in Englande, wroten by T. Rowleie, 1469, for Mastre Canynge:" to which
Chatterton had annexed his own remarks. Walpole returned a polite
answer, and asked for further communications. On the receipt of a second
letter from Chatterton, Walpole repeated his wish to know more
concerning Rowley and his poems; in reply to which, Chatterton took
occasion to represent his own situation, that he was the son of an
indigent widow, and clerk to an attorney, but that his inclinations led
him to more elegant pursuits; and he intimated a hope that Walpole would
assist in placing him where he might be able to gratify such
propensities. His letter was accompanied by more of the Rowleian poems,
and contained an assurance, that the person who had lent them to him to
transcribe, possessed other valuable relics of ancient poetry. Some
inquiries which Walpole made, confirmed the account given by Chatterton
of himself; but in answer to his solicitation for patronage, Walpole
declared that he had not the means of exerting it; and recommended a
sedulous attention to business, as the most certain way of recompensing
his mother for her care, and of securing his own independence. He
mentioned that more competent judges, than he pretended to be, were not
satisfied of the manuscripts being genuine; and at the same time stated
their reasons for concluding them to be of another age than that to
which they were assigned. Shortly after, Chatterton wrote to him two
letters, which though querulous, are not disrespectful. In the first,
while he thanks his correspondent for the advice he had given him, he
professes his resolution "to go a little beyond it, by destroying all
his useless lumber of literature, and never using his pen again but in
the law;" and in the other, declaring his settled conviction that the
papers of Rowley were genuine, he asks him to return the copy which had
been sent him. Owing to the absence of Walpole, who was then in Paris,
some time elapsed without any notice being taken of this request; and on
his return Walpole found the following letter, which he terms singularly
impertinent.
Sir,--I cannot reconcile your behaviour to me with the notions I once
entertained of you. I think myself injured, Sir; and did you not know my
circumstances, you would not dare to treat me thus. I have sent for a
copy of the M.S. No answer from you. An explanation or excuse for your
silence would oblige
Thomas Chatterton.
July 24th.
The manuscripts and letters were all returned in a blank cover, on the
fourth of August, and here the intercourse was at an end. Gray and Mason
were the friends whom Walpole had consulted about the manuscripts, and
they had no hesitation in pronouncing them to be forgeries. It may seem
strange, that with such men, the uncommon beauty of the poetry they
contained did not create some interest for the author. But Gray was now
in a state of health that, perhaps, left him little power of being
interested in anything; or the wonder may resolve itself into that
blindness which poets, no less than patrons, too frequently discover for
the excellence of their contemporaries. Chatterton himself spoke with
contempt of the productions of Collins. As to Walpole, he had no doubt
more pleasure in petting the lap-dog that was left to his care by the
old blind lady at Paris, than he could ever have felt in nursing the
wayward genius of Chatterton.
During his residence in Lambert's house, his constitutional reserve had
assumed an air of gloomy sullenness: he had repeatedly betrayed to the
servants an intention of committing suicide; and at length a paper,
entitled the last Will and Testament of Thomas Chatterton, which was
found lying on his desk, manifested a design of perpetrating this act on
the ensuing day, Easter Sunday, April 15th, 1770. On so unequivocal a
proof as this appeared to be of his desperate resolution, his master no
longer thought it safe to retain him.
A few months before, he had written letters to several booksellers and
printers in London, and from them received assurances of protection and
employment if he should remove to the capital. This decided him as to
his future course. When he was questioned by Thistlethwaite as to the
plan of life he intended to pursue, if the prospect which was thus held
out, should fail him, he answered: "The promises I have had are
sufficient to dispel doubt; but should I be deceived I will turn
Methodist preacher. Credulity is as potent a deity as ever, and a new
sect may easily be devised. But if that too should fail me, my last and
final resource is a pistol." It is almost unnecessary to observe, that
when he thus speculated on his future proceedings, his mind had been
strongly tainted with infidelity.--Towards the conclusion of April he
set forth on his ill-omened journey. He had never yet gone farther than
a Sunday's walk from his native city; and at the age of seventeen,
equally inexperienced and confident, without a friend or a guide, and
with principles shaken and perverted, he was about to enter on a new and
perilous theatre; nor could it have been difficult to divine what the
event must soon be. On the 26th of April 1770, immediately after his
arrival in London, he writes to his mother, and speaks in high spirits
of the encouragement he has met with from the booksellers to whom he has
applied, "who," says he, "all approve of my design." On the sixth of the
next month, he informs her that "he gets four guineas a month by one
Magazine, and that he shall engage to write a history of England and
other pieces, which will more than double that sum." "Mr. Wilkes had
known him by his writings, since he first corresponded with the
booksellers. He is to visit him the following week, and by his interest
would ensure Mrs. Ballance the Trinity House." In short he is in
raptures at the change in his condition and views; and talks as if his
fortune were already made. He now inhabited the house of Walmsley, a
plasterer, in Shoreditch, where his kinswoman Mrs. Ballance also lived.
