of the play, and offering to get him a copy of it for a guinea. Dodsley declined the offer, and the work was not published until 1777, after Chatterton's death. Its plot is not very successful, but its tone has much charm, and some passages of the poetic dialogue are full of beauty. The songs are the best part, however. Chatterton himself said of them, in his letter to Dodsley, "the Songs are flowing, poetical, and elegantly simple."

MINSTRELS' SONG

Only the first and more beautiful part is given. 3. dight; adorned. From O. E. dihtan, to arrange, set in order. In current use down to Chatterton's time. 4. nesh. Tender, soft. Derived by Chatterton from Chaucer. 5. straught; stretched. An old preterit form. 8. eyne. Eyes. From O. E. eage; pl. eagan. This plural ending is preserved in oxen, children. 16. kind; Nature.

ROUNDELAY

44. gre; grow.

AN EXCELENTE BALADE OF CHARITIE

Chatterton adds to this title, As written by the Good Priest Thomas Rowley, 1464. He added, with the glossary, notes explaining what he intended to seem local references in the poem. He sent the poem to the Town and Country Magazine about a month before his death, but it was rejected. This and the Roundelay have been the best known and most admired of Chatterton's poems. The following notes give only the intended meaning of the words in unusual forms, and some slight reference to their proper etymology; there is not space to explain in full Chatterton's ingenious mistakes. The stanza form is a combination of rime royal and the Spenserian stanza; it is rime royal with an alexandrine substituted for the last line of each stanza.

1. In Virgo. That is, in that sign of the Zodiac; the time is September. sheene; shine. 5. chelandry; goldfinch. 7. aumere; dress, apparel. 18. weed. Properly used. The O. E. wæd meant garment. 22. gloomed. Chatterton traces a false etymology for the word, and explains that it means clouded. 24. church-glebehouse. The grave. Church-glebe, cultivable land belonging to a parish church. 31. ghastness; gloom. 'pall; appall. 40.

swangs. Swings. Coined from swang, -the O. E. preterit of swing, -here made into a present form. 45. chapournette. "A small round hat, not unlike the shapournette in heraldry, formerly worn by ecclesiastics and lawyers." - Chatterton. 46. mickle. Much. O. E. mycel; M. E. mikel. Preserved in the Scots muckle. 47. aynewarde. "He told his beads backwards, a figurative expression to signify cursing." - Chatterton. Chatterton had no authority for aynewarde; ayenwarde (again-ward) means back again. 52. autremete. “A loose white robe worn by priests.” — Chatterton. 53. shoe's peak. The fashion of peaked shoes reached an extreme in the fifteenth century. The points were often two feet long, with sometimes an arrangement for fastening them up to be out of the way in walking. They were, as in this case, a sign of foppishness. 56. horse-milliner. Certainly not a fifteenth-century word. But Steevens tells us he saw it, in 1776, over a shop-door in Bristol.” Skeat. 63. Crouche. Cross. Lat. crux. 74. jape. "A short surplice, worn by friars of an inferior class, and secular priests.” Chatterton. Another unwarranted coinage or adaptation. 75. limitor. A begging friar, who was given license to beg within a certain limit. See Prologue to Canterbury Tales, 11. 208–269. 89. his way aborde. Pursued his way. Aborde was coined by Chatterton. 90. gloure; glory.

THE PROPHECY

Printed in the Political Register for June, 1770. It is not probable that Chatterton had any deep or well-formed convictions on political subjects. In fact there is a possibility that he wrote on both sides of the public issue. All that has been identified, however, is in the line of this satire. His radicalism is of a vague, undirected type, very easy to find expression for. This poem is, perhaps, the keenest and most mature of his satires. If his conviction had equalled his power of expression, he would have given promise of becoming a great satirist. The Prophecy was written during the great contest over Wilkes and his expulsion from Parliament, when London was noisy with patriotic clamour of all sorts.

20. St. Stephen's pier. In the old Houses of Parliament, burned in 1834, St. Stephen's Chapel was used as the chamber of the House of Commons. 22. Augustus Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton (1735-1811), Premier from 1768-1770. He was at the

head of affairs when Wilkes was expelled from Parliament, and hence was a butt of attack from friends of Wilkes. 40. Gotham. A parish in Nottinghamshire, said to be distinguished by the foolishness of its people. 73. The Earl of Bute had not been Premier since 1763, but he was hated whether in office or out of office. He was regarded as the chief moral support of George III., in his dogged fight for royal supremacy, and in fact, as largely responsible for the king's notion of royal prerogative. 102. "This probably refers to the famous No. 45 of Wilkes's North Briton which was suppressed by the government.”. - Skeat. Wilkes established his paper, the North Briton, in 1762. In 1763, in No. 45, he made a vigorous attack on the government, for which he was eventually expelled from Parliament and finally sentenced to prison.

