"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:--