Rossetti's primary interest in Chatterton dates back to an early period, as I find by the date, 1848, in the copy he possessed of the poet's works. But throughout a long interval he neglected Chatterton, and it was not until his friend Theodore Watts, who had made Chatterton a special study, had undertaken to select from and write upon him in Ward's _English Poets_, that he revived his old acquaintance. Whatever Rossetti did he did thoroughly, and hence he became as intimate perhaps with the Rowley antiques as any other man had ever been. His letters written during the course of his Chatterton researches must, I think, prove extremely interesting. He says:
Glancing at your Keats MS., I notice (in a series of parallels) the names of Marlowe and Savage; but not the less "marvellous" than absolutely miraculous Chatterton. Are you up in his work? He is in the very first rank! Theod. Watts is "doing him" for the new selection of poets by Arnold and Ward, and I have contributed a sonnet to Watts's article.... I assure you Chatterton's name _must_ come in somewhere in the parallel passage. He was as great as any English poet whatever, and might absolutely, had he lived, have proved the only man in England's theatre of imagination who could have bandied parts with Shakspeare. The best way of getting at him is in Skeat's Aldine edition (G. Bell and Co., 1875). Read him carefully, and you will find his acknowledged work essentially as powerful as his antiques, though less evenly successful--the Rowley work having been produced in Bristol leisure, however indigent, and the modern poetry in the very fangs of London struggle. Strong derivative points are to be found in Keats and Coleridge from the study of Chatterton. I feel much inclined to send the sonnet (on Chatterton) as you wish, but really think it is better not to ventilate these things till in print. I have since written one on Blake. Not to know Chatterton is to be ignorant of the _true_ day- spring of modern romantic poetry.... I believe the 3d vol. of Ward's _Selections of English Poetry_, for which Watts is selecting from Chatterton, will soon be out,--but these excerpts are very brief, as are the notices. The rendering from the Rowley antique will be much better than anything formerly done. Skeat is a thorough philologist, but no hand at all when substitution becomes unavoidable in the text.... Read the _Ballad of Charity, the Eclogues, the songs in Ælla_, as a first taste. Among the modern poems _Narva and Mared_, and the other _African Eclogues_. These are alone in that section _poetry absolute_, and though they are very unequal, it has been most truly said by Malone that to throw the _African Eclogues_ into the Rowley dialect would be at once a satisfactory key to the question whether Chatterton showed in his own person the same powers as in the person of Rowley. Among the satirical and light modern pieces there are many of a first-. rate order, though generally unequal. Perfect specimens, however, are _The Revenge, a Burletta, Skeat, vol i; Verses to a Lady, p. 84; Journal Sixth, p. 33; The Prophecy, p. 193; and opening of Fragment, p. 132._ I would advise you to consult the original text.
