Chapter VI: Appendix (1)

The following account of the life of Chatterton, which Croft prefaces with a few sentences in clumsy imitation of Hackman’s style, is copied from a reprint of “Love and Madness,” which was issued by an Ipswich bookseller in 1810. It is more connected and concise than the versions in the earlier editions.

* * * * *

The task you have set me about Chatterton is only a further proof of your regard for me. You know the warmth of my passions, and you think that if I do not employ myself they may flame out and consume me. Well, then, I will spend a morning or two in arranging what I have collected respecting the author of Rowley’s poems. Every syllable you will read I assure you shall be _authentic_.

Did you start at “The author of Rowley’s poems?” My mind does not now harbour a doubt that Chatterton wrote the whole, whatever I thought when we read them together at H. The internal evidence of the matter shall not puzzle you, but you shall tell me whether you do not think it easier for Chatterton to have imitated the style of Rowley’s age (which he has not done exactly, if you believe those who think as I think), than for Rowley to write in a style which did not exist till so many ages after his time. To suppose him to have found half, and to have added to them, or to consider him as a cat’s paw in the business to some contemporary Rowley, in order to extricate a fictitious Rowley from oblivion, would in my humble opinion be nonsense. For my own part, though he might find some old MSS., I cannot believe he found a syllable which he has attributed to Rowley. Who will engage to prove from internal evidence the antiquity of _any one_ of Rowley’s compositions? What he did find certainly suggested to him the idea of pretending to have found more; but how shall we persuade credulity to believe that all Rowley’s poems were copied from old MSS., when the only MSS. produced in confirmation of the story are indisputably proved to be modern? Is any one fool enough to believe C. was the only blind, subterraneous channel through which these things were to emerge to-day, and float for ever down the stream of fame? This (without mentioning other objections to such a ridiculous belief) were to suppose two people to determine on the same strange conduct, and two people (the real and the foster father) to keep with equal fidelity the same secret. And would the foster father have been as fond and careful of another’s secret, as of the offspring of his own invention?

It is not clear to me that C.’s life (if such a scrap of existence can be called a life) does not exhibit circumstances still more extraordinary, if possible, than his being the author of Rowley’s poems. But I possess not the abilities which Johnson displayed in his famous life of Savage, nor is this a formal life of Chatterton; though such a thing might well employ even the pen of Johnson. This is only an idle letter to my dear M. Oh, my M., you, who contributed so liberally last year to extricate from distress the abilities of a——; what would you not have done for Chatterton!

Thomas Chatterton, destined to puzzle at least, if not to impose upon, the ablest critics and antiquarians which the most polished age of England has produced, was born at Bristol, Nov. 20, 1752. His father had been master of the free school in Pile Street in that city, and was sexton of St. Mary Redcliffe Church. History condescends not to relate anything more of such an ignoble family, than that they had been sextons of the same church for near a century and a half.

It seems to have been determined by fortune that this poor lad—I ought rather to say this extraordinary human being—should have no obligation but to genius and himself. His father, as he was a schoolmaster, and reported to have been a tolerable poet for a sexton, might perhaps have given his son a free-school education, had he lived to see him old enough for instruction. The sexton died very soon after, if not before, the birth of his son; who indisputably received no other education than what he picked up at a charity school at a place called St. Augustine’s Back in Bristol. Reading, writing, and accounts, composed the whole circle of sciences which were taught at this university of our Bristol Shakespeare.

On July 1, 1767, he was articled clerk to an attorney of Bristol, whom I have not been able to find out. From him, I understand, has been procured a strange, mad MS. of Chatterton, which he called his _will_.

When the new bridge at Bristol was finished, there appeared, in Farly’s _Bristol Journal_, an account of the ceremonies on opening the old bridge (the piece is prefixed to the volume of Chatterton’s “Miscellanies”), preceded by these words: “To the Printer. Oct. 1, 1768. The following description of the ‘fryars’ first passing over the old bridge, taken from an old MS., may not at this time be unacceptable to the generality of your readers. Yours, Dunhelmus Bristoliensis.” Curiosity at last traced the insertion of this curious memoir to Chatterton. To the threats of those who treated him (agreeably to his age and appearance) as a child, he returned nothing but haughtiness and a refusal to give any account. To milder usages and many promises, the boy, after some time, confessed that he had received that and other MSS. from his father, which he had found in an iron chest placed by William Canynge (the founder of the church of which C.’s family had so long been sextons) in a muniment room over the northern portico of St. Mary Redcliffe. Warton (in his history of English poetry) says when this appeared he was about seventeen. Days are more material in C.’s life than years in the lives of others. He wanted, you see, something of sixteen. One fact is curious, that, though it was not possible for him to have picked up Latin at a charity school where Latin was not taught, his note to the printer has, for no apparent reason, a Latin signature, Dunhelmus Bristoliensis. This Latin certainly was not Rowley’s. It must have been C.’s. The memoir procured C. the acquaintance of some gentlemen of Bristol, who, because they condescended to receive from him the compositions which he brought them, without giving him much, if anything, in return, fondly imagined themselves the patrons of genius. Mr. Catcott and Mr. Barrett, a pewterer and a surgeon, of his obligations to whom he speaks in his letters, were his principal, if not his only, patrons. To these gentlemen he produced, between October 1768 and April 1770 (besides many things which he confessed to be his own, and many which, in the interval, appeared in the _Town and Country Magazine_), all Rowley’s poems, except the “Ballad of Charitie.” Of these only two, I think, and those the shortest, he pretended to be the original MSS. The rest were transcripts, in his own hand, of some of which he acknowledged himself the author. Concerning these curiosities no distinct or satisfactory account, by friend or enemy, by threat or promise, could ever be drawn from him. For these curiosities how much he received from his Bristol patrons does not appear. His patrons do not boast of their generosity to him. They (Catcott at least) received no inconsiderable sum for Rowley’s poems; nor has the sale of them turned out badly. In consequence of the money got by poems which Chatterton certainly brought to light, and which I firmly believe C. to have written, his mother acknowledges to have received the immense sum of five guineas, by the hands of Mr. Catcott; and Mr. Barrett, without fee or reward, cured the whitlowed finger of the sister. Talk no more of the neglect of genius in any age or country, when _in this age and country_ Rowley’s poems have produced such fortunes to the author and his family. Should I ever appear in print on this subject, I would publicly call upon the gentlemen concerned in this transaction to state their accounts.

