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"In Severn's vale, a wan and moonstruck boy
Sought by the daisy's side a pensive joy;
Held converse with the sea-birds as they passed,
And strange and dire communion with the blast;
And read in sunbeams, and the starry sky,
The golden language of eternity.
Age saw him, and looked sad; the young men smiled;
And wondering maidens shunned his aspect wild.
But He--the ever kind, the ever wise,
Who sees through fate, with omnipresent eyes,
Hid from the mother, while she blessed her son,
The woes of genius and of Chatterton."--_Ebenezer Elliott._
The Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, is a beautiful church; some
of the biographers of Chatterton have declared that it is the finest
parish church in England. Mr. Britton has been almost as enamored of it
as was Chatterton himself. He has written a complete history of it, and
has for years zealously exerted himself to rouse the inhabitants of
Bristol to have this ornament of their city put into thorough repair by
subscription, an object in which I am glad to find that he has finally
succeeded, and that the perfect restoration, especially of the time-worn
exterior, is already commenced under the superintendence of himself and
Mr. Brayley.
"Beautiful exceedingly" is St. Mary of Redcliffe; and it is the triumph
of this beauty that it has awoke the poet in the soul of one of its
lovers, and a poet so extraordinary in the circumstances of his life, in
the mere boyhood of his age, in the tragic nature of his death, and,
above all, in the proud splendor of his genius; that his passion for
this lovely structure, and the facts which have sprung out of it, have
flung round St. Mary an everlasting interest, and made it one of the
most brilliant monuments of national glory which stand on the bosom of
our mother-land.
If it had turned out that the Rowley Poems produced to the public by
Chatterton had been genuine, and that the fame of so great a poet as
Thomas Rowley the priest had been buried for near four hundred years in
the iron chest of William Canynge, it would have been a most
extraordinary circumstance that it should have been a boy of fourteen
who had discovered them; who had had the taste and discernment to pick
them out from amid the ordinary documents of such a chest, of little
interest except to parishioners; to transcribe them, to press them upon
the attention of his townsmen and the literary public, and to have
suffered insult, obloquy, and persecution on their account. Had he only
raised that great public astonishment, inquiry, quarrel, and controversy
among the learned and antiquarian of his time, and had been
satisfactorily proved to be _only_ the discoverer, introducer, and
champion of the merit of these productions, it would have been one of
the most remarkable occurrences in the whole history of literature, and
the boy Chatterton would have still merited the happy epithet of "the
marvelous boy." Had he been allowed, on justly admitted grounds, to have
taken only that position which he claimed, that of the discoverer of
the Rowley MSS., and the writer of his own acknowledged poems, the
occurrence would have stood alone in the annals of letters, and
Chatterton must have still remained one of the most extraordinary of
precocious geniuses. The wit which sparkles through the whole series of
his verses, from Sly Dick to his Journal and his Will; the bold satire,
the daring independence of his thoughts, setting defiance to public
opinion, even on the most solemn of all subjects--religion; the
indomitable pride, and bold adventure of the lad; these are facts, in
connection with his great "discovery," supposing it to have been a real
discovery, which must have raised the wonder of every one, and have
given him a distinguished niche in the Walhalla of his country. The boy
of sixteen, who could pen such a description as that of Whitfield in his
Journal, beginning,
"In his wooden palace jumping,
Tearing, sweating, bawling, thumping,
Repent, repent, repent,
The mighty Whitfield cries,
Oblique lightning in his eyes"--
the daring description of religion in his Defense; or who could make
such a will as that which he drew up, when he for the first time
proposed to himself suicide, must be pronounced a startling but most
uncommon lad. The youth who, without friends or patrons in the great
metropolis, could set out with a small fund borrowed at the rate of a
guinea apiece from his acquaintances, to make his fortune and fame; and
there, in the midst of the utter wreck of all his august visions and
soaring hopes; in the depth of neglect, contempt, and the most grinding
indigence, could issue satire after satire, and launch Junius-like
letters from the newspapers at the highest personages of the land, not
sparing even the crowned head, can, however we might estimate such
productions in an experienced adult, only be regarded with the most
profound and unmixed wonder. We may lament over the waywardness of his
genius, but we must admit its unequivocal reality; and when its career
is closed by self-violence, after appealing to Heaven from the abyss of
its agony in stanzas such as the following, we know not whether most to
marvel at the greatness of the phenomenon, or the dense stolidity of the
age which did not perceive it, but suffered it to expire in horror, to
the eternal disgrace of human nature and our country.
"THE RESIGNATION.
O God, whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,
To thee, my only rock, I fly;
Thy mercy in thy justice praise.
The mystic mazes of thy will,
The shadows of celestial light,
Are past the power of human skill;
But what th' Eternal acts is right.
O teach me in the trying hour,
When anguish swells the dewy tear,
To still my sorrows, own thy power,
Thy goodness love, thy justice fear.
If in this bosom aught but Thee
Encroaching sought a boundless sway,
Omniscience could the danger see,
And Mercy look the cause away.
Then why, my soul, dost thou complain?
Why, drooping, seek the dark recess?
Shake off the melancholy chain,
For God created all to bless.
