Thomas Chatterton

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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'. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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'. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whereupon, when the ascent had been accomplished, Catcott 'called out with a triumphant air of lively simplicity "I'll make Dr. Johnson a convert" (to the view then still largely obtaining that Rowley's poems were written in the fifteenth century) and he pointed to the "Wondrous chest".' '"There" said he 'with a bouncing confident credulity "There is the very chest itself"!' After which 'ocular demonstration', Boswell remarks, 'there was no more to be said.' It was to such men as these that Chatterton read his 'Rouleie's' poems. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The question therefore concerning the authenticity of these Poems must now be decided by an examination of the fragments upon vellum, which Mr. Barrett received from Chatterton as part of his original MSS., and by the internal evidence which the several pieces afford. If the Fragments shall be judged to be genuine, it will still remain to be determined, how far their genuineness should serve to authenticate the rest of the collection, of which no copies, older than those made by Chatterton, have ever been produced. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Bristol antiquaries, rather a large body, were all agog with excitement. Ultimately they discovered that the unknown contributor, of whom the editor could say nothing more than that his 'copy' was subscribed Dunclinus Bristoliensis, was Thomas Chatterton the attorney's apprentice. Now the amazing credulity of these learned people is one of the least comprehensible circumstances of our poet's strange life. ”

“ But this can only happen in the case of persons of no education and totally illiterate; and such persons seldom write. It is unnecessary however to discuss this point very accurately, as nobody, I believe, will contend, that the poems attributed to Rowley are written in any provincial dialect. If there should be a few words in them, which are now more common at Bristol than at London, it should be remembered that Chatterton was of Bristol. ”

“ It is worthy of notice that the pedigree made mention of a certain Radcliffe Chatterton de Chatterton, but Burgum's suspicions were not aroused by the circumstance.
In July 1765, that is to say when the boy was aged about 13, the authorities of Colston's Hospital apprenticed him to John Lambert, a Bristol attorney. He had chosen the calling himself, but it was not long before the life became intolerable to him. It was arranged that he should board with Lambert, and the attorney made him share a bedroom with the foot-boy and eat his meals in the kitchen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In these cases, I think, there is a just ground for believing, that the words as well as their interpretations came from the hand of Chatterton, especially as they may be proved very often to have taken their rise either from blunders of Skinner himself, or from such mistakes and misapprehensions of his meaning as Chatterton, from haste and ignorance, was very likely to fall into. ”

“ In the letter just mentioned he gives the following account of his reception, with some curious observations upon political writing: "The Lord Mayor received me as politely as a citizen could. But the devil of the matter is, there is no money to be got of this side of the question.—But he is a poor author who cannot write on both sides.—Essays on the patriotic side will fetch no more than what the copy is sold for. As the patriots themselves are searching for a place, they have no gratuity to spare.—On the other hand, unpopular essays will not even be accepted ”

“ 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. ”

“ ÆLLA, atte WATCHETTE.
Curse onne mie tardie woundes! brynge mee a stede!
I wylle awaie to Birtha bie thys nyghte:
Albeytte fro mie woundes mie soul doe blede,
I wylle awaie, & die wythynne her syghte.
Brynge mee a stede, wythe eagle-wynges for flyghte; 910
Swefte as mie wyshe, &, as mie love ys, stronge.
The Danes have wroughte mee myckle woe ynne syghte,
Inne kepeynge mee from Birtha's armes so longe.
O! whatte a dome was myne, sythe masterie
Canne yeve ne pleasaunce, nor mie londes goode leme myne eie! 915
Yee goddes, howe ys a loverres temper formed! ”

“ And use the sexes for the purpose gevene.
(Storie of William Canynge)
has an absurd affectation of straightforward good sense divested of sentiment which could not appeal to any one on a higher plane of civilization than a medical student.
And this is easily explicable if only it is borne in mind that the Rowley poems were written by a boy, and that such lovely things as the Dirge in Ælla suggest a maturity that Chatterton did not by any means perfectly possess. In some respects he was as childish (to use the word in no contemptuous sense) as in others he was precocious. ”

“ Soe wylle wee beere the Dacyanne armie downe,
And throughe a storme of blodde wyll reache the champyon crowne.
(Ælla, 631.)
Loverdes, how doughtilie the tylterrs joyne!
(Tournament, 92.) .
In fine, there is no poet, one may boldly declare, whose pages are so filled with battle, murder and sudden death, as Chatterton's are; and this is perhaps the clearest indication he gives of immaturity.
But if his ideas were sometimes crude and boyish they were not by any means always so; he has flashes of genius, sudden beauties that take away the breath. ”

“ Professor Skeat indeed estimates that of the words contained in Milles' Glossary to the Rowley Poems only seven percent are genuine old words correctly used. The Professor in his modernized edition is continually pointing out with kindly reluctance that such and such a word never bore the meaning ascribed to it—that because, for instance, Bailey had explained Teres major as a smooth muscle of the arm it was not therefore any legitimate inference of Chatterton's that tere (singular form) meant a muscle and could be translated 'health'. ”

“ Again, he was not restrained from a contemplation of suicide by any scruples of religion—for he has left his views expressed in an article written some few days before his death. He believed in a daemon or conscience which prompted every man to follow good and avoid evil; but—different men different daemons—his held self-slaughter justified when life became intolerable ”