Has not the world a right to know what Catcott fairly bought of Chatterton (he does not pretend to have bought all), and what was the fair purchase-money of these inestimable treasures? Let us know what the editors of Rowley’s poems gave and received for them, and what the sale of them has produced? Is the son to be declared guilty of forgery? Are his forgeries to be converted into (I believe, no inconsiderable sums of) money? And is the mother and sister’s share to be five guineas?

Either mean envy of C.’s extraordinary genius, or manly abhorrence of his detestable death, leads almost every person, who talks or writes about this boy, to tell you of his shocking profligacy and his total want of principle.

When C. left this world in August, 1770, he wanted as many months as intervene between August and November to complete his eighteenth year. If into so small a space he had contrived to crowd much profligacy and much want of principle, some perhaps may be ascribed to his youth, and to want of friends. Johnson, I remember, defends even the life of Savage, which differed from Chatterton’s in more circumstances than its length, by some such observation as this: that the sons of affluence are improper judges of his conduct, and that few wise men will venture to affirm they should have lived better than Savage in Savage’s situation. Do _profligate_ and _unprincipled_, some of the tenderest epithets vouchsafed unto poor Chatterton, mean dishonest or undutiful, an unkind brother or an unfeeling child? The dullest enemies of his genius can produce no proofs of any such crime. Some of the papers that I shall send you will contain the fullest proof of the negative. Do they mean that, being a young man, he was addicted to women, like all youths of strong imaginations? Do the epithets mean that he exhibited those damnable proofs of his crimes which Bougainville exported into the country of Omiah? The proofs (if there were any, which his bedfellow at his first lodging in town denies) only show that he was unlucky. The crimes must be admitted. Do they mean that, writing to procure bread for himself, his mother, and his sister, he wrote on any side and on any subject which would afford bread?

Let me now make you acquainted with the indisputable history of this boy till he left Bristol. As he says, in his “Story of Canynge.”

In all his sheepen gambols, and child’s play,
At every merry-making, fair or wake,
I kenn a purpled light of wisdom’s ray;
He ate down learning with the wastle cake,
As wise as any of the aldermen,
He’d wit enough to make a mayor at ten.

Beattie has hardly been able to invent a more striking picture of his minstrel than is exhibited of Chatterton in a letter written by his sister, last year, to a gentleman who desired her to recollect every circumstance concerning him, however trifling it might seem to her. The letter is lent to me, with many charges of care. Pray be careful of it. In transcribing it, you will naturally preserve the false spelling and stops. Let Chatterton’s sister tell her own story in her own way. The anxiety shown in this letter to prove “he was a lover of truth from the earliest dawn of reason,” is owing to what these two poor women (the mother and sister) have heard about deceit, imposter and _forgery_. For Chatterton’s sake the English language should add another word to its dictionary; and should not suffer the same term to signify a crime for which a man suffers the most ignominious punishment, and the deception of ascribing a false antiquity of two or three centuries to compositions, for which the author’s name deserves to live for ever. Suffer me to ask what the prudery of our critics would have said had the song to Ælla, or the chorus to Godwin, been produced by Mr. Warton’s nephew, or by a relation of Mr. Walpole? Should we then have been stunned in this manner with repetitions of imposter and forgery? The sins of the forgery and the imposter would then have been boasted by the child’s most distant relations, unto the third and fourth generations. Is lady A. L. accused of _forgery_ for her “Auld Robin Gray?” Is Macpherson’s name mentioned in the same sentence with this unfeeling word _forgery_, even by those who believe Macpherson and Ossian to be the same? “When a rich man speaketh,” says the son of Sirach (you see I have not taken orders in vain), “every man holdeth his tongue: and lo! what he says is extolled to the clouds: but if a poor man speak, they say, ‘What fellow is this?’”

