Mr. Watts-Dunton in his article on Chatterton in Ward's _English
Poets_ speaks of his extraordinary metrical inventiveness and of his
ultimate responsibility for such lines as these--
And Christabel saw the lady's eye
And nothing else she saw thereby
Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall
Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall--
the anapaestic dance of which breaks in upon the normal iambic
movement of the poem with a natural dramatic propriety. He compares
too _The Eve of St. Agnes_ with the _Excelente Balade of Charitie_,
remarking that it was only in his latest work that Keats attained
to that dramatic objectivity which was 'the very core and centre of
Chatterton's genius.'
Another writer, Mr. Thomas Seccombe, speaks of his 'genuine lyric
fire, a poetic energy, and above all an intensity remote from his
contemporaries and suggestive (as Cimabue in his antique and primitive
manner is suggestive of Giotto and Angelico) of Shelley and Keats.'
Chatterton's influence on the great body of poets of the generation
succeeding his own was very considerable--Mr.
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