The other letters to his mother and sisters betray the same
intoxication. At the Chapter Coffee-house, he meets with a gentleman
"who would have introduced him as a companion to the young duke of
Northumberland in his intended general tour, had he not been unluckily
incapacitated for that office by his ignorance of any tongue but his
own. His present profession obliges him to frequent places of the best
resort. He employs his money in fitting himself fashionably, and getting
into good company; this last article always brings him in good interest.
He has engaged to live with a gentleman, the brother of a lord (a Scotch
one indeed) who is going to advance pretty deeply into the bookselling
branches, and is to have lodging and boarding, genteel and elegant,
gratis, besides no inconsiderable premium. He is introduced to Beckford,
the Lord Mayor, to whom he had addressed an Essay, and who received him
with all the politeness a citizen could assume, and warmly invited him
to come again. He might have a recommendation to Sir George Colebrook,
an East India Director, as qualified for an office no ways despicable;
but he shall not take a step to the sea while he can continue on land.
If money flowed as fast upon him as honours, he would give his sister a
portion of £5000." The kind-hearted boy did indeed find means out of the
little profits arising from his writings, to send her, his mother, and
his grandmother, several trifling presents. In July he removed to
lodgings at Mrs. Angel's, a sack-maker in Brook Street, Holborn. He
assigned no reason for quitting those he had occupied in Shoreditch; but
Sir Herbert Croft supposes, not without probability, that it was in
order to be nearer to the places of public entertainment, to which his
employment as a writer for ephemeral publications, obliged him to
resort. On the 20th of July, he acquaints his sister that he is engaged
in writing an Oratorio, which when finished would purchase her a gown,
and that she might depend on seeing him before the first of January,
1771. "Almost all the next Town and Country Magazine," he tells her, "is
his." He boasts that "he has an universal acquaintance; that his company
is courted every where; and could he humble himself to go behind a
compter, he could have had twenty places, but that he must be among the
great: state matters suit him better than commercial." Besides his
communications to the above mentioned miscellany, he was a frequent
contributor of essays and poems to several of the other literary
journals. As a political writer, he had resolved to employ his pen on
both sides. "Essays," he tells his sister, "on the patriotic side, fetch
no more than what the copy is sold for. As the patriots themselves are
searching for a place, they have no gratuities to spare. On the other
hand, unpopular essays will not be accepted, and you must pay to have
them printed; but then you seldom lose by it. Courtiers are so sensible
of their deficiency in merit, that they generally reward all who know
how to daub them with an appearance." But all his visions of emolument
and greatness were now beginning to melt away. He was so tired of his
literary drudgery, or found the returns it made him so inadequate to his
support, that he condescended to solicit the appointment of a
chirurgeon's mate to Africa, and applied to Mr. Barrett for a
recommendation, which was refused him, probably on account of his
incapacity. It is difficult to trace the particulars of that sudden
transition from good to bad fortune which seems to have befallen him.
That his poverty was extreme cannot be doubted. The younger Warton was
informed by Mr. Cross, an apothecary in Brook Street, that while
Chatterton lived in the neighbourhood, he often called at his shop; but
though pressed by Cross to dine or sup with him, constantly declined the
invitation, except one evening, when he was prevailed on to partake of a
barrel of oysters, and ate most voraciously. A barber's wife who lived
within a few doors of Mrs. Angel's, gave testimony, that after his death
Mrs. Angel told her, that "on the 24th of August, as she knew he had not
eaten anything for two or three days, she begged he would take some
dinner with her; but he was offended at her expressions, which seemed to
hint that he was in want, and assured her he was not hungry." The
stripling whose pride would not let him go behind a compter, had now
drunk the cup of bitterness to the dregs. On that day he swallowed
arsenic in water, and on the following expired. His room was broken
into, and found strewn over with fragments of papers which he had
destroyed. He was interred in the burying-ground of Shoe Lane
work-house. Such was the end of one who had given greater proofs of
poetical genius than perhaps had ever been shown in one of his years.