A gentleman, who saw these two women last year, declares that, in his opinion, they might easily have been persuaded that injured justice demanded their lives at Tyburn, for being the mother and sister of him who was suspected to have _forged_ the poems of Rowley. Such terror had the humanity of certain curious enquirers impressed upon their minds, by worrying them to declare the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the _forgery_. Strange-fated Chatterton! Hadst thou possessed fewer and less eminent abilities, the world would now give thee credit for more and for greater.

With regard to the fact, the mother and sister, either believe, or pretend to believe, that all Rowley’s poems came out of the old chest in the church. The case is, not one of the three knows anything of the matter. Most readily I admit that, if Chatterton be an impostor (_i.e._, the wonderful human being I firmly believe him), he imposed upon every soul who knew him. This, with me, is one trait of his greatness.

It has been thought that murders and other crimes are pointed out to discovery by the finger of Providence. But “God’s revenge against murder” is, in fact, only the sociableness of man’s disposition. That we may have been wisely formed for this purpose, among others, I do not deny. But Tyburn would see fewer executions were man a less sociable animal. It is not good for him to be alone. Joy or sorrow, villainy or otherwise, _we must have society, we must communicate it_. Man, in spite of grammar, is a noun adjective. Does any one admire Junius for saying that his secret should die with him, and for keeping his word? But this was only saying he would not enlarge the circle of those to whom his secret was already known, for that he was, as he says, “the sole depositary of his own secret,” I cannot think.

The original letters are clearly written in a female hand. But Junius is now known.

Let any man, at any time of life, make an experiment of not communicating to a single individual, during twelve months, a single scheme, a single prospect, a single circumstance respecting himself. Let him try how it is to lock up everything, trifling or serious, sad or merry, within his own solitary breast. There are easier tasks. This boy did it during his whole life.

Very few such men as John the Painter[13] have appeared in the world, from whom his secret was only stolen by the traitorous hand of friendship. No such human being as this boy, at any period of life, has ever been known, or possibly ever will be known. The Spartan lad was far inferior, and that was the effect of education. Psalmanazar and D’Eon are not to be compared with him. That, at his timid and sociable age, when other children are almost afraid to be left alone, Chatterton should wrap his arms round him, stand aloof from the whole world, and never lean upon a single individual for society in his schemes (in schemes, too, neither odious nor criminal), is with me almost more wonderful than the schemes which I firmly believe him, without any assistance, to have planned and executed. It shall make a trait in the character of a general, if he have strength of mind enough not to communicate his plans to his first favourite, till the communication is no longer dangerous. Shall not a boy of eighteen, of seventeen, of _sixteen_, have merit for secrecy much more singular?

[13] Do not smile at my lugging in John the Painter till you consider how it applies. His secrecy was wonderful, yet less wonderful that Chatterton’s in exact proportion as his secret was more criminal, and more nearly concerned his life. But you will not deny it to be _odd_, what I know for a fact, that among his papers were some observations on Rowley’s poems. If they have not been destroyed, they might surely be published. They could not endanger our dockyards, though written by John the Painter. Cannot you give a hint of this kind, some day, at your house? Most probably _he_ has them.

In one part of the sister’s letter, you will not fail to recollect Dryden, who speaks of the alliance between understanding and madness. I am sure that “Love and Madness” are near relations.

* * * * *

“Conscious, of my own inability’s to write to a man of letters. And reluctant to engage in the painful recollection of the particulars of the life of my poor deceased brother. Together with the ill-state of health I’ve enjoyed since it has been required of me, are Sir, the real causes of my not writing sooner. But I am invited to write as to a friend, inspired with the sacred name, I will forget the incorrectness of my epistle and proceed.

