Thomas Chatterton

“ How shall we celebrate the day,
When God appeared in mortal clay,
The mark of worldly scorn;
When the Archangel's heavenly Lays,
Attempted the Redeemer's Praise
And hail'd Salvation's Morn! ”

“ Never in feats of wickedness outdone,
Saw Nica, sister to the Mountain king,
Drest beautiful, with all the flow'rs of spring;
He saw, and scatter'd poison in her eyes;
From limb to limb in varied forms he flies ”

“ Nor welcomed the frown with a sigh;
I scorned, like a monkey, to dangle my chain,
And paint them new charms with a lie.
Once Cotton was handsome; I flam'd and I burn'd,
I died to obtain the bright queen ”

“ Now even had his authorities been well informed, which they were not by any means, and had Chatterton never misread or misunderstood them, which he very frequently did, it was impossible that his work should have been anything better than a mosaic of curious old words of every period and any dialect. Old English, Middle English, and Elizabethan English, South of England folk-words or Scots phrases taken from the border ballads—all were grist for Rowley's mill. It is only fair to say that he seldom invented a word outright, but he altered and modified with a free hand. ”

“ We now come to the circumstance which procured Chatterton's release from his irksome apprenticeship—his threat of suicide. He had often been heard to speak approvingly of suicide, and there is a story, which has, however, little authority, that once in a company of friends he drew a pistol from his pocket, put it to his head, and exclaimed 'Now if one had but the courage to pull the trigger!' This anecdote—if not in fact true—illustrates very well the gloomy depression of spirit which alternated with those outbursts of feverish energy in which his poems were composed. ”

“ The gatherd storme is rype; the bigge drops falle;
The forswat meadowes smethe, and drenche the raine;
The comyng ghastness do the cattle pall,
And the full flockes are drivynge ore the plaine;
Dashde from the cloudes the waters flott againe;
The welkin opes; the yellow levynne flies;
And the hot fierie smothe in the wide lowings dies. ”

“ And rising billows play'd around his head;
When a strong tempest rising from the main,
Dashed the full clouds, unbroken on the plain.
Nicou, immortal in the sacred song,
Held the red sword of war, and led the strong ”

“ How shall we celebrate his Name,
Who groan'd beneath a Life of shame
In all Afflictions tried!
The Soul is raptured to concieve
A Truth, which Being must believe,
The God Eternal died.
My Soul exert thy Powers, adore,
Upon Devotion's plumage sar
To celebrate the Day;
The God from whom Creation sprung
Shall animate my grateful Tongue;
From him I'll catch the Lay!
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ Thie inmoste thoughtes, thie labrynge brayne I sawe,
And from thie gentle dreeme will thee adawe.
Full manie champyons and menne of lore,
Payncters and carvellers have gaind good name,
But there's a Canynge, to encrease the store,
A Canynge, who sall buie uppe all theyre fame. ”

“ An illusion is successfully conveyed of a dim remote age when an idle-strenuous people lived only to be picturesque, to kill one another in tourneys, to rear with painful labour beautiful elaborate cathedrals, and yet had so much time on their hands that they could pass half their lives cracking unhallowed sconces in the Holy Land and, in that part of their ample leisure which they devoted to study, spell 'flourishes' as 'Florryschethe'. ”

“ Haste to thie kiste, thie onlie dortoure bedde.
Cale, as the claie whiche will gre on thie hedde,
Is Charitie and Love aminge highe elves;
Knightis and Barons live for pleasure and themselves. ”

“ Chatterton could only produce poetry in his fifteenth-century vein; his imagination failed him in modern English. No one who has any appreciation of Rowley's poems will consider that the African Eclogues are for a moment comparable with them. If he was to write at all he must produce antiques, and, as it happened, interest had been aroused in ancient poetry, largely by the publication of Percy's Reliques and of the spurious Ossian. Appearing at this juncture, then, as ancient writings taken from an old chest, his poems would be read and their value appreciated ”

