In turning away from Milton to Chatterton, he was going back to one of his first loves in literature. What he says of Chatterton's words and idioms seems paradoxical enough, as applied to the archaic jargon concocted by the Bristol boy out of Kersey's _Dictionary_[54]. But it is true that through that jargon can be discerned, in the Rowley poems, not only an ardent feeling for romance and an extraordinary facility in composition, but a remarkable gift of plain and flowing construction. And after Keats had for some time moved, not perfectly at his ease, though with results to us so masterly, in the paths of Milton, we find him in fact tempted aside on an excursion into the regions beloved by Chatterton. We know not how much of _Hyperion_ had been written when he laid it aside in January to take up the composition of _St Agnes' Eve_, that unsurpassed example--nay, must we not rather call it unequalled?--of the pure charm of coloured and romantic narrative in English verse. As this poem does not attempt the elemental grandeur of _Hyperion_, so neither does it approach the human pathos and passion of _Isabella_. Its personages appeal to us, not so much humanly and in themselves, as by the circumstances, scenery and atmosphere amidst which we see them move. Herein lies the strength, and also the weakness, of modern romance,--its strength, inasmuch as the charm of the mediæval colour and mystery is unfailing for those who feel it at all,--its weakness, inasmuch as under the influence of that charm both writer and reader are too apt to forget the need for human and moral truth: and without these no great literature can exist.