“My brother very early discover’d a thurst for preheminence, I remember before he was 5 years old he would always preside over his play mates as their master and they his hired servants. He was dull in learning not knowing many letters at 4 years old, and always objected to read in a small book. He learnt the Alphabet from an old Folio musick book of father’s my mother was then tearing up for waste paper, the capitals at the beginning of the verses. I assisted in teaching him. I recollect nothing remarkable till he went into the school, which was in his 8th year. Excepting his promising my mother and me a deal of finery when he grew up as a reward of her care. About his 10th year he began (with the trifle my mother allowed him for pocket money) to hire books from the circulating library and we were informed by the usher made rapid progress in arithmetick. Between his 11th and 12th year he wrote a caterlogue of the books he had read to the number of 70. History and divinity were the chief subjects, his school mates informed us he retired to read at the hours allotted for play. At 12 years old he was confirmed by the bishop, he made very sencible serious remarks on the awfullness of the ceremony and his own feelings and convictions during it. Soon after this in the week he was door-keeper he made some verses on the last day, I think about 18 lines, paraphrased the 9 chapter of Job and not long after some chapters in Isaiah. He had been gloomy from the time he began to learn, but we remark’d he was more cheerfull after he began to write poetry. Some saterical peicis we saw soon after. His intimates in the school were but few and they solid lads and except the next neighbour’s sons I know of none acquaintance he had out. He was 14 the 20th of Novr. and bound apprentice the 1st of July following. Soon after his apprenticeship he corresponded with one of his school mates that had been his bedfellow, and was I believe bound to a merchant at New York. He read a letter at home that he wrote to his friend, a collection of all the hard words in the English language, and requested him to answer it. He was a lover of truth from the earlyest dawn of reason, and nothing would move him so much as being bely’d. When in the school we were informed by the usher, his master depended on his verasity on all occations. Till this time he was remarkably indifferent to females, one day he was remarking to me the tendency sever study had to sour the temper and declared he had always seen all the sex with equal indifference but those that nature made dear, he thought of makeing an acquaintance with a girl in the neighbourhood, supposeing it might soften the austerity of temper study had ocationed, he wrote a poem to her and they commenced corrisponding acquaintance. About this time the parchments belonging to my father that was left of covering his boys books, my brother carried to the office. He would often speak in great raptures of the undoubted success of his plan for future life. He was introduced to Mr. Barret, Mr. Catcot, his ambition increas’d daily. His spirits was rather uneven. Some time so gloom’d that for many days together he would say very little and that by constraint. At other times exceeding chearfull. When in spirits he would injoy his rising fame. Confident of advancement he would promise my mother and me should be partakers of his success. Mr. Barret lent him many books on surgery and I believe he bought many more as I remember to have packt them up to send to him when in London and no demand was ever made for them. About this time he wrote several saterical poems. One in the papers of Mr. Catcot’s putting the pewter plates in St. Nicholas tower. He began to be universally known among the young men. He had many cap acquaintance but I am confident but few intimates. At about 17, he became acquainted with Mr. Clayfield, distiller in Castle-street, who lent him many books on astronomy. Mr. Cator likewise assisted him with books on that subject, from thence he applyd himself to that study. His hours in the office was from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening. He had little of his masters business to do. Sometimes not 2 hours in the day, which gave him an opportunity to pursue his genius. He boarded at Mr. Lambert’s, but we saw him most evenings before 9 o’clock and would in general stay to the limits of his time which was 10 o’clock. He was seldom 2 evenings together without seeing us. I had almost forgotten to add, we had heard him frequently say that he found he studied best towards the full of the moon and would often sit up all night and write by moon light. A few months before he left Bristol he wrote letters to several booksellers in London I believe to learn if there was any probability of his getting an employment there but that I cannot affirm as the subject was a secret at home. He wrote one letter to Sir Horace Warpool, and except his corrispondence with Miss Rumsey, the girl I before mentioned, I know of no other. He would frequently walk the colledge green with the young girls that statedly paraded there to show their finery. But I really believe he was no debauchee (tho some have reported it), the dear unhappy boy had faults enough I saw with concern. He was proud and exceedingly impetious but that of venality he could not be accused justly with. Mrs. Lambert informed me not 2 months before he left Bristol, he had never been once found out of the office in the stated hours as they frequently sent the footman and other servants there to see. Nor but once stayd out till 11 o’clock; then he had leave, as we entertained some friends at our house at Christmas.

“Thus Sir have I given you, as before the great searcher of hearts the whole truth as far as my memory have been faithful the particulars of my dear brother. The task have been painfull, and for want of earlier recollection much have been nay the greatest part have been lost. My mother joins with me in best respects which conclude me.

“Sir,
“Your very humble servant,
“+Mary Newton+.
“+Bristol, Somersetshire Square+,
“_Sept. 22, 1778_.”

Chatterton remained in the attorney’s office at Bristol till April 1770. The life he led there you may collect from Mrs. Newton’s letter. In addition to that, she and her mother relate that his Sundays were generally spent in walking alone into the country round Bristol, as far as the day would allow his return before night. From these excursions he never failed to bring home with him drawings of churches, or of something which had struck him. That he had a turn of drawing you will see by the figure of a warrior (perhaps Ælla) presenting a church on his knee, which shall accompany this letter (and you are now a judge of drawing, you know). It was one of his first attempts.

But any single self-acquired accomplishment ceases to surprise, when we recollect his other acquisitions of heraldry, architecture, music, astronomy, surgery, &c. Our surprise has been long since called forth. Had Chatterton, without any instruction but reading, writing, and accounts, _before he was 18_, arrived at the ability of _only_ putting together, in prose or in verse, something which was deemed worth insertion in the most worthless magazine, it would have been surprising. What master would not be astonished to discover such a talent in a servant (grown grey in the acquisition of it) who had only learnt to read and write? Stephen Duck, and others, have been lifted to independence, to wealth, for little more. The author of our existence can alone determine to what He has made his creatures equal.

That Chatterton should acquire particular things, without instruction, is not singular, since it was with him a favourite maxim that man was equal to _anything_ and that _everything_ might be acquired by diligence and abstinence. Was anything of this sort mentioned in his hearing? All boy as he was, he would only observe that the person in question merited praise; but that God had sent His creatures into the world with arms long enough to reach anything, if they would be at the trouble of extending them. This idea he could not but feel confirmed by what he knew of a Mr. Burgum (I think), Mr. Catcott’s partner, who taught himself Latin and Greek.

How very strongly the idea, that a human being may accomplish anything, had taken possession of Chatterton. He desires his sister to improve herself in copying music, drawing, and _everything which requires genius_; as if genius were no less common to man and woman than a pair of eyes or a nose. He gave all his fellow-creatures credit for what he felt so plainly himself.

