Keats said that he always associated the season of autumn with the memory
of Chatterton. He asserted, somewhat oddly, that he was the purest
writer in the English language and used "no French idiom or particles,
like Chaucer." In a letter from Jane Porter to Keats about the reviews
of his "Endymion," she wrote: "Had Chatterton possessed sufficient
manliness of mind to know the magnanimity of patience, and been aware
that great talents have a commission from Heaven, he would not have
deserted his post, and his name might have been paged with Milton."

Keats was the poetic child of Spenser, but some traits of manner--hard to
define, though not to feel--he inherited from Chatterton. In his
unfinished poem, "The Eve of St. Mark," there is a Rowleian accent in the
passage imitative of early English, and in the loving description of the
old volume of saints' legends whence it is taken, with its

"--pious poesies
Written in smallest crow-quill size
Beneath the text."

And we cannot but think of the shadow of St. Mary Redcliffe falling
across another young life, as we read how

"Bertha was a maiden fair
Dwelling in th' old Minster-square;
From her fireside she could see,
Sidelong, its rich antiquity,
Far as the Bishop's garden-wall";

and of the footfalls that pass the echoing minster-gate, and of the