JAMES MACPHERSON

(1738-1796)

The excuse for including in this collection a piece of work whose authenticity has not been proved, is found in the importance given to the production in its own time, and its undoubted influence. Macpherson's Ossian appeared shortly before Percy's Reliques did, and had its share in turning the attention and taste of the public back to earlier and romantic times. The new interest in the mediæval was stimulated by anything that came out of the past, whether supposed to be from the third century or the thirteenth. Macpherson, a schoolmaster of Highland birth, began to publish his translations from Gaelic poetry in 1760 and continued to add to them for three years. His own assertion was that the poems were the composition of Ossian, a Gaelic bard of the third century A.D. The authenticity

of Macpherson's claim was at once disputed, and controversy over the point ran high. The exact valuation to be put upon the work has not even yet been settled. Very few in the present time believe that the poems were the work of Ossian. But on the other hand, it is improbable that they were entirely original with Macpherson. The probability is that parts of them are bits of Gaelic poetry later than the third century, however—which Macpherson translated and put together with additions and filling of his own. For a summing up of the controversy, and of the present theories on the subject, see Beers's History of English Romanticism in the

Eighteenth Century, Chap. IX.; William Sharp's introduction to the Centenary edition of Ossian. (Edinburgh, 1896.)

CARTHON

This is one of the minor poems, but it is selected because it is short enough to insert in almost complete form, and because it illustrates very well the merits as well as the faults of the Ossian poems as a whole. Ossian, the bard to whom Macpherson ascribed the work, was the son of Fingal, king of Morven, in the western Highlands. Fingal is the hero of the cycle of poems, though not the immediate hero of each poem. The story of Carthon, as supplemented by Macpherson's explanation, is as follows:

Clessámmor, the brother-in-law of Comhal (Fingal's father), when a young man, was driven by a storm up the mouth of the Clutha [Clyde] to the British town Balclutha. Reuthámir, the head man of the place, received him hospitably, and soon gave him his only child, Moina, in marriage. But a rival, Reuda, appeared at Reuthámir's house and took means to affront Clessámmor. In the quarrel that followed, Clessámmor killed Reuda, and then, being hard beset by Reuda's friends, escaped to his ship and sailed away. He was prevented from returning for Moina; she died not very long after, leaving a son, Carthon, of whose existence Clessámmor did not learn. When Carthon was three years old, Comhal, king of Morven, came down on an expedition against the Britons, and took and burned Balclutha. Carthon was saved and carried away by his nurse. These events are all antecedent to the narrative of the poem. In the poem, Carthon comes back to revenge himself upon Fingal, as the son of Comhal, that king being now dead. The figure that appears in the mist (ll. 133-136) is a warning of coming war. Fingal, understanding the sign, goes out at the head of his host; he meets Carthon. Carthon defeats two heroes sent against him. Then Fingal sends Clessámmor, who kills Carthon, not knowing him to be his own son.

The poem is addressed, as several of the others are, to Malvina, the bride of Ossian's dead son, Oscar.

The text with the exception of certain quotation-marks, added to make the reading easier, is that of the Centenary edition. (Edinburgh, 1896.)

CHARLES CHURCHILL

(1731-1764)

The popularity and momentary power of Churchill's work is one of the signs of decadence of taste and appreciation in the third quarter of the century. The transitory return of the personal satire is at once a part and an effect of the revival of the intellectual type in verse, in the time of Johnson and Goldsmith. Churchill's work has now fallen into obscurity, but between the years 1761 and 1764 it was a power in current politics. Aside from these three years, the rest of his unfortunate and misdirected life is somewhat obscure. He was a poor clergyman who at the age of thirty discovered his own satirical ability, and came before the world with his Rosciad (1761), directed at the actors of the time. This proving instantly successful, he followed it up with other pieces in the same tone. In the next year he made the acquaintance of Wilkes, already entered upon his career of notoriety, and became his "poet-laureate." Wilkes was just establishing his organ of protest, the North Briton, and Churchill contributed much material to it. He showed such aptness in using the popular prejudices, and such power of personal invective, that he became indispensable to Wilkes. The next three years were productive ones, though the work produced was nearly all in the same vein. Churchill showed little variety in talent or purpose. He had one gift, and he used it to the utmost. His satires dealt almost entirely with current matters, and these he handled at close range. So it is impossible for his verse to be interesting to another period. His personal attacks were virulent and unscrupulous, but often witty and pointed. The selections given here are scarcely a fair representation of his work; but his most characteristic attacks usually have an object now so obscure that it is easy for the reader of the present time to miss the purport of the satire.

The text used is that of the Aldine edition, based on Tooke's edition. (London, 1892.)

THE PROPHECY OF FAMINE

The Prophecy of Famine, A Scots Pastoral, was published in 1763. Its great popularity was due, not merely to the wit of the satire, but to the sympathy that it found in the minds of a large number of Eng