Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/618



EREVER the English tongue is spoken, men have talked of the “marvellous boy.” But it is not a name to conjure with; it does not call up the rich associations that cluster around names like those of Spenser, Keats, Tennyson. Memories and quotations do not spring from one’s lips at the sound; we think of no pet line or phrase that came from the boy’s pen. We say, “How sad! what a wonderful genius!” but we know very little to corroborate our idea of his genius, and have only a dim notion of a tragic history. To tell the truth, Chatterton is now little more than a name. So few are really acquainted with his poems that his work must be regarded as practically dead,—at least, this is the case in the land of the poet’s birth. Did not Lowell speak of the matter as the “Chatterton superstition”? Superstition or no superstition, fad or no fad, the thing is now past; the lad’s poems have not proved to be “a joy forever,” but must be classed with those numerous publications which are familiar to none but literary students. We may allow him the title of an “inheritor of unfulfilled renown,” which Shelley bestowed upon