Editorial note — P O E M S
Reading edition
R* Chatterton’s Poems, quarto, edit. Milles, p. 458.
It was not without good reason that the editor was solicitous to disprove Chatterton’s frank confession, respecting this poem; for he perceived clearly that the style, the colouring, and images, are nearly the same in this, and the second poem with the same title, and that every reader of any discernment must see at the first glance, that he who wrote the first Battle of Hastings was the authour of all the other poems ascribed to Rowley.—It is observable that Chatterton in the Battle of Hastings, No 2, frequently imitates himself, or repeats the same images a second time. Thus in the first poem with this title we meet
——“he dying gryp’d the recer’s limbe; The recer then beganne to flynge and kicke, And toste the erlie farr off to the grounde: The erlie’s squier then a swerde did sticke Into his harte, a dedlie ghastlie wounde; And downe he felle upon the crymson pleine, Upon Chatillion’s soulless corse of claie.”
In the second Battle of Hastings are these lines:
“But as he drewe his bowe devoid of arte, “So it came down upon Troyvillain’s horse; “Deep thro hys hatchments wente the pointed floe; “Now here, now there, with rage bleedinge he rounde doth goe. “Nor does he hede his mastres known commands, “Tyll, growen furiouse by his bloudie wounde, “Erect upon his hynder feete he staundes, “And throwes hys mastre far off to the grounde.”
Can any one for a moment doubt that these verses were all written by the same person?——The circumstance of the wounded horse’s falling on his rider, in the first of these similies, is taken directly from Dryden’s Virgil, Æn. X. v. 1283.—Chatterton’s new editor has artfully contrasted this passage of Dryden with the second simile, where that circumstance is not mentioned.