And this is easily explicable if only it is borne in mind that the Rowley poems were written by a boy, and that such lovely things as the Dirge in _Ælla_ suggest a maturity that Chatterton did not by any means perfectly possess. In some respects he was as childish (to use the word in no contemptuous sense) as in others he was precocious. And it is a thousand pities that the difficulties of Chatterton's language and the peculiar charm and invention of his metrical technique cannot be appreciated till the boyish love of adventure, delight in imagined bloodshed, and ignorance of sentimental love, have generally been left behind. Nothing--to give an example--could be more frigid than the description of Kennewalcha-- White as the chaulkie clyffes of Brittaines isle, Red as the highest colour'd Gallic wine (an unthinkable study in burgundy and whitewash, _Battle of Hastings_, II, 401); nothing, on the other hand, more vivid, more obviously written with a pen that shook with excitement, than The Sarasen lokes _owte_: he doethe feere, &c. (_Eclogue the Second_, 23.) Soe wylle wee beere the Dacyanne armie downe, And throughe a storme of blodde wyll reache the champyon crowne. (_Ælla_, 631.) Loverdes, how doughtilie the tylterrs joyne! (_Tournament_, 92.). In fine, there is no poet, one may boldly declare, whose pages are so filled with battle, murder and sudden death, as Chatterton's are; and this is perhaps the clearest indication he gives of immaturity. But if his ideas were sometimes crude and boyish they were not by any means always so; he has flashes of genius, sudden beauties that take away the breath. A better example than this of what is called the sublime could not be found: See! the whyte moone sheenes onne hie; Whyterre ys mie true loves shroude; Whyterre yanne the mornynge skie, Whyterre yanne the evenynge cloude. (_Ælla_, 872.) and, from the _Songe bie a Manne and Womanne_, I heare them from eche grene wode tree, Chauntynge owte so blatauntlie, Tellynge lecturnyes to mee, Myscheefe ys whanne you are nygh. (_Ælla_, 107.) Did ever shepherd's pipe play a prettier tune? He has some fine martial sounds, as for instance: Howel ap Jevah came from Matraval (_Battle of Hastings_, I, 181.) He rarely employs personifications, but no poet used the figure more convincingly. The third Mynstrelle's description of Autumn is a lovely thing, and one will not easily forget his Winter's frozen blue eyes--though unfortunately that is not in Rowley. His art was essentially dramatic, and he has some fine dramatic moments, as for example when the Usurer soliloquizing miserably on his certain ultimate damnation suddenly cries out O storthe unto mie mynde! I goe to helle. (_Gouler's Requiem_.) The word 'storthe' is a good example of Chatterton's use of strange words. The effect of a sudden outcry which it produces would be lost in a modernized version which rendered it 'death'.