“ Is it not a fact that the average baron stayed at home in his castle devising abominable schemes to wring money or its equivalent from miserable and half-starved peasants?'—such a one can only be answered with another question: 'Is Pierrot like a man, and has it been put beyond question that Pontius Pilate was hanged for beating his wife?' The Rowley writings are—properly considered—entirely fanciful and unreal. They have many faults, but are seen at their worst when Chatterton is trying to exhibit some eternal truth. ”

“ And if it appears matter for surprise that there should ever have been any controversy about the authorship of the Rowley writings, in view of the lad's admission that he had written three such signal pieces as the Bristowe Tragedy, the first Battle of Hastings, and Onn oure Ladies Chyrche, it must be considered that the production of the greater part of the poems by a poorly educated boy not turned seventeen would naturally appear a circumstance more surprising than that such a boy should tell a lie and claim some of them as his own. ”

“ "Here take this silver, it maie eathe thie care;
We are Goddes stewards all, nete of oure owne we bare. ”

“ Almighty Framer of the Skies!
O let our pure devotion rise,
Like Incense in thy Sight!
Wrapt in impenetrable Shade
The Texture of our Souls were made
Till thy Command gave light. ”

“ If he should stick at the word entirely, which may possibly seem to carry the conclusion a little beyond the premisses, he is desired to reflect, that, the poems having been proved to be a forgery since the time of Skinner, and to have been written in great part by Chatterton, it is infinitely more probable that the remainder was also written by him than by any other person. The great difficulty is to conceive that a youth, like Chatterton, should ever have formed the plan of such an imposture, and should have executed it with so much perseverance and ingenuity ”

“ This being granted, I have nothing to do but to prove, that the language of the poems attributed to Rowley (when every proper allowance has been made) is totally different from that of the other English writers of the XV Century, in many material particulars. It would be too tedious to go through them all; and therefore I shall only take notice of such as can be referred to three general heads; the first consisting of words not used by any other writer; the second, of words used by other writers, but in a different sense ”

“ It will soon appear, if I am not much mistaken, that the author of the Glossary was the author of the Poems.
Whoever will take the pains to examine these interpretations will find, that they are almost all taken from SKINNER'S Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ [5] . In many cases, where the words are really ancient, the interpretations are perfectly right; and so far Chatterton can only be considered in the light of a commentator, who avails himself of the best assistances to explane any genuine author. ”

“ Chatterton's influence on the great body of poets of the generation succeeding his own was very considerable—Mr. Watts-Dunton indeed declares him to have been the father of the New Romantic School—and the affection with which Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth and many others regarded him was extraordinary. He was their pioneer, who had lost his life in a heroic attempt to penetrate the dull crassness of the mid-eighteenth century. ”

“ It is not surprizing that Chatterton should have been ignorant of a peculiarity of the English language, which appears to have escaped the observation of a professed editor of Chaucer. Mr. Urry has very frequently lengthened verbs in the singular number, by adding n to them, without any authority, I am persuaded, even from the errors of former Editions or MSS. It might seem invidious to point out living writers, of acknowledged learning, who have slipped into the same mistake in their imitations of Chaucer and Spenser. ”

“ His principal patrons were Henry Burgum and George Catcott, a pair of pewterers, the former vulgar and uneducated but very ambitious to be thought a man of good birth and education, the latter a credulous, selfish and none too scrupulous fellow, a would-be antiquary, of whom there is the most delightfully absurd description in Boswell's Johnson. The biographer relates that in the year 1776 Johnson and he were on a visit to Bristol and were induced by Catcott to climb the steep flight of stairs which led to the muniment room in order to see the famous 'Rowley's Cofre'. ”

“ Baker, Thistlethwaite and a few more were contemporaries of the poet, but the rest of the circle consisted mainly of men who had reached middle age—dullards, perhaps, who condescended to clever adolescence, whom Chatterton certainly mocked bitterly enough in satires which he wrote apparently for his own private satisfaction, but whom he nevertheless took considerable pains to conciliate as being men of substance who could lend books and now and then reward the Muse with five shillings. ”

“ He had long been desirous that these Poems should be printed; and therefore readily undertook the charge of superintending the edition. This he has executed in the manner, which seemed to him best suited to such a publication; and here he means that his task should end. Whether the Poems be really antient, or modern; the compositions of Rowley, or the forgeries of Chatterton; they must always be considered as a most singular literary curiosity. ”