By Johnson he was pronounced "the most extraordinary young man that had
ever encountered his knowledge;" and Warton, in the History of English
Poetry, where he discusses the authenticity of the Rowleian poems, gives
it as his opinion, that Chatterton "would have proved the first of
English poets if he had reached a maturer age."
"He was proud," says his sister, "and exceedingly imperious;" but both
she and his school-fellow Thistlethwaite, vindicated him from the charge
of libertinism, which was brought against him by some who thought they
could not sufficiently blacken his memory. On the contrary, his
abstemiousness was uncommon; he seldom used animal food or strong
liquors, his usual diet being a piece of bread and a tart, and some
water. He fancied that the full of the moon was the most propitious time
for study, and would often sit up and write the whole night by
moonlight. His spirits were extremely uneven, and he was subject to long
and frequent fits of absence, insomuch that he would look stedfastly in
a person's face without speaking or seeming to see him for a quarter of
an hour or more. There is said to have been something peculiarly
pleasing in his manner and address. His person was marked by an air of
manliness and dignity that bespoke the superiority of his mind. His
eyes, one of which was more remarkable than the other, were of a grey
colour, keen, and brilliant, especially when any thing occurred to
animate him.
Of all the hypotheses concerning those papers which have been the
subject of so much controversy, none seems more probable than that
suggested by Warton, who, in the History of English Poetry, admits that
some of the poems attributed to Rowley might have been preserved in
Canynge's chest; and in another publication allows that Chatterton
"might have discovered parchments of humble prose containing local
memoirs and authentic deeds illustrating the history of Bristol, and
biographical diaries, or other notices, of the lives of Canynge, Ischam,
and Gorges. But that many of the manuscripts were not genuine, is proved
not only by the dissimilitude of the style to any composition of the age
of Henry VI. and Edward IV. and by the marked resemblance to several
passages in modern poets, but by certain circumstances which leave
little or no doubt of their having been fabricated by Chatterton
himself." One of his companions, at the time that he was an apprentice
to Lambert, affirms, that he one day produced a piece of parchment on
which he wrote several words, if not lines, in a character that appeared
to his companion totally unlike English, that he then held it over a
candle to give it the appearance of antiquity, which changed the colour
of the ink, and made the parchment appear black and contracted. Another
person declares, that he saw him rub a piece of parchment in several
places in streaks with yellow ochre, and then rub it on the ground which
was dirty, and afterwards crumple it in his hand. Having concluded the
operation, he said it would do pretty well, but he could do it better at
home. The first part of the Battle of Hastings, he confessed to Mr.
Barrett, that he had written himself.
Some anachronisms as to particular allusions have been pointed out. The
irregular, or Pindaric measure as it has been called, used in the song
to Aella, in the verses on the Mynster, and in the chorus in Goddwyn,
was not employed till a much later aera. There are also in the Aella
some lines in blank verse, not introduced among us till the time of
Surrey, who adopted it from the Italian.
Another criterion of a more general nature, which has not yet, at least
that I am aware, been applied to those compositions, is, I think, very
strongly against the antiquity of them; and that is, that the intention
and purpose of the writer in the longer pieces is not sufficiently
marked and decisive for the remoter ages to which they are ascribed. In
the early stages of a language, before conventional phrases have been
formed, and a stock of imagery, as it were, provided for the common use,
we find that the plan of a work is often rude and simple indeed, but
that it almost always bears evident signs of having subsisted anteriorly
in the mind of the writer as a whole. If we try Aella, the longest of
the poems, by this test, we shall discover strong evidence of its being
modern. A certain degree of uniformity is the invariable characteristic
of the earlier productions of art; but here is as much desultoriness and
incoherence, as can well he possible in a work that makes any
pretensions to a plan. On this internal proof alone I should not
hesitate in assigning it to Chatterton rather than to Rowley, to the one
who luxuriated in an abundance of poetic materials poured out before him
for his use or his imitation, rather than to the other who had
comparatively but a few meagre models to work upon.
