of the several nations which inhabit the great continent of Asia,
together with its borderers, mountaineers, and islanders; points out the
advantages to be derived from the concurrent researches of the members
of the Society, amongst which the confirmation of the Mosaic account of
the primitive world is justly insisted on as the most important; and
enlarges on the philosophy of the Asiatics. Besides several other
essays, particular dissertations are allotted to the subjects of the
Indian chronology; the antiquity of their zodiac, which he maintains not
to have been formed from the Greek or Arabs; the literature of the
Hindus; and the musical modes used by that people.
In the course of the last two years he edited the Persian poem by
Hatefi, of Laile and Majnoon, the Petrarch and Laura of the Orientals.
The book was published at his own cost; and the profits of the sale
appropriated to the relief of insolvent debtors in the gaol at Calcutta.
In 1793 Lady Jones, to whose constitution, naturally a weak one, the
climate continued still unpropitious, embarked for England. The
physicians had long recommended a return to Europe as necessary for the
restoration of her health, or rather as the only means of preserving her
life; but her unwillingness to quit her husband had hitherto retained
her in India. His eagerness to accomplish his great object of preparing
the Code of Laws for the natives would not suffer him to accompany her.
He hoped, however, that by the ensuing year he should have executed his
design; and giving up the intention he had had of making a circuit
through Persia and China on his return, he determined to follow her then
without any deviation from his course. In the beginning of 1794 he
published a translation of the Ordinances of Menu, on which he had been
long employed, and which may be regarded as initiatory to his more
copious pandect.
The last twenty years of his life he proposed passing in a studious
retreat after his return to England; and had even commissioned one of
his friends to look out for a pleasant country-house in Middlesex, with
a garden, and ground to pasture his cattle.
But this prospect of future ease and enjoyment was not to be realized.
The event, which put an unexpected end both to that and to his important
scheme for the public advantage, cannot be so well related as in the
words of Lord Teignmouth. "On the 20th of April, or nearly about that
date, after prolonging his walk to a late hour, during which he had
imprudently remained in conversation in an unwholesome situation, he
called upon the writer of these sheets, and complained of agueish
symptoms, mentioning his intention of taking some medicine, and
repeating jocularly an old proverb, that "an ague in the spring is
medicine for a king." He had no suspicion at the time of the real nature
of his indisposition, which proved in fact to be a complaint common in
Bengal, an inflammation in the liver. The disorder was, however, soon
discovered by the penetration of the physician, who after two or three
days was called in to his assistance; but it had then advanced too far
to yield to the efficacy of the medicines usually prescribed, and they
were administered in vain. The progress of the complaint was uncommonly
rapid, and terminated fatally on the 27th of April, 1794.
"On the morning of that day, his attendants, alarmed at the evident
symptoms of approaching dissolution, came precipitately to call the
friend who has now the melancholy task of recording the mournful event:
not a moment was lost in repairing to his house. He was lying on a bed
in a posture of meditation, and the only symptom of remaining life was a
small degree of motion in the heart, which after a few seconds ceased,
and he expired without a pang or groan. His bodily suffering, from the
complacency of his features, and the ease of his attitude, could not
have been severe; and his mind must have derived consolation from those
sources where he had been in the habit of seeking it, and where alone in
our last moments it can be found." "The funeral ceremony," adds his
noble biographer, "was performed on the following day, with the honours
due to his public station; and the numerous attendance of the most
respectable British inhabitants of Calcutta evinced their sorrow for his
loss, and their respect for his memory. The Pundits who were in the
habit of attending him, when I saw them at a public _durbar_, a few days
after that melancholy event, could neither restrain their tears for his
loss, nor find terms to express their admiration at the wonderful
progress which he had made in the sciences which they professed."
A domestic affliction of the severest kind was spared him by his removal
from life. Eight years after that event, his sister, who was married to
an opulent merchant retired from business, perished miserably, in
consequence of her clothes having taken fire.
His large collection of Sanscrit, Arabic, and other eastern manuscripts,
was presented by his widow to the Royal Society. A catalogue of them,
compiled by Mr. Wilkins, is inserted in his works.