When Voltaire tells us, in his history of Charles XII., that on such a day he quitted Stockholm, _to which he never returned_, we are interested enough, even in such a savage, to feel something like concern. In April 1770 Chatterton quitted Bristol (from which place he never had before been absent further than he could walk in half a Sunday, and to which place _he never returned_), to try his fortune in London.

He lodged first at Shoreditch, afterwards (when his employment made it necessary for him to frequent public places, I suppose) in Brook Street, Holborn. The man and woman where he first lodged are still living in the same house. He is a plaisterer. They and their nephew, niece, and Mrs. Ballance, who lodged in the house, and desired them to let Chatterton (her relation) lodge there also. The little collected from them you shall have in their own words. But the life he led did not afford them any opportunities to observe him, could they have imagined that such a being was under the same roof with them, or that they would be asked for their observations upon him, after an interval of so many years. Mrs. Ballance says he was as proud as Lucifer. He very soon quarrelled with her for calling him “Cousin _Tommy_,” and asked her if she ever heard of a poet’s being called _Tommy?_ But she assured him she knew nothing of poets, and only wished he would not set up for a gentleman. Upon her recommending it to him to get into some office, when he had been in town two or three weeks, he stormed about the room like a madman, and frightened her not a little by telling her, he hoped, with the blessing of God, very soon to be sent prisoner to the Tower, which would make his fortune. He would often look steadfastly in a person’s face without speaking, or seeming to see the person, for a quarter of an hour or more, till it was quite frightful, during all which time (she supposes, from what she has since heard) that his thoughts _were gone about something else_. When Beckford died, he was perfectly frantic, and out of his mind, and said he was ruined. He frequently said he should settle the nation before he had done; but how could she think her poor cousin Tommy was so great a man as she now finds he was? His mother should have written word of his greatness, and then, to be sure, she would have humoured the gentleman accordingly. Mr. Walmsley saw nothing of him, but that there was something manly and pleasing about him, and that he did not dislike the wenches. Mrs. Walmsley’s account is that she never saw any harm of him, that he never _mislisted_ her; but was always very civil whenever they met in the house by accident; that he would never suffer the room, in which he used to read and write, to be swept, because, he said, poets hated brooms; that she told him she did not anything that _poet folks_ were good for, but to sit in a dirty cap and gown in a garret, and at last to be starved; that, during the nine weeks he was at her house, he never stayed out after the family hours, except once, when he did not come home all night, and had been, she heard, _poeting_ a song about the streets. The night, Mrs. Ballance says, she knows he lodged at a relation’s; Mr. Walmsley’s house was shut up when he came home.

The niece says, for her part, she always took him more for a mad boy than anything else, he would have such flights and _vagaries_; that, but for his face, and her knowledge of his age, she should never have thought him a boy, he was so manly, _and so much himself_; that no women came after him, nor did she know of any connection; but still that he was a sad rake, and terribly fond of women, and would sometimes be saucy to her; that he ate what he chose to have with his relation (Mrs. B.) who lodged in the house, but he never touched meat, and drank only water and seemed to live on the air.

The niece adds that he was good-tempered, and agreeable, and obliging, but sadly proud and haughty; nothing was too good for him, nor was anything too good for his grandmother, &c., at a time when she (the niece) knew he was almost in want; that he used to sit up almost all night, reading and writing, and that her brother said he was afraid to lie with him; for, to be sure, he was a _spirit_, and never slept; for he never came to bed until it was morning, and then, for what he saw, never closed his eyes.

The nephew (Chatterton’s bedfellow, during the first six weeks he lodged there) says, that, notwithstanding his pride and haughtiness, it was impossible to help liking him; that he lived chiefly upon a bit of bread, or a tart, and some water, but he once or twice saw him take a sheep’s tongue out of his pocket; that Chatterton, to his knowledge, never slept while they lay together; that he never came to bed until very late, sometimes three or four o’clock, and was always awake when he (the nephew) waked, and got up at the same time, about five or six; that almost every morning the floor was covered with pieces of paper not so big as sixpences, into which he had torn what he had been writing before he came to bed. In short, they all agree that no one would have taken him, from his behaviour, &c., to have been a poor boy of seventeen, and a sexton’s son: they never saw such another person before nor since—he appeared to have something wonderful about him. They say he gave no reason for quitting their house. They found the floor of his room covered with little pieces of paper, the remains of his _poeting_, as they term it.

And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy; Deep thought oft seem’d to fix his infant eye. Dainties he heeded not, not gaude, nor toy, Save one short pipe of rudest minstrelsy. Silent, when glad; affectionate, though shy: And now his look was most demurely sad; And now he laugh’d aloud, yet none knew why. The neighbours stared and sigh’d, yet bless’d the lad _Some deem’d him wondrous wise, and some believ’d him mad._

Mrs. Angel, to whose house he removed from Shoreditch, I have in vain endeavoured repeatedly to find out. A person in distressed circumstances, as I understand her to be, is slow to believe that an inquiry after her hiding-place is only set on foot by the curiosity of honest enthusiasm. Little versed in the history of mankind, she cannot imagine how any one can be curious or concerned about a person, so many years after his death, for whom in his lifetime no one cared a farthing. Every stranger is to her imagination a bailiff in disguise. In every hasty tread she hears “the monster Bumbailiano, keeper of the dark and black cave.” Poor hunted animal! If thou wert kind to Chatterton; if, by thy charitable means, his young hairs were brought down with somewhat less of sorrow to the grave, never may the monster lay his cruel paw upon thy shoulder!

Could Mrs. Angel be found, much might not be learnt from her short knowledge of Chatterton, for he remained nine weeks in Shoreditch—at least, not much more, perhaps, than has been gotten from Mrs. Walmsley and her family. Mrs. Wolfe, a barber’s wife, within a few doors of the house in which Mrs. Angel lived, remembers him, and remembers his death. She speaks also of his proud and haughty spirit, and adds, that he appeared both to her and Mrs. Angel as if he were born for something great. Mrs. Angel told her, after his death, that, as she knew he had not eaten anything for two or three days, she begged he would take some dinner with her on the 24th of August; but he was offended at her expressions, which seemed to hint that he was in want, and assured her he was not hungry.

Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar!
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime
Hath felt the influence of malignant star,
And wag’d with fortune an eternal war!
Check’d by the scoff of pride, and envy’s frown,
And poverty’s unconquerable bar,
In life’s low vale remote hath pin’d alone,
_Then dropt into the grave, unpitied and unknown_!

Such was the short and incredible life of Thomas Chatterton. Over his death, for the sake of the world (he is out of the reach of our pity or concern), I would willingly draw a veil. But this must not be. They who are in a condition to patronise merit, and they who feel a consciousness of merit which is not patronised, may form their own resolutions from the catastrophe of his tale: those, to lose no opportunity of befriending genius; these, to seize every opportunity of befriending themselves; and, upon no account, to harbour the most distant idea of quitting the world, however it may be unworthy of them, lest despondency should at last deceive them into so unpardonable a step. Chatterton, as appears by the coroner’s inquest, swallowed arsenic in water on the 24th of August, 1770, and died in consequence thereof the next day. He was buried in a shell in the burying-ground of Shoe-land workhouse. His taking such a rash and unjustifiable step is almost as strange as his fathering his poems upon Rowley. That he should have been driven to it by _absolute_ want (though I do not say it was _not_ so) is not very possible, since he never indulged himself in meat and drank nothing but water. The coroner has no minutes of the melancholy business, and is unable to recall any of the circumstances at this distance of time to his memory. The witnesses before the inquest, as appears by his memorandum, were Frederick Angel, Mary Foster, and William Hamsley, none of whom I have been able to find out. That his despair should fix on August, that it should not have staid at least till the gloomier months of winter, must surprise those who are sensible of the influence of such a climate as ours. Recollecting what Mrs. Newton says of the effect which the moon had upon her brother, I searched for the moon’s changes in August 1770. Much cannot be presumed from them. The moon was at the full on the 6th, and in the last quarter the 14th. The 20th, at eleven at night, there was a new moon. The fatal day was the 24th. But who can bear to dwell upon, or argue about, the self-destruction of such a being as Chatterton? The motives for everything he did are past finding out.

His room, when it was broke open after his death, was found, like the room he quitted at Mrs. Walmsley’s, covered with little scraps of paper. What a picture he would have made, with the fatal cup by his bedside, destroying plans of future Ællas and Godwins, and of unfinished books of The Battle of Hastings? M. I have had the (call it what you will) to spend half an hour in the room. It was half an hour of most exquisite sensations. My visit of devotion was paid in the morning, I remember; but I was not myself again all day. To look round the room; to say to myself, here stood his bed; there the poison was set; in that window he loitered for some hours before he retired to his last rest, envying the meanest passenger, and wishing he could exchange his own feelings and intellects for their manual powers and insensibility! Then, abhorrence of his death, abhorrence of the world, and I know not how many different and contradictory but all distracting ideas! Nothing should tempt me to undergo such another half-hour.

Bristol, stand forth! Too just are even these rhymes
Without a trial to condemn thy crimes.
Come forward, answer to thy cursed name;
Stand, if thou dare, before the bar of fame.
Bristol, hold up thine hand, that damned hand
Which scatters misery over half the land,
The land of Genius!

We come now to the question of most difficulty, but of least consequence. What could induce Chatterton to lay such a plan? Was it the credit of imposing upon the world, which he was determined never to claim, since he never owned the imposition? My answer is, that I neither know nor care; and the conjectures of the _rustiest fellow_ of the Antiquarian Society cannot give an answer much more to the purpose. Are the motives of men’s and women’s conduct so plain that he who runs may read them? How much less obvious are we to expect the motives of a boy’s conduct? Chatterton, with some, with many things about him, superior to most, to all men, was still but a boy. Though he did see seventeen before his death, he must have been _literally_ a boy when he laid the foundation of his plans. If Macpherson and Ossian be the same, if Chatterton thought them to be the same, Chatterton is an original in poetry only, not in suppositiousness. Good men are satisfied with the applause of their own consciences, and scatter charity with the invisible hand of bounty. May not great men be formed in the same mould? May not obscurity appear to enlarge an ideal as well as a real object? God would, perhaps, be something less of God were He visible. But, as I said, I neither know nor care what was Chatterton’s motive.

Am I still asked for it? Like many a man in conversation, I will get off by telling a story. D’Alembert, in his pamphlet upon the destruction of the Jesuits, relates that one of the Order, who had spent twenty years upon a mission in Canada, did not believe even the existence of a God. Notwithstanding this, he had, numerous times run the hazard of his life in defence of that religion which he preached with success among the savages. To a friend, who expressed surprise at the warmth of his zeal, the missionary observed: “Ah, you have no idea of the pleasure there is in having 20,000 men to listen to you, and in persuading them what you do not believe yourself.”

By what was the scheme suggested to Chatterton’s invention? This question, it is, perhaps, still more impossible to answer, nor do I pretend to answer it. If you can ground any conjecture on a few facts I will mention, so: Psalmanazar died about the time Chatterton’s scheme was born, and bequeathed his methodistical memoirs to the world. Walpole, about the same time, endeavoured to turn a whole national current of belief with respect to Richard III., and not long before, acknowledged the imposition he had put upon the public in the preface to “Otranto.” The Douglas cause was, about the same time, in high agitation. Ossian, with Blair’s dissertation, in which the name of _Ælla_ is mentioned, had not long made its appearance. “The Concubine,” in Spenser’s manner, appeared in 1767. Percy’s “Reliques” had not long been published. Page xxiv. of the first volume (second edition, 1767), mention is made of “Colgrin, son of that _Ælla_ who was elected King of the Saxons in the room of Hengist.” Chatterton must have admired “Hardyknute” (vol. ii. p. 94), which Mrs. Wardlaw _pretended_ to have found on “shreds of paper employed for what is called the bottoms of clues,” and must have seen through the _pretended_ extract of a letter from _Canton_ to James Carland, Esq., at the end of the third volume, which vouches for the _truth_ of Percy’s _Hau Kiou Choaau_, there advertised as _translated from the Chinese_. On the 21st of January, 1769, the _invisible_ Junius printed his first letter. In May 1769, Mrs. Montague published her Essay on Shakespeare, from which it is not impossible that Chatterton’s _tindery_ ambition might catch the fire of rivalry. Farrer’s Essay on the learning of Shakespeare had appeared about a twelvemonth. In the wonderful extent of his reading, Chatterton could not be ignorant of Parnell’s imposition on Pope, by means of a pretended Leonine translation of some of his lines in the Rape of the Lock, or of Parnell’s Fairy Tale, _in the Ancient English style_. Better memories may, perhaps, recollect other things of this kind. That Chatterton had Walpole and Ossian in some measure present to his mind, is manifest from his fixing upon the same person (Mr. W.) to introduce Rowley to the world, whom Macpherson chose for Ossian. And, surely, to prove Earl Godwin a good man and true, in spite of history, is much such an attempt as Mr. Walpole’s concerning Richard. The first stanza of Canynge’s prologue to Godwin, is little more than a versification of the ingenious supposition in the article _Godwin_, in the “Biographia Britannica,” and is rather the language of our _distant_ age, than of a man writing _three hundred years nearer_ Godwin, who was not then _ungently_ treated in _so many_ histories as now.

Whilomme, by pensmen, much ungentle name
Has upon Godwin Earl of Kent been laid,
Thereby bereaving him of faith and fame.
The unforgiving clergymen have said,
That he was known to no holy wurche,
But this was all his fault, he gifted not the church.

It may be said that hardly one of the schemes which I have mentioned succeeded. Let me, in my turn, tell what Fontenelle, in his “Dialogues,” puts into the mouth of the Russian Pretender. When he is asked how he dared to assert a claim, for which two or three impostors had suffered the cruellest death, he answers, it was upon that very circumstance he grounded the probability of passing for a true man and no impostor.

Of the impossibility to prove imitation I am well aware. But for intentional imitation I do not here contend. The originality of his sublime genius would not have stooped from its height to imitate any man that ever existed. By the nature of his plan, the folding-doors of imitation were effectually shut against Chatterton. His hands were tied up from picking and stealing. What other poet, ancient or modern, except Homer (and even Homer had his ancients, perhaps), can produce an octavo volume, in the whole course of which, after a search of some years, the best and oldest heads are not able to detect him with certainty more than six or eight times? And those coincidences must of course have been the effect more of memory than design.

If Chatterton did endeavour to catch the public by other baits besides genius who can blame him?

Ill-fated Chatterton! Why didst thou not attend to _Orestes_ “On the Poverty of Authors”? (_Town and Country Magazine_, Aug. 1769, p. 399.) How couldst thou imagine that even thy parts would prevent thy adding one to his long but faithful list of the starved children of genius? Could thy penetrating sight discover no truth in his borrowed observation, that “We more readily assist the lame and the blind than a poor man of genius; for every one is sensibly affected with the apprehension of blindness or lameness; but who is in the least dread of the accidents which attend on genius?”

Here let me stop a moment to rescue the world from blame it does not merit. The world is not accountable for the death of every man of abilities who has perished, however miserably, in an alehouse, or a prison. Profligacy and genius, ability and prodigality, are not, as many imagine, the same things. But genius too often thinks it necessary to be profligate, and profligacy often demands to pass for genius. To behold genius confined in a prison, or skulking in an alehouse, and not to lend relief, were infamous, provided the spectator could be sure he was lending _effectual relief_. But if to rescue from one prison, be only to give an opportunity to visit another—whose humanity is sturdy enough to bear such insults even from a friend or from a child? Churchill reproached the world with suffering Lloyd to pine in the Fleet, and Johnson has moistened many an eye with the sufferings of Savage. But the world, if it be ever accountable, is only accountable for the death of such a being as Chatterton, who (let his enemies or enviers persist, as they choose, in asserting what they cannot prove) was not extravagant, was not profligate, was not unprincipled. All his profligacy consisted in quitting the attorney’s office, and penning Ælla—“when he should have engrossed.” His only extravagance was lavishing unnecessary presents upon his grandmother, mother, and sister, a few shillings, the earnings of his genius, which might otherwise, perhaps, have saved him from starving. Unprinciples belongs to those who accuse him of crimes without a shadow of proof.

One other question remains to be answered. It may be asked why Chatterton’s own “Miscellanies” are inferior to Rowley? Let me ask another question. _Are_ they inferior? Genius, abilities, application, we _may_ bring into the world with us; these rare ingredients _may_ be mixed up in our compositions by the hand of Nature; but Nature herself cannot create a human being possest of a complete knowledge of the world almost the moment he is born into it. Is the knowledge of the world, which his “Miscellanies” contain, no proof of his astonishing quickness in seizing everything he chose? Is it remembered when, and at what age, Chatterton for the first time quitted Bristol, and how few weeks he lived afterwards? Chatterton’s “Letters” and “Miscellanies” exhibit an insight into men, manners, and things, for the want of which in their writings, authors who have died old men, with more opportunities to know the world (who could have fewer than Chatterton?) have been thought to make amends by other merits.

Again, in his own character, he painted for booksellers and bread; in Rowley’s, for fame and eternity. Why are a boy’s _tasks_ at school inferior to what he writes for his amusement? Then it is not impossible that he might designedly underwrite himself. He certainly did when he wrote “Ladgate’s answer to the Song of Ælla.” After all, he was no modern; the boy was born an ancient; and he knew mankind well enough to see that, in the present age, there was a greater facility of emergence from obscurity to fame, through the channel of curiosity, for a monk of the fifteenth century than for a sexton’s son of the eighteenth. Shame upon that age, which still persists in bearing testimony to his knowledge of it!

With regard to Chatterton’s face and person, all agree that he was a manly, good-looking boy, that there was something about him which instantaneously prepossessed you in his favour. Mr. Barrett and Mr. Catcott, as well as all who remember him, speak particularly of his eye. Catcott says he could never look at it long enough to see what sort of an eye it was; but it seemed to be a kind of hawk’s eye, he thinks; you could see his soul through it. Mr. Barrett says he took particular notice of his eyes from the nature of his profession. He never saw such. One was still more remarkable than the other. You might see the fire roll at the bottom of them, as you sometimes do in a black eye, but never in grey ones, which his were. Mr. Barrett adds, that he used often to send for him from the charity school (which is close to his house) and differ from him in opinion on purpose to make him earnest, and to see how wonderfully his eye would strike fire, kindle, and blaze up....

So ends what I have to say about Chatterton, when I shall have just observed that his _innocent_ imposition on the world is exactly the story of M. Angelo’s buried statue of Cupid; and, finally, that Miss More is oftener boasted of by Bristol, and has acquired more fame and wealth for an “Ode to Garrick’s Dog” than Chatterton for all Rowley’s poems. Prefix to this letter, if you please, the _comforting_ discovery of Lord Shaftesbury in his “Characteristics,” that “an ingenious man never starves unknown.” Such a being as Chatterton should not have been suffered to starve at all. But _comfort_ like this is to be expected from “Knights and Barons.”

Bards may be Lords, but ’tis not in the cards,
Play as you will, to turn Lords into Bards.

The employment has been of the service to me that you meant it should. In some measure I have forgotten myself, and, as much as it was possible, forgotten my M. during the hours I have spent upon this business. If the story be not told as regularly as it might, the situation of my mind with regard to you must be my excuse. Besides, were I cold enough to tell such a tale as Chatterton’s with as much regularity as I put a common occurrence upon paper I should despise myself. All I shall further add is, that I do not hold out Chatterton as the first character in the world. An army of Macedonian and Swedish butchers, indeed, fly before him; nor does my memory supply me with any human being who, at such an age, with such disadvantages, has produced such compositions. Under the heathen mythology superstition and admiration would have explained all by bringing Apollo upon earth. Nor would the god ever have descended with more credit to himself. But, after all, the world is only indebted to Chatterton for a few inimitable poems. If barbarity and fanaticism be suffered to destroy mankind, genius will write in vain, when there is none to read. To preserve our fellow-creatures is still a greater praise than to instruct or amuse them. Perhaps, all circumstances considered, the first character that ever existed was Bartholomew las Casas.