But ah! my breast is human still;
The rising sigh, the falling tear,
My languid vitals' feeble rill,
The sickness of my soul declare.
But yet, with fortitude resigned,
I thank the inflictor of the blow;
Forbid the sigh, compose my mind,
Nor let the gush of misery flow.
The gloomy mantle of the night,
Which on my sinking spirit steals,
Will vanish at the morning light
Which God, my East, my Sun, reveals."
But pride and despair triumphed over this deep feeling of trust in
Divine goodness. These words were the rending cry of the dying giant;
they were the mighty poetry of forlornest misery; and, independently of
the poems of Thomas Rowley, stamped beyond dispute the high poetical
renown of Thomas Chatterton. They showed that, notwithstanding the
unworthy subjects on which necessity had forced him to attempt the waste
of his sublime endowments, and had forced him in vain, for the soul of
poesy within him had refused to come forth at the call of booksellers
and political squabblers, there lay still in his bosom the great heart
and the great mind of the first-rate poet.
But what were all these flashes and indications of the _mens divinior_
to the broad and dazzling display of it in the Rowley poems themselves;
those poems which would have crowned any grown man a king in the realms
of intellectual reputation, which yet the towering pride of the
boy--"that damned, native, unconquerable pride" which he said "plunged
him into distraction," that "nineteen twentieths of his composition," as
he himself asserted it to be--flung determinedly from him? These poems,
now admitted on all hands to be his own boyish compositions, and which,
indeed, were thrust upon him as crimes by those of his cotemporaries who
ought to have seen in them the proofs of a genius which should have been
carefully and kindly cherished for the good of humanity and the honor of
England--these are, indeed, more stately and beautiful than the fair
pile of St. Mary, which had first awoke in his spirit the deathless love
of poetry and antique romance. Ah! what a sad, beautiful, but
heart-wringing romance is itself the story of Chatterton! His real
history is this.
There was a little boy in Bristol, whose fathers, for many generations,
had been the sextons of St. Mary Redcliffe. The veneration for this
beautiful fabric, from the habit of ages, might be said to be woven into
the frames and infused into the blood of this family. The office was
gone out of the family; the boy's father had become a schoolmaster, and
died three weeks previous to the child's birth. His uncle had been the
last to fill this post, but he, too, was deceased. The boy's mother,
however, lived in a small house, in a back court, nearly opposite to
this church; and the lad, very likely led by what he heard her say of
the former long connection of their family with it, was in the habit of
going into it when open, and wandering about it for hours. At that time,
nearly a century ago, neither churches nor church-yards were so rigidly
locked up as at present, and ample and often was the time when a little
boy on the watch might enter, and while marriage or burial ceremony went
on, while the cleaners and sweepers were at work, or while the evening
and the morning bell was rung, might stroll to and fro, and gaze and
wonder to his heart's content. That this was his dearest occupation was
soon well known to his family. "His mother's house," says one of his
biographers, "was close to the fine structure of St. Mary Redcliffe, and
they well knew that the boy's favorite haunts were the aisles and towers
of that noble pile. And there they would find the truant, seated
generally by the tomb of Canynge, or lodged in one of the towers,
reading." And what effect this church-haunting had upon him was very
early visible. At five years of age he went to the day-school in
Pyle-street, which had formerly been taught by his father, but here he
was dull and stupid; and, till he was six and a half years old, his
master could trace no sign of intellectual progress in him, and his poor
mother began to think him an absolute fool. But the objects of the
silent church had not fallen in vain on his infant fancy. Those quaint
and gorgeous paintings, and those antique letters engraven on floor
crosses, had acquired a strong hold upon him, and, without doubt, led
him to seize, as he did, with an avidity new to him, on the old musical
manuscript in French, adorned with illuminated capitals, which he found
at home. "He fell in love with it," said his mother; and the shrewd
woman, catching at this discovered charm, brought him an ancient
black-letter Bible, which she possessed, to read, and the boy's inner
nature came to light: "he was no longer a dunce." At eight he was a
voracious devourer of books. He read morning, noon, and night, from the
hour that he awoke to that in which he went to bed. But another cause
now contributed to strengthen the impression of antiquity which he had
received in St. Mary's Church. He was become an inmate of the Blue-coat
School of Bristol, on St. Augustine's Back, founded by Colston, a
merchant, in 1708. Here, in an institution which, though not of ancient
date, was yet conducted in the ancient fashion, he was arrayed in long
blue coat and belt, and scarlet stockings, and tonsure cap. Here, say
some of his schoolfellows, he took no part in the poetical and literary
emulations which arose. An usher wrote poetry, and his example
stimulated others to a like ambition; but Chatterton "possessed
apparently neither the inclination nor ability for literary pursuits;"
he contented himself with the ordinary sports and pastimes of his age.
But, in truth, he was secretly gleaning up knowledge wherever he could
lay hands on it. Long before, he had begged of a painter to paint him an
angel, with wings and a trumpet, _to trumpet his name over the world_!
This spirit once awoke, was not likely to die again, even in the bosom
of a child. He had continually in his heart that cry which haunted
Cowley:
"What shall I