Thy words be high of din, but nought beside, is a line that occurs in Ælla, and may sometimes be applied to the author himself. Nothing indeed is more wonderful in the Rowley poems than the masterly style of versification which they frequently display. Few more exquisite specimens of this kind can be found in our language than the Minstrel's song in Ælla, beginning, O sing unto my roundelay. A young poet may be expected to describe warmly and energetically whatever interests his fancy or his heart; but a command of numbers would seem to be an art capable of being perfected only by long-continued and diligent endeavours. It must be recollected, however, that much might be done in the time which was at Chatterton's disposal, when that time was undivided by the study of any other language but his own. We see, in the instance of Milton's juvenile poems in Latin, not to mention others, to what excellence this species of skill may be brought, even in boyhood, where the organs are finely disposed for the perception of musical delight; and if examples of the same early perfection be rarer in our own tongue, it may be because so much labour is seldom or ever exacted, at that age, in the use of it. Tyrwhitt, whose critical acumen had enabled him to detect a supposititious passage in a tragedy of Euri pides, was at first a dupe to the imposture of Chatterton, and treated the poems as so decidedly genuine, that he cited them for the elucidation of Chaucer; but seeing good grounds for changing his opinion, as Mr. Nichols* informs us, he cancelled several leaves before his volume was published. Walpole was equally deceived; though his vanity afterwards would not suffer him to own that he had been so. Mr.Tyson, in a letter to Dr. Glynn,† well observed, that he could as soon believe that Hogarth painted the cartoons, as that Chatterton wrote Rowley's poems: yet (he adds) they are as unlike any thing ancient, as Sir Joshua's flowing contour is unlike the squares and angles of Albert Durer. The poems that were written after his arrival in London, when his mind was agitated by wild speculations, and thrown off its balance by noise and bustle, were, as might be expected, very unequal to those which he had produced in the retirement of his native place. Yet there is much poignancy in the satires. The three African eclogues have a tumid grandeur. Heccar and Gaira is the best of them. The following verses are strong and impassioned: The children of the wave, whose pallid race Views the faint sun display a languid face, * Illustrations of Literature, vol. i. p. 158. From the red fury of thy justice fled, Many of the pieces, confessedly his own, furnish Pale rugged Winter bending o'er his tread; His train a motley'd, sanguine, sable cloud, The lofty elm, the oak of lordly look, The willow shadowing the babbling brook, The hedges blooming with the sweets of May, In "Resignation," from which these lines are taken, there is a fine personification of Hope, though the application of it is designedly ludicrous. See Hope array'd in robes of virgin white, With him poetry looks best when she is All deftly mask'd as hoar antiquity. Scarcely any of these later poems are free from grammatical incorrectness or ambiguity of expression. Some are debased by the more serious fault of ribaldry and profaneness. His irreligion, however, seems to have been rather the fluctuating of a mind that had lost its hold on truth for a time, than the scepticism of one confirmed in error. He acknowledges his dependence on a Creator, though he casts off his belief in a Redeemer. His incredulity does not appear so much the offspring of viciousness refusing the curb of moral restraint, as of pride unwilling to be trammelled by the opinions of the multitude. We cannot conceive that, with a faculty so highly imaginative, he could long have continued an unbeliever; or, perhaps, that he could ever have been so in his heart. But he is a portentous example of the dangers to which an inexperienced youth, highly gifted by nature, is exposed, when thrown into the midst of greedy speculators, intent only on availing themselves of his resources for their own advantage, and without any care for his safety or his peace. Some years ago the present laureat (Southey) undertook the office of editing his works, for the benefit of his sister, Mrs. Newton. It is to be lamented, that a project so deserving of encouragement does not appear to have been successful. HENRY KIRKE WHITE. HENRY KIRKE WHITE was born at Nottingham, on the twenty-first of March, 1785. His father, John, was a butcher; his mother, Mary Neville, was of a respectable family in Staffordshire. Of the schoolmistress, who taught him to read and whose name was Garrington, he has drawn a pleasing picture in his verses entitled Childhood. At about six years of age he began to learn writing, arithmetic, and French, from the Rev. John Blanchard; and when out of school was employed in carrying about the butcher's basket. Some lines "On being confined to School one pleasant Summer Morning," written at the age of thirteen, by which time he had been placed under the tuition of a Mr. Shipley, are nearly equal to any he |