The following list of desiderata was found among his papers, after his
decease.
India.
The Ancient Geography of India, &c., from the Puranas.
A Botanical Description of Indian Plants, from the Cochas, &c.
A Grammar of the Sanscrit Language, from Panini.
A Dictionary of the Sanscrit Language, from thirty-two original
Vocabularies and Niructi.
On the ancient Music of the Indians.
On the Medical Substances of India, and the Indian Art of Medicine.
On the Philosophy of the Ancient Indians.
A Translation of the Veda.
On Ancient Indian Geometry, Astronomy, and Algebra.
A Translation of the Puranas.
Translation of the Mahabharat, and Ramayan.
On the Indian Theatre, &c. &c.
On the Indian Constellations, with their Mythology, from the Puranas.
The History of India, before the Mohammedan Conquest, from the Sanscrit
Cashmir Histories.
Arabia.
The History of Arabia before Mohammed.
A Translation of the Hamasa.
A Translation of Hariri.
A Translation of the Facahatal Khulafa. Of the Cafiah.
Persia.
The History of Persia, from authorities in Sanscrit, Arabic, Greek,
Turkish, Persian, ancient and modern.
The five Poems of Nizami, translated in prose.
A Dictionary of pure Persian--Jehangiri.
China.
Translation of the Shi-cing.
The Text of Con-fu-tsu, verbally translated.
Tartary.
A History of the Tartar Nations, chiefly of the Moguls and Othmans, from
the Turkish and Persian.
By an unanimous vote of the East India Company Directors, it was
resolved, that a cenotaph, with a suitable inscription, should be raised
to his memory in St. Paul's Cathedral; and that a statue of him should
be sent to Bengal, for the purpose of being placed there in a proper
situation.
A monument has also been erected to his memory in the anti-chapel of
University College, Oxford, by Lady Jones, with the following
inscription:
M. S.
Gulielmi Jones equitis aurati,
Qui clarum in literis nomen a patre acceptum
Magna cumulavit gloria.
Ingenium in illo erat scientiarum omnium capax,
Disciplinisque optimis diligentissima exculturn.
Erat indoles ad virtutem eximia,
Et in Justitia, Libertate, Religione vindicanda
Maxime probata.
Quicquid autem utile vel honestum
Consiliis, Exemplo, Auctoritate vivus promoverat,
Id omne scriptis suis immortalibus
Etiam nunc tuetur atque ornat.
Praestantissimum hunc virum,
Cum a provincia Bengala,
Ubi judicis integerrimi munus
Per decennium obierat,
Reditum in patriam meditaretur,
Ingruentis morbi vis oppressit,
X. Kal. Jun. A. C. MDCCLXXXXIV. Aet. XLVIII.
Ut quibus in aedibus
Ipse olim socius inclaruisset,
In iisdem memoria ejus potissimum conservaretur,
Honorarium hoc monumentum
Anna Maria filia Jonathan Shipley, Epis. Asaph.
Conjugi suo, B. M.
P. C.
To the name of poet, as it implies the possession of an inventive
faculty, Sir William Jones has but little pretension. He borrows much;
and what he takes he seldom makes hotter. Yet some portion of sweetness
and elegance must he allowed him.
In the hymns to the Hindu deities, the imagery, which is derived chiefly
from Eastern sources, is novel and attractive. That addressed to
Narayena is in a strain of singular magnificence. The description, in
the fourth stanza, of the creative power or intelligence, issuing from
the primal germ of being, and questioning itself as to its own
faculties, has something in it that fills the mind with wonder.
What four-form'd godhead came,
With graceful stole and beamy diadem,
Forth from thy verdant stem?
Full-gifted Brahma! Rapt in solemn thought
He stood, and round his eyes fire-darting threw
But whilst his viewless origin he sought,
One plain he saw of living waters blue,
Their spring nor saw nor knew.
Then in his parent stalk again retired,
With restless pain for ages he inquired
What were his powers, by whom, and why, conferr'd,
With doubts perplex'd, with keen impatience fired,
He rose, and rising heard
Th' unknown, all-knowing word,
Brahma! no more in vain research persist.
