Chapter V: Notes

1. _The Tournament_, lines 7-10.

Wythe straunge depyctures, Nature maie nott yeelde, &c.

'This is neither sense nor grammar as it stands' says Professor Skeat. But Chatterton is frequently ungrammatical, and the sense of the passage is quite clear if either of the two following possible meanings is attributed to _unryghte_.

(1)=to present an intelligible significance otherwise than by writing--as 'rebus'd shields' do (un-write);

or (2) = to misrepresent (un-right).

With pictures of strange beasts that have no counterpart in Nature and appear to be purely fantastic ('unseemly to all order') yet none the less make known to men good at guessing riddles ('who thyncke and have a spryte') what the strange heraldic forms express-without-use-of-written-words ('unryghte')--or (taking the second meaning of unryghte--misrepresent) present-with-a-disregard-of-truth-to-nature.

2. _Letter to the Dygne Mastre Canynge_, line 15.

Seldomm, or never, are armes vyrtues mede, (that is to say, coats of arms)
Shee nillynge to take myckle aie dothe hede

i.e. 'She unwilling to take much aye doth heed'; 'which is nonsense' says Prof. Skeat. But the sentence is an example of ellipse, a figure which Chatterton affected a good deal, and fully expressed would run 'She--not willing to take much, ever doth heed not to take much', which would of course be intolerably clumsy but perfectly intelligible.

3. _Ælla_, line 467.

Certis thie wordes maie, thou motest have sayne &c.

Prof. Skeat 'can make nothing of this' and reads 'Certes thy wordes mightest thou have sayn'.

A simple emendation of _maie_ to _meynte_ would give very good sense.

4. _Ælla_, line 489.

Tyrwhitt has _sphere_--evidently a mistake in the MS. for _spere_ which he overlooked. It is not included in his errata. In the 1842 edition the meaning 'spear' is given in a footnote.

5. _Englysh Metamorphosis_.

Prof. Skeat was the first to point out that this piece is an imitation of _The Faerie Queene_, Bk. ii, Canto X, stanzas 5-19.

6. _Battle of Hastings_, II, line 578.

To the ourt arraie of the thight Saxonnes came

Prof. Skeat explains _ourt_ as 'overt' and observes that it contradicts _thight_, which he renders 'tight'. But really there is not even an antithesis. _Ourt arraie_ is what a military handbook calls 'open order' and _thight_ is 'well-built', well put together (Bailey's Dictionary). The Saxons were well-built men marching in open order.