Where he is much inspirited by his subject, being thrown off his guard,
he forgets himself and becomes modern, as in these lines, from which I
have removed nothing but the old spelling.
_First Dane_.
Fly, fly, ye Danes! Magnus, the chief, is slain;
The Saxons come, with Aella at their head;
Let's strive to get away to yonder green;
Fly, fly! this is the kingdom of the dead.
_Second Dane_.
O gods! have Romans at my anlace bled?
And must I now for safety fly away?
See! far besprenged all our troops are spread,
Yet I will singly dare the bloody fray.
But no; I'll fly, and murder in retreat;
Death, blood, and fire shall mark the going of my feet.
The following repetitions are, if I mistake not, quite modern:
Now Aella _look'd_, and _looking_ did exclaim;
and,
He _falls_, and _falling_ rolleth thousands down.
As is also this antithetical comparison of the qualities of a war-horse
to the mental affections of the rider:
Bring me a steed, with eagle-wings for fight,
Swift as my wish, and as my love is, strong.
There are sometimes single lines, that bear little relation to the
place in which they stand, and seem to be brought in for no other
purpose than their effect on the ear. This is the contrivance of a
modern and a youthful poet.
Thy words be high of din, but nought beside,
is a line that occurs in Aella, and may sometimes be applied to the
author himself.
Nothing indeed is more wonderful in the Rowley poems than the masterly
style of versification which they frequently display. Few more exquisite
specimens of this kind can be found in our language than the Minstrel's
song in Aella, beginning,
O sing unto my roundelay.
A young poet may be expected to describe warmly and energetically
whatever interests his fancy or his heart; but a command of numbers
would seem to be an art capable of being perfected only by long-continued
and diligent endeavours. It must be recollected, however, that much might
be done in the time which was at Chatterton's disposal, when that time
was undivided by the study of any other language but his own.
We see, in the instance of Milton's juvenile poems in Latin, not to
mention others, to what excellence this species of skill may be brought,
even in boyhood, where the organs are finely disposed for the perception
of musical delight; and if examples of the same early perfection be
rarer in our own tongue, it may be because so much labour is seldom or
ever exacted, at that age, in the use of it.
Tyrwhitt, whose critical acumen had enabled him to detect a
supposititious passage in a tragedy of Euripides, was at first a dupe to
the imposture of Chatterton, and treated the poems as so decidedly
genuine, that he cited them for the elucidation of Chaucer; but seeing
good grounds for changing his opinion, as Mr. Nichols[1] informs us, he
cancelled several leaves before his volume was published. Walpole was
equally deceived; though his vanity afterwards would not suffer him to
own that he had been so. Mr. Tyson, in a letter to Dr. Glynn,[2] well
observed, that he could as soon believe that Hogarth painted the
cartoons, as that Chatterton wrote Rowley's poems: yet (he adds) they
are as unlike any thing ancient, as Sir Joshua's flowing contour is
unlike the squares and angles of Albert Durer.
The poems that were written after his arrival in London, when his mind
was agitated by wild speculations, and thrown off its balance by noise
and bustle, were, as might be expected, very unequal to those which he
had produced in the retirement of his native place. Yet there is much
poignancy in the satires. The three African eclogues have a tumid
grandeur. Heccar and Gaira is the best of them.
The following verses are strong and impassioned:
The children of the wave, whose pallid race
Views the faint sun display a languid face,
From the red fury of thy justice fled,
Swifter than torrents from their rocky bed.
Fear with a sicken'd silver tinged their hue,
The guilty fear where vengeance is their due.
Many of the pieces, confessedly his own, furnish descriptions of
natural objects, equally happy with those so much admired in the
Rowleian poems.
When golden Autumn, wreath'd in ripen'd corn,
From purple clusters pour'd the foamy wine,
Thy genius did his sallow brows adorn,
And made the beauties of the season thine.
With rustling sound the yellow foliage flies,
And wantons with the wind in rapid whirls,
The gurgling rivulet to the vallies hies,
Whilst on its bank the spangled serpent curls.
* * * * *
Pale rugged Winter bending o'er his tread;
His grizzled hair bedropt with icy dew;
His eyes a dusky light congeal'd and dead,
His robe a tinge of bright ethereal blue.