My veil thou canst not move.--Go, bid all worlds exist.
To the hymns he subjoins the first Nemean ode of Pindar, "not only," he
says, "in the same measure as nearly as possible, but almost word for
word with the original; those epithets and phrases only being
necessarily added which are printed in Italic letters." Whoever will be
at the trouble of comparing him with Pindar, will see how far he is from
fulfilling this promise.
Of the Palace of Fortune, an Indian tale, the conclusion is unexpected
and affecting.
The Persian song from Hafez, is one of those pieces that, by a nameless
charm, fasten themselves on the memory.
In the Caissa, or poem on Chess, he is not minute enough to gratify a
lover of the game, and too particular to please one who reads it for the
poetry. The former will prefer the Scacchia Ludus of Vida, of which it
is a professed imitation; and the latter will be satisfied with the few
spirited lines which the Abbe de Lille has introduced into his L'Homme
des Champs, on this subject. Vida's poem is a surprising instance of
difficulty overcome, in the manner with which he has moulded the
phraseology of the classics to a purpose apparently alien from it; and
he has made his mythology agreeable, trivial as it is, by the skill with
which it is managed. But I find that both the Caissa, and the Arcadia,
which is taken from a paper in the Guardian, were done, as the author
says, at the age of 16 or 17 years, and were saved from the fire in
preference to a great many others, because they seemed more correctly
versified than the rest. It is, therefore, hardly fair to judge them
very strictly.
His Latin commentary on Asiatic poetry is more valuable for the extracts
from the Persian and Arabic poets, which he has brought together in it,
than to be commended for anything else that it contains, or for the
style in which it is written. Certain marks of hurry in the composition,
which his old schoolfellow, Doctor Parr, had intimated to him with the
ingenuousness of a friend and a scholar, are still apparent. He takes up
implicitly with that incomplete and partial, though very ingenious
system, which Burke had lately put forth in his essay on the Sublime and
Beautiful. He has supported that writer's definition of Beauty by a
quotation from Hermogenes. A better confirmation of his theory might
have been adduced from the Philebus of Plato, in which Socrates makes
the same distinction as our eloquent countryman has taken so much pains
to establish between that sensation which accompanies the removal of
pain or danger, and which he calls delight--and positive pleasure.[2] As
the work, however, of a young man, the commentary was such as justly to
raise high expectations of the writer.
His style in English prose, where he had most improved it, that is, in
his discourses delivered in India on Asiatic History and Literature, is
opulent without being superfluous; dignified, yet not pompous or
inflated. He appears intent only on conveying to others the result of
his own inquiries and reflections on the most important topics, in as
perspicuous a manner as possible; and the embellishments of diction come
to him unbidden and unsought. His prolixity does not weary, nor his
learning embarrass, the reader. If he had been more elaborate, he might
have induced a suspicion of artifice; if he had been less so, the
weightiness of his matter would seem to have been scarcely enough
considered. But he has higher claims to the gratitude of his country,
and of mankind, than either prose or poetry can give. His steady zeal in
the cause of liberty, and justice, and truth, is above all praise; and
will leave his name among the few
--quos aequus amavit
Jupiter, aut ardens evexit ad aethera virtus,
Dis geniti.
FOOTNOTES
[1] [Greek: Leimhon], a meadow.
[2] [Greek: Alaethehis dhan tinas, o Sokrates, upolambanon, orthos tis
dianooit an; SO. Tas peri te ta kala legomena chromata kai peri ta
schaemata, kai ton osmon tas pleistas, kai tas ton phthongon, kai
osa tas endeias anaisthaetous echonta kai alupous, tas plaeroseis
aisthaetas kai aedeias katharas lupon paradidosi.] "What pleasures
then, Socrates, may one justly conclude to be true ones?--_Soc._
Those which regard both such colours as are accounted beautiful; and
figures; and many smells and sounds; and whatsoever things, when
they are absent, we neither feel the want of, nor are uneasy for;
but when present, we feel and enjoy without any mixture of
uneasiness." He then goes on to exemplify these true pleasures in
forms, colours, &c. Compare the De Rep. p. 534.