“ Wilson suggests too that the boy who had read theology, orthodox and the reverse, held to the common eighteenth century view that death was annihilation; and this may well have been the case. One thing at any rate is certain, that Chatterton on the 14th of April 1770 left on his desk a number of pieces of paper filled with a jumble of satiric verse, mocking prose, and directions for the construction of a mediæval tomb to cover the remains of his father and himself. ”

“ To be excelld bie none but Homer's martial maid. 400
White as the chaulkie clyffes of Brittaines isle,
Red as the highest colour'd Gallic wine,
Gaie as all nature at the mornynge smile,
Those hues with pleasaunce on her lippes combine,
Her lippes more redde than summer evenynge skyne, 405
Or Phoebus rysinge in a frostie morne,
Her breste more white than snow in feeldes that lyene,
Or lillie lambes that never have been shorne,
Swellynge like bubbles in a boillynge welle,
Or new-braste brooklettes gently whyspringe in the delle. ”

“ The fragments in prose, which are considerably larger, Mr. Barrett intends to publish in his History of Bristol, which, the Editor has the satisfaction to inform the Publick, is very far advanced. In the same work will be inserted A Discorse on Bristowe, and the other historical pieces in prose, which Chatterton at different times delivered out, as copied from Rowley's MSS.; with such remarks by Mr. Barrett, as he of all men living is best qualified to make, from his accurate researches into the Antiquities of Bristol. ”

“ Then again there are the various lives of the poet; for the most part mere random aggregations of such facts, true or imagined, as fell in the editor's way, filled out with pulpit commonplaces and easy paragraphs beginning 'But it is ever the way of Genius ...' Professor Wilson's Chatterton: a Biographical Study is as final in its own way as Professor Skeat's two volumes. ”

“ A person of some note in the literary world is of opinion, that glum and glom are modern cant words; and from this circumstance doubts the authenticity of Rowley's Manuscripts. Glum-mong in the Saxon signifies twilight, a dark or dubious light; and the modern word gloomy is derived from the Saxon glum. ”

“ Who sange a charme, that dyd it mickle goode;
Then praid Seyncte Cuthbert, and our holie Dame,
To blesse his labour, and to heal the same. 460
Then drewe the arrowe, and the wounde did seck,
And putt the teint of holie herbies on;
And putt a rowe of bloude-stones round his neck;
And then did say; go, champyon, get agone. ”

“ It is against all odds, that two men, living at the distance of two hundred years one from the other, should accidentally agree in coining the same words, and in affixing to them exactly the same meaning.
I proceed to state some instances of words and interpretations which are evidently founded upon misapprehensions of passages in Skinner.
ALYSE. Le. 29. G. 180. Allow. Chatterton. See before, p. 314.
Till I meet with this word, in this sense, in some approved author, I shall be of opinion that it has been formed from a mistaken reading of the following article in Skinner. ”

“ Moreover, the Professor has for the most part left the facts to tell their own story; and thus his book is free from such absurdities as the sentimental regrets of Gregory and Professor Masson that Chatterton was led into a course of folly ending in suicide through being deprived of a father's care. ”

“ The history of this youth is so intimately connected with that of the poems now published, that the Reader cannot be too early apprized of the principal circumstances of his short life. He was born on the 20th of November 1752, and educated at a charity-school on St. Augustin's Back, where nothing more was taught than reading, writing, and accounts. At the age of fourteen, he was articled clerk to an attorney, with whom he continued till he left Bristol in April 1770. ”

“ Only occasionally does one find the note (written with an obviously sincere pleasure) 'This word is correctly used.' Of course it was impossible that Chatterton should have produced even a colourable imitation of fifteenth-century poetry at a time when even Malone—for all his acknowledged reputation as an English Scholar—could not quote Chaucer so as to make his lines scan. The Rowley Poems and Percy's Reliques mark the beginning of that renascence of our older poetry so conspicuous in the time of Lamb and Hazlitt. ”