Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 53, No. 332, June, 1843

Besprinkle all the meads with gore.

"Driven by thy broadsword fell,
Down to the depths of hell,
Thousands of Dacians went.

…
"Oh Thou, where'er, thy bones at rest,
Thy sprite to haunt delighteth best,
Whether upon the blood-embrued plain—
Or where thou ken'st from far,
The dismal cry of war,
Or see'st some mountain made of corses slain,

"Or see'st the war-clad steed
That prances o'er the mead,
And neighs to be among the pointed spears—
Or in black armour stalk around
Embattled Bristol, once thy ground,
Or haunt with lurid glow the castle stairs,

"Or, fiery, round the Minster glare!
Let Bristol still be made thy care;
Guard it from foeman and consuming fire;
Like Avon's stream embrace it round,
Nor let a sparkle harm the ground,
Till in one flame the total world expire."

The quatrains entitled Lydgate's answer, are amply complimentary on the foregoing song, but otherwise as prosaic as the lines that introduce it.

"Among the Grecians Homer was
A poet much renown'd;
Among the Latins Virgilius
Was best of poets found.

"The British Merlin often had
The gift of inspiration;
And Afled to the Saxon men
Did sing with animation.

"In Norman times Turgotus and
Good Chaucer did excel;
Then Stowe, the Bristol Carmelite,
Did bear away the bell.

"Now Rowley, in these murky days,
Sends out his shining lights,
And Turgotus and Chaucer live
In every line he writes."

The next is the Tournament, an interlude. Sir Simon de Burton, its hero, is supposed to have been the first founder, in accomplishment of a vow made on the occasion, of a church dedicated to Our Lady, in the place where the church of St Mary Redcliff now stands. There is life and force in the details of this tourney; and the songs of the minstrel are good, especially the first, which is a gallant hunting stave in honour of William the Red King, who hunts the stag, the wolf, and "the lion brought from sultry lands." The sentiment conveyed in the burden of this spirited chorus sounds oddly considerate, as the command issued by William Rufus:—

"Go, rouse the lion from his hidden den,
Let thy darts drink the blood of any thing but men."

To the paternity of the next in order—the Bristol Tragedy, or Death of Sir Charles Baldwin—Chatterton confessed; and such an admission might have satisfied any one but Dean Milles. The language is modern—the measure flowing without interruption; and, though the orthography affects to be antiquated, there is but one word (bataunt) in the whole series of quatrains, ninety-eight in number, that would embarrass any reader in his teens; though a boy that could generate such a poem as that, might well be believed the father of other giants whom he chose to disown. It is a masterpiece in its kind, almost unexceptionable in all its parts. The subject is supposed to have been suggested by the fate of Sir Baldwin Fulford, a zealous Lancastrian, beheaded at Bristol in 1461, the first year of the reign of Edward IV., who, it is believed, was actually present at the execution.

Now comes Ella, a tragical interlude, or discoursing tragedy, by Thomas Rowley, prefaced by two letters to Master Canning, and an introduction. In the first letter, among various sarcasms on the age, is one, complaining that

"In holy priest appears the baron's pride."

A proposition, we fear, at least as true in our day as in the fifteenth century. From the same epistle we would recommend to the consideration of the Pontius Pilates of our era, the numerous poets who choose none but awfully perilous themes, and who re-enact tremendous mysteries more confidently than if they were all Miltons, the annexed judicious admonition:—

"Plays made from holy tales I hold unmeet;
Let some great story of a man be sung;
When as a man we God and Jesus treat,
In my poor mind we do the Godhead wrong."

And the following piece of advice, from the same letter, would not be ill bestowed on modern shopocracy:—

"Let kings and rulers, when they gain a throne,
Show what their grandsires and great-grandsires bore;
Let trades' and towns'-folk let such things alone,
Nor fight for sable on a field of ore."

Yet he who could give this sensible counsel did by no means follow it. Chatterton, who really could trace back his ancestors for 150 years as a family of gravediggers, drew out for himself a pedigree which would have astonished Garter king-at-arms, and almost abashed a Welsh or German genealogy. He derived his descent from Sire de Chasteautonne, of the house of Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, who made an incursion on the coast of Britain in the ninth century, and was driven away by Alfred the Great! Nine shields, exhibiting the family arms, were carefully prepared by him, and are preserved, with many other and very various inventions by the same hand, in the British Museum; and neat engravings of those Chatterton escutcheons are furnished by Mr Cottle, in his excellent essays on this tortuous genius. He was equally liberal in providing a pedigree for his friend Mr Burgham, a worthy and credulous pewterer in his native town, convincing him, by proofs that were not conclusive at the Herald's College, that he was descended from the De Burghams, who possessed the estate and manor of Brougham in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and so allying the delighted hearer with the forefathers of an illustrious Ex-Chancellor of our day. No less a personage, too, than Fitz-Stephen, son of Stephen Earl of Ammerle in 1095, grandson of Od, Earl of Bloys and Lord of Holderness, was the progenitor gravely assigned to Chatterton's relative, Mr Stephens, leather-breeches-maker of Salisbury. Evidence of all sorts was ever ready among the treasures in the Redcliff muniment room, the Blue-Coat boy's "Open Sesame!"

The plot of Ella may be told in a few words. Ella, a renowned English warrior, the same who is invoked in the fine song already quoted, marries Bertha, of whom his friend and fellow warrior, Celmond, is secretly enamoured. On the wedding-day he is called suddenly away to oppose a Danish force, which he defeats, but not without receiving wounds severe enough to prevent his immediate return home. Celmond takes advantage of this circumstance, and under pretence of conducting Bertha to her husband, betrays her into a forest that chances to be the covert of Hurra, the Danish general, and other of the discomfited invaders. Her shrieks bring Hurra and his companions to her aid. They kill Celmond, and generously resolve to restore Bertha to her lord. He in the mean time, impatient to rejoin his bride, has contrived to get home, where, when he hears of her ill-explained departure, believing her false, he stabs himself. She arrives only in time to see him die.

Celmond, soliloquizing on the charms of Bertha, exclaims,—

"Ah, Bertha, why did nature frame thee fair?
Why art thou not as coarse as others are?
But then thy soul would through thy visage shine;
Like nut-brown cloud when by the sun made red,
So would thy spirit on thy visage spread."

At the wedding-feast, so unexpectedly interrupted by news of the Danes, the following pretty stanzas are sung by minstrels representing a young man and woman.

"Man.—

Turn thee to thy shepherd swain;
Bright sun has not drunk the dew
From the flowers of yellow hue;
Turn thee, Alice, back again.

Woman.—

No, deceiver, I will go,
Softly tripping o'er the mees,