Certainly that most
vigorous passage commencing—
“Interest, thou universal God of men,” etc.
reads startlingly, and comes in a questionable shape. What
is the answer 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.”