the glossary to Speght's _Chaucer_, and such
words as were marked with a capital O, standing for 'obsolete' in the
Dictionaries of Kersey and Bailey. Now even had his authorities been
well informed, which they were not by any means, and had Chatterton
never misread or misunderstood them, which he very frequently did, it
was impossible that his work should have been anything better than
a mosaic of curious old words of every period and any dialect. Old
English, Middle English, and Elizabethan English, South of England
folk-words or Scots phrases taken from the border ballads--all
were grist for Rowley's mill. It is only fair to say that he seldom
invented a word outright, but he altered and modified with a free
hand. Professor Skeat indeed estimates that of the words contained in
Milles' Glossary to the Rowley Poems only seven percent are genuine
old words correctly used. The Professor in his modernized edition is
continually pointing out with kindly reluctance that such and such
a word never bore the meaning ascribed to it--that because, for
instance, Bailey had explained _Teres major_ as a smooth muscle of the
arm it was not therefore any legitimate inference of Chatterton's
that _tere_ (singular form) meant a muscle and could be translated
'health'. Only occasionally does one find the note (written with an
obviously sincere pleasure) 'This word is correctly used.' Of
course it was impossible that Chatterton should have produced even a
colourable imitation of fifteenth-century poetry at a time when
even Malone--for all his acknowledged reputation as an English
Scholar--could not quote Chaucer so as to make his lines scan. The
_Rowley Poems_ and Percy's _Reliques_ mark the beginning of that
renascence of our older poetry so conspicuous in the time of Lamb
and Hazlitt. Before this epoch was the Augustan age, much too
well satisfied with its own literature to concern itself with an
unfashionable past.

But, after all, however absurd from any historical point of view the
language and metres of the boy-poet may be, at least he invented a
practicable language which admirably conveyed his impression of the
latest period of the middle ages--that after-glow which began with
the death of Chaucer. Chatterton's poetry is a pageant staged by an
impressionist. It cannot be submitted to a close examination, and it
is all wrong historically, yet it presents a complete picture with an
artistic charm that must be judged on its own meri