His train a motley'd, sanguine, sable cloud,
He limps along the russet dreary moor,
Whilst rising whirlwinds, blasting keen and loud,
Roll the white surges to the sounding shore.
The lofty elm, the oak of lordly look,
The willow shadowing the babbling brook,
The hedges blooming with the sweets of May,
With double pleasure mark'd the gladsome way.
In "Resignation," from which these lines are taken, there is a fine
personification of Hope, though the application of it is designedly
ludicrous.
See Hope array'd in robes of virgin white,
Trailing an arch'd variety of light,
Comes showering blessings on a ruin'd realm,
And shows the crown'd director of the helm.
With him poetry looks best when she is
All deftly mask'd as hoar antiquity.
Scarcely any of these later poems are free from grammatical
incorrectness or ambiguity of expression. Some are debased by the more
serious fault of ribaldry and profaneness. His irreligion, however,
seems to have been rather the fluctuating of a mind that had lost its
hold on truth for a time, than the scepticism of one confirmed in error.
He acknowledges his dependence on a Creator, though he casts off his
belief in a Redeemer. His incredulity does not appear so much the
offspring of viciousness refusing the curb of moral restraint, as of
pride unwilling to be trammelled by the opinions of the multitude. We
cannot conceive that, with a faculty so highly imaginative, he could
long have continued an unbeliever; or, perhaps, that he could ever have
been so in his heart. But he is a portentous example of the dangers to
which an inexperienced youth, highly gifted by nature, is exposed, when
thrown into the midst of greedy speculators, intent only on availing
themselves of his resources for their own advantage, and without any
care for his safety or his peace.
Some years ago the present laureat (Southey) undertook the office of
editing his works, for the benefit of his sister, Mrs. Newton. It is to
be lamented, that a project so deserving of encouragement does not
appear to have been successful.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Illustrations of Literature, vol. i. p. 158.
[2] Nichols's Literary An. vol. viii. p. 640.
* * * * *
HENRY KIRKE WHITE.
Henry Kirke White was born at Nottingham, on the twenty-first of March,
1785. His father, John, was a butcher; his mother, Mary Neville, was of
a respectable family in Staffordshire. Of the schoolmistress, who taught
him to read and whose name was Garrington, he has drawn a pleasing
picture in his verses entitled Childhood. At about six years of age he
began to learn writing, arithmetic, and French, from the Rev. John
Blanchard; and when out of school was employed in carrying about the
butcher's basket. Some lines "On being confined to School one pleasant
Summer Morning," written at the age of thirteen, by which time he had
been placed under the tuition of a Mr. Shipley, are nearly equal to any
he afterwards produced. Next year he was made to work at a stocking-loom,
preparatively to his learning the business of a hosier; but his
mother, seeing the reluctance with which he engaged in an employment so
ill-suited to his temper and abilities, prevailed on his father, though
not without much difficulty, to fix him in the office of Messrs. Coldham
and Endfield, attorneys in Nottingham. As his parents could not afford
to pay a fee, he was (in 1799) engaged to serve for two years, and at
the end of that term he was articled. Most of his time that could be
spared from the duties of the office was, at the recommendation of his
masters, spent in learning Latin, to which, of his own accord he added
Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Some knowledge of chemistry,
astronomy, electricity, and some skill in music and drawing, were among
his other voluntary acquirements. White was one of those, who feel an
early and importunate craving for distinction. He had already been
chosen member of a literary society in his native town; and soon after
his election, as Mr. Southey relates, "he lectured upon genius, and
spoke extempore for about two hours, in such a manner, that he received
the unanimous thanks of the society, and they elected this young Roscius
of Oratory their Professor of Literature." He next became a writer in
several of the Monthly Miscellanies; and (in 1803) put forth a volume of
poems. A few words of unfortunate criticism in one of the Reviews, which
in a few years more he would have learned to smile at, had nearly
crushed his hopes as an author; when Mr. Southey, into whose hands both
the Review and the Poems themselves chanced to fall, generously came to
his relief. The protection of one so deservedly eminent could not fail
of affording him some comfort: though he still complained that "the
Review went before him where ever he turned his steps, that it haunted
him incessantly, and that he was persuaded it was an instrument in the
hands of Satan to drive him to distraction."