The Rowley Poems. Thomas Chatterton
epistolary form, calling it Love and Madness. This is quite worth reading for its own sake, but much more so for its 49th letter, which purports to have been written by Hackman to satisfy Miss Reay's curiosity about Chatterton. As a matter of fact Croft, who had been very interested in the boy-poet and had collected from his relations and those with whom he had lodged in London all they could possibly tell him, wrote the letter himself and included it rather inartistically among the genuine Hackman-Reay correspondence. Amongst other valuable matter, this letter 49 contains a long account of her brother by Mary Chatterton.—(See Love letters of Mr. Hackman and Miss Reay, 1775–79, introduction by Gilbert Burgess: Heinemann, 1895.) 1774–81. Warton's History of English Poetry, in Volume II of which there is an account of Chatterton.
1781. Jacob Bryant's Observations upon the Poems of T. Rowley in which the authenticity of those poems is ascertained. Bryant was a strong Pro-Rowleian and argues cleverly against the possibility of Chatterton's having written the poems. He shows that Chatterton in his notes often misses Rowley's meaning and insists that he neglected to explain obvious difficulties because he could not understand them. Bryant is the least absurd of the Pro-Rowleians.
1782. Dean Milles' edition of the Rowley poems—a splendid quarto with a running commentary attempting to vindicate Rowley's authenticity. Milles was President of the Society of Antiquaries and his commentary is characterized by Professor Skeat as 'perhaps the most surprising trash in the way of notes that was ever penned.
1782. Mathias' Essay on the Evidence … relating to the poems called Rowley's—he is pro-Rowleian and criticizes Tyrwhitt's appendix.
1782. Thomas Warton's Enquiry … into the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley—Anti-Rowleian.
1782. Tyrwhitt's Vindication of his Appendix. Tyrwhitt had discovered Chatterton's use of Bailey's Dictionary and completely refutes Bryant, Milles, and Mathias. It may be observed in passing that though Goldsmith upheld Rowley, Dr. Johnson, the two Wartons, Steevens, Percy, Dr. Farmer, and Sir H. Croft pronounced unhesitatingly in favour of the poems having been written by Chatterton: while Malone in a mocking anti-Rowleian pamphlet shows that the similes from Homer in the Battle of Hastings and elsewhere have often borrowed their rhymes from Pope!
1798. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse by Edward Gardner (two volumes). At the end of Volume II there is a short account of the Rowley controversy and, what is more important, the statement that Gardner had seen Chatterton antiquate a parchment and had heard him say that a person who had studied antiquities could with the aid of certain books (among them Bailey) 'copy the style of our elder poets so exactly that the most skilful observer should not be able to detect him. "No," said he, "not Mr. Walpole himself."' But perhaps this should be taken cum grano.
1803. Southey and Cottle's edition in three volumes with an account of Chatterton by Dr. Gregory which had previously been published as an independent book. Southey and Cottle's edition is very compendious so far as matter goes, and contains much that is printed for the first time. Gregory's life is inaccurate but very pleasantly written.
1837. Dix's life of Chatterton, with a frontispiece portrait of Chatterton aged 12 which was for a long time believed to be authentic. No genuine portrait of Chatterton is known to be in existence; probably none was ever made. Dix's life, not a remarkable work in itself, has some interesting appendices; one of which contains a story—extraordinary enough but well supported—that Chatterton's body, which had received a pauper's burial in London, was secretly reburied in St. Mary's churchyard by his uncle the Sexton.
1842. Willcox's edition printed at Cambridge; on the whole a slovenly piece of work with a villainously written introduction.
1854. George Pryce's Memorials of Canynges Family; which contains some notes of the coroner's inquest on Chatterton's body, which would have been most interesting if authentic, but were in fact forged by one Gutch.
1856. Chatterton: a biography by Professor Masson—published originally in a volume of collected essays; re-published and in part re-written as an independent volume in 1899. The Professor reconstructs scenes in which Chatterton played a part; but it is suggested (with diffidence) that his treatment is too sentimental, and the boy-poet is Georgy-porgied in a way that would have driven him out of his senses, if he could have foreseen it. The picture is fundamentally false.
1857. An Essay on Chatterton by S.R. Maitland, D.D., F.R.S., and F.S.A. A very monument of ignorant perversity. The writer shamelessly distorts facts to show that Chatterton was an utterly profligate blackguard and declares finally that neither Rowley nor Chatterton wrote the poems.
1869. Professor D. Wilson's Chatterton: a Biographical Study, and
1871. Professor W.W. Skeat's Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (in modernized English) of which mention has been made above.
1898. A beautifully printed edition of the Rowley poems with decorated borders, edited by Robert Steele. (Ballantyne Press.)
1905 and 1909. The works of Chatterton, with the Rowley poems in modernized English, edited with a brief introduction by Sidney Lee.
1910. The True Chatterton—a new study from original documents by John H. Ingram. (Fisher Unwin.)
Besides all these serious presentations of Chatterton there are a number of burlesques—such as Rowley and Chatterton in the Shades (1782) and An Archæological Epistle to Jeremiah Milles (1782), which are clever and amusing, and three plays, two in English, and one in French by Alfred de Vigny, which represents the love affair of Chatterton and an apocryphal Mme. Kitty Bell.
The whole of Chatterton's writings—Rowley, acknowledged poems, and private letters, have been translated into French prose. Oeuvres complètes de Thomas Chatterton traduites par Javelin Pagnon, précédées d'une Vie de Chatterton par A. Callet (1839). Callet's treatment of Chatterton is very sympathetic and interesting.
Finally for further works on Chatterton the reader is referred to Bohn's Edition of Lowndes' Bibliographer's Manual—but the most important have been enumerated above.
IV. NOTE ON THE TEXT.
This edition is a reprint of Tyrwhitt's third (1778) edition, which it follows page for page (except the glossary; see note on p. 291). The reference numbers in text and glossary, which are often wrong in 1778, have been corrected; line-numbers have been corrected when wrong, and added to one or two poems which are without them in 1778, and the text has been collated throughout with that of 1777 and corrected from it in many places where the 1778 printer was at fault. These corrections have been made silently; all other corrections and additions are indicated by footnotes enclosed in square brackets.
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.