The Rowley Poems. Thomas Chatterton
of the Rowley fiction—which might be metaphorically described as a motley edifice, half castle and half cathedral, to which Chatterton all his life was continually adding columns and buttresses, domes and spires, pediments and minarets, in the shape of more poems by Thomas Rowley (a secular priest of St. John's, Bristol); or by his patron the munificent William Canynge (many times Mayor of the same city); or by Sir Thibbot Gorges, a knight of ancient family with literary tastes; or by good Bishop Carpenter (of Worcester) or John à Iscam (a Canon of St. Augustine's Abbey, also in Bristol); together with plays or portions of plays which they wrote—a Saxon epic translated—accounts of Architecture—songs and eclogues—and friendly letters in rhyme or prose. In short, this clever imaginative lad had evolved before he was sixteen such a mass of literary and quasi-historical matter of one kind or another that his fictitious circle of men of taste and learning (living in the dark and unenlightened age of Lydgate and the other tedious post-Chaucerians) may with study become extraordinarily familiar and near to us, and was certainly to Chatterton himself quite as real and vivid as the dull actualities of Colston's Hospital and the Bristol of his proper century.
Chatterton's own circle of acquaintance was far less brilliant. 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'. 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. Another of his audience was Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, who collected materials for a history of Bristol, which, when published after the boy-poet's death, was found to contain contributions (supplied by Chatterton) in the unmistakable and unique 'Rowleian' language—valuable evidence about old Bristol miraculously preserved in Rowley's chest.
We hear also of Michael Clayfield, a distiller, one of the very few men in Bristol whom Chatterton admired and respected; of Baker, the poet's bedfellow at Colston's, for whom Chatterton wrote love poems, as Cyrano de Bergerac did for Christian de Neuvillette, to the address of a certain Miss Hoyland—thin, conventional silly stuff, but Roxane was probably not very critical; of Catcott's brother, the Rev. A. Catcott, who had a fine library and was the author of a treatise on the Deluge; of Smith, a schoolfellow; of Palmer an engraver, and a number of others—mere names for the most part. 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. For Burgum the poet invented, and pretended to derive from numerous authorities (some of which are wholly imaginary), a magnificent pedigree showing him descended from a Simon de Seyncte Lyse alias Senliz Earl of Northampton who had come over with the Conqueror. To this he appended a portion of a poem not included in this edition, entitled the 'Romaunte of the Cnyghte', composed by John de Bergham about A.D. 1320. It was some years before Mr. Burgum applied to the College of Heralds to have his pedigree ratified, but when he did so he was informed that there had never been a de Bergham entitled to bear arms.
With a second instalment of the genealogical table were copies of the poems called The Tournament and The Gouler's (i.e. Usurer's) Requiem, which are printed in this volume. Mr. Burgum was completely taken in, and, exulting in his new-found dignity, acknowledged the announcement of his splendid birth with a present of five shillings. 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. Further, though his sister has recorded that the work was light, the practice being inconsiderable, Lambert always tore up any writing of Chatterton's that he could find if it did not relate to his business. 'Your stuff!' he would say. Nevertheless he admitted that his apprentice was always to be found at his desk, for he often sent the footman in to see. And no doubt on some of these occasions Chatterton was copying the legal precedents of which 370 folio pages, neatly written in a well-formed handwriting, remain to this day as evidence of legitimate industry. At other times he was certainly composing poems by Rowley.
Perhaps at this point it would be well to give some account of Chatterton's method in the production of ancient writings. First it seems he wrote the matter in the ordinary English of his day. Then he would with the help of an English-Rowley and Rowley-English Dictionary (which he had laboriously compiled for himself out of the vocabulary to Speght's Chaucer, Bailey's Universal Etymological Dictionary, and Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum) translate the work into what he probably thought was a very fair imitation of fifteenth century language. His spelling Professor Skeat characterizes as 'that debased kind which prevails in Chevy Chase and the Battle of Otterbourn in Percy's Reliques, only a little more disguised.' Percy's Reliques were not published till 1765, but it is natural to suppose that Chatterton when he was 'wildly squandering all he got On books and learning and the Lord knows what,' and thereby involving himself in some little debt, would have bought the volume very soon after its publication. Finally as to the production of 'an original'. We have two accounts; one of which represents the pseudo-Rowley rubbing a parchment upon a dirty floor after smearing it with ochre and saying 'that was the way to antiquate it'; the other, even more explicit, is the testimony of a local chemist, one Rudhall, who was for some time a close friend of Chatterton's. The incident in which Rudhall appears is worth relating at length.
In the month of September 1768 an event of some importance occurred at Bristol—a new bridge that had been built across the Avon to supersede a structure dating from the reign of the second Henry being formally thrown open for traffic. At the time when this was the general talk of the city Chatterton had left with the editor of Felix Farley's Bristol Journal a description of the 'Fryars passing over the Old Bridge taken from an ancient manuscript.' This account was in the best Rowleian manner, with strange spelling and uncouth words, but for the most part quite intelligible to the ordinary reader. The editor accordingly published it (no payment being asked) and great curiosity was aroused in consequence. Where had this most interesting document come from? Were there others like it? 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. For on being asked how he had come by his MSS. he refused at first to give any answer. Then he said he was employed to transcribe some old writings by 'a gentleman whom he had supplied with poetry to send to a lady the gentleman was in love with'—the excuse being suggested no doubt by the case of Miss Hoyland and his friend Baker. Finally when, as we can only conclude, this explanation was disproved or disbelieved, he announced that the account was copied from a manuscript his father had taken from Rowley's chest. And this explanation was considered perfectly satisfactory.
Yet it seemed obvious that the antiquaries would demand to see the manuscript, and Chatterton, contrary to his usual practice of secrecy, called upon his friend Rudhall and, having made him promise to tell nothing of what he should show him, took a piece