* * * * *
THOMAS CHATTERTON.
If it were allowable for one who professes to write the lives of
English poets to pass the name of Chatterton in silence, I should think
the literature of our country more honoured by the concealment of his
fate than by the record of his genius. Yet from his brief story, the
young will learn, that genius is likely to lead them into misery, if it
be not accompanied by something that is better than genius; and men,
whom birth and station have rendered eminent, may discover that they owe
some duty to those whom nature has made more than their equals; and
who--
Beneath the good tho' far--are far above the great.
Thomas Chatterton was born in the parish of St. Mary Redcliffe, at
Bristol, on the twentieth of November, 1752. His father, who was of the
same name, and who died about three months before the birth of his son,
had been writing-master to a classical school, singing-man in Bristol
cathedral, and master of the free-school in Pyle-street in that city;
and is related to have been inclined to a belief in magic, and deeply
versed in Cornelius Agrippa. His forefathers had borne the humble office
of sexton to St. Mary Redcliffe church for a century and a half, till
the death of John Chatterton, great uncle of the poet.
From what is recorded of the infancy of Chatterton, parents may be
satisfied that an inaptness to learn in childhood, is far from being a
prognostic of future dullness. At the age of five years, he was sent to
the school of which his father had been master, and was found so
incorrigibly stupid, that he was rejected by the teacher, whose name was
Love, as incapable of profiting by his instruction. His mother, as most
mothers would have done in the like case, bitterly lamented her son's
untowardness; when an old musical manuscript in French coming in his
way, he fell in love, as she expressed it, with the illuminated
capitals. Of this fancy she eagerly availed herself to lead him on to an
acquaintance with the alphabet; and from hence proceeded to teach him to
read in an old Testament or Bible in the black letter. Doctor Gregory,
one of his biographers, justly observes, that it is not unreasonable to
suppose his peculiar fondness for antiquities to have originated in this
incident.
It is related, on the testimony of his sister, as a mark of his early
thirst for distinction, that being offered a present of china-ware by a
potter, and asked what device he would have painted on it, he replied,
"Paint me an angel with wings, and a trumpet to trumpet my name about
the world." It is so usual with those who are fondly attached to a
child, to deceive themselves into a belief, that what it has said on the
suggestion of others, has proceeded from its own mind, that much credit
is seldom due to such marvels.
A little before he had attained his eighth year, he was admitted into
Colston's charity school in Bristol, an institution in some respects
similar to that excellent one of Christ's Hospital in London, the boys
being boarded and clothed, as well as instructed, in the house. In two
years his dislike to reading was so thoroughly overcome, that he spent
the pocket-money allowed him by his mother in hiring books from a
circulating library. He became reserved, thoughtful, and at times
melancholy; mixed little in childish sports; and between his eleventh
and twelfth years had made a catalogue of the books he had read to the
number of seventy. It is to be regretted, that with a disposition thus
studious, he was not instructed in any language but his own. The example
of one of the assistants in the school, named Thomas Phillips, spread a
poetical emulation among the elder boys, of whom Thistlethwaite, Cary,
and Fowler, figured in the periodical publications of the day.
Chatterton did not escape the contagion; and a pocket-book presented to
him by his sister, as a new-year's gift, was returned at the end of the
year filled with his writing, chiefly in verse. Phillips is probably the
person whose skill in poetry is extolled by Chatterton in an elegy on
the death of his acquaintance of that name, which has some stanzas of
remarkable beauty.
Soon after his confirmation by the bishop, at twelve years of age, he
was prompted by the serious reflections which the performance of that
ceremony had awakened in him, to compose some lines on the Last Day, and
a paraphrase of the ninth chapter of Job, and of some chapters in
Isaiah. Had his life been protracted, there is every reason to believe,
from the process which usually takes place in minds constituted like
his, that after an interval of scepticism, these feelings of piety would
have returned in their full force. At the same time he indulged himself
in satirical effusions on his master, and such of his schoolfellows as
had provoked either his resentment or his ridicule.
On the first of July, 1767, he was taken from school, and apprenticed
for seven years to Mr. John Lambert, attorney, of Bristol, to be
instructed in the art of a scrivener. The apprentice fee was only ten
pounds; he slept in the room with the footboy, and was confined to the
office from eight o'clock in the morning, with the usual interval for
dinner, till the same hour at night. His conduct was such as left his
master no room for blame. He never exceeded the hours limited for his
absence, except on one occasion, when he had been to spend an evening in
the company of his mother and some friends. Once only he incurred
correction. His old schoolmaster had received an abusive anonymous
letter; and Lambert having discovered from the hand-writing, which was
ill disguised, and by the paper, which was the same as that used in his
office, that Chatterton was the writer, thought it necessary to check so
mischievous a propensity, by inflicting on him one or two blows. Though
he was compelled to pass so large a portion of time in confinement, he
had much leisure left him, as his master's business frequently did not
occupy more than two hours in the day. His chief employment was the
copying of precedents, with which he filled a folio book of 344 pages
closely written.
At the beginning of October, 1768, the new bridge at Bristol was
completed; and about the same time there appeared in the Bristol Journal
a paper, purporting to be a description of the Fryar's first passing
over the old bridge, taken from an ancient manuscript, and signed
Dunhelmus Bristoliensis. By this the public curiosity was excited; and
the printer not being able to satisfy the inquiries that were made
concerning the quarter from whence he had received the communication, it
was with some difficulty traced to Chatterton. To the menaces of those,
who first roughly demanded from him an account of the means by which the
paper had come into his hands, he refused to give any reply; but on
being more mildly questioned, after some prevaricating, said, that he
had got it, together with several other manuscripts, that had been in
the possession of his father, by whom they were found in a large box, in
an upper room, over the chapel, on the north side of Redcliffe church.
That some old parchments had been seen by him in his mother's house is
nearly certain; nor is it at all improbable that they might have been
discovered in a neglected coffer in the church, according to the account
he gave of them. But that either the description of the Fryar's passage
over the bridge, or the most considerable of the poems attributed to
Rowley were among them, can scarcely be credited. The delusion supposed
to have been practised on the public by Macpherson, and that
acknowledged to have been so by Walpole, in passing off the Castle of
Otranto for a translation from the Italian, were then recent; and these
examples might have easily engaged Chatterton to attempt a fraud, which
did not seem likely to be more injurious in its consequences than either
of them.
About the same time he became known to a Mr. Catrott, and to a Mr.
Barrett, a chirurgeon at Bristol, who intended to publish a history of
that city, and was then collecting materials for the purpose. To the
former he showed the Bristowe Tragedy, the Epitaph on Robert Canynge,
and some other short pieces; to the latter several fragments, some of
considerable length, affirming them to be portions of the original
manuscripts which had fallen into his hands. From both he received at
different times some pecuniary reward for these communications, and was
favoured by the loan of some books. Among those which he borrowed of Mr.
Barrett, there were several on medical subjects; and from him he
obtained also some instructions in chirurgery. He is represented by one
of his companions to have extended his curiosity, at this time, to many
other objects of inquiry; and to have employed himself not only in the
lighter studies of heraldry and English antiquities, but in the theory
of music, mathematics, metaphysics, and astronomy.
He now became a contributor of prose and verse to the Magazines. Among
the acknowledgments to correspondents in the Town and Country Magazine
for November, 1768, one of his letters appears to be noticed; but
nothing of his writing in that miscellany, the first with which he is
known to have corresponded, has been discovered before the February of
the following year.
The attention he had drawn to himself in his native city soon induced
him to aspire after higher notice. In March he addressed the following
letter to the Honourable Horace Walpole;
Sir,--Being versed a little in antiquities, I have met with several
curious manuscripts, among which the following may be of service to
you in any future edition of your truly entertaining Anecdotes of
Painting.
In correcting the mistakes (if any) in the notes, you will greatly
oblige
Your most humble servant,
THOMAS CHATTERTON.
Bristol, March 25th, Corn Street.