Perhaps the most engaging of the Rowley poems are "An Excelente Balade of
Charitie," written in the rhyme royal; and "The Bristowe Tragedie," in
the common ballad stanza, and said by Tyrwhitt to be founded on an
historical fact: the excecution at Bristol, in 1461, of Sir Baldwin
Fulford, who fought on the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses.
The best quality in Chatterton's verse is its unexpectedness,--sudden
epithets or whole lines, of a wild and artless sweetness,--which goes far
to explain the fascination that he exercised over Coleridge and Keats. I
mean such touches as these:


"Once as I dozing in the witch-hour lay."

"Brown as the filbert dropping from the shell."

"My gorme emblanchèd with the comfreie plant."

"Where thou may'st here the sweetè night-lark chant,
Or with some mocking brooklet sweetly glide."

"Upon his bloody carnage-house he lay,
Whilst his long shield did gleam with the sun's rising ray."

"The red y-painted oars from the black tide,
Carved with devices rare, do shimmering rise."

"As elfin fairies, when the moon shines bright,
In little circles dance upon the green;
All living creatures fly far from their sight,
Nor by the race of destiny be seen;