The Rowley Poems Part 2

A great deal more has been written about Chatterton than it is worth anybody's while to read. To begin with, there are all the volumes and pamphlets concerning themselves with the question whether the Rowley poems were written by Chatterton or by Rowley, or by both (Chatterton adding matter of his own to existing poems written in the fifteenth century), or by neither. It may be said that these problems were not conclusively and finally solved till Professor Skeat brought out his edition of Chatterton in 1871.

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. It is a scholarly compilation of all previous accounts, very well digested and arranged. 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 Ma.s.son that Chatterton was led into a course of folly ending in suicide through being deprived of a father's care. Such a father as Chatterton's was!

While premising that any one who wishes to learn the facts of the boy-poet's life--his circ.u.mstances and surroundings--can find them all set forth in Professor Wilson's book: while equally if he is interested in the pseudo-Rowley's language, philologically considered, he will find this elaborately examined in Professor Skeat's second volume; it has been thought that the following bibliography of books dealing with various aspects of the poet which were read and valued in their day may be found of interest to students of literary history.

1598. Speght's edition of Chaucer, the glossary of which Chatterton used in the compilation of his Rowley Dictionary.

1708. Kersey's _Dictionarium Anglo-Britannic.u.m_, and

1737. Bailey's _Universal Etymological Dictionary_. (8th Enlarged Edition.) Bailey is largely copied from Kersey, but Chatterton certainly used both dictionaries in making his antique language.

1777. Tyrwhitt's edition of the Rowley poems. Tyrwhitt was Chatterton's first editor and in his edition many of the poems were printed for the first time. 'The only really good edition is Tyrwhitt's.' 'This exhibits a careful and, I believe, extremely accurate text ... an excellent account of the MSS. and transcripts from which it was derived. It is a fortunate circ.u.mstance that the first editor was so thoroughly competent.' (Professor Skeat, Introd.

to Vol. II of his 1871 edition.)

1778. Tyrwhitt's third edition, from which the present edition is printed. With this was printed for the first time 'An appendix ...

tending to prove that the Rowley poems were written not by any ancient author but entirely by Thomas Chatterton.' This edition follows the first nearly page for page; but was reset.

1780. _Love and Madness_ by Sir Herbert Croft. This strange book deserves a brief description as it is the source of almost all our knowledge of Chatterton.

A certain Captain Hackman, violently in love with a Miss Reay, mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, and stung to madness by his jealousy and the hopelessness of his position, had in 1779 shot her in the Covent Garden Opera House and afterwards unsuccessfully attempted to shoot himself. Enormous public interest was excited, and Croft--baronet, parson, and literary adventurer--got hold of copies which Hackman had kept of some letters he had sent to the charming Miss Reay. These he published as a sensational topical novel in 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 pa.s.sing that though Goldsmith upheld Rowley, Dr. Johnson, the two Wartons, Steevens, Percy, Dr. Farmer, and Sir H. Croft p.r.o.nounced 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 _c.u.m 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 s.e.xton.

1842. Willc.o.x'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 Ma.s.son--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 doc.u.ments_ 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 Archaeological 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 completes de Thomas Chatterton traduites par Javelin Pagnon, precedees 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.h.i.+elds' 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.

2. _Letter to the Dygne Mastre Canynge_, line 15.

Seldomm, or never, are armes vyrtues mede, (that is to say, coats of arms) Shee nillynge to take myckle aie dothe hede

i.e. 'She unwilling to take much aye doth heed'; 'which is nonsense'

says Prof. Skeat. But the sentence is an example of ellipse, a figure which Chatterton affected a good deal, and fully expressed would run 'She--not willing to take much, ever doth heed not to take much', which would of course be intolerably clumsy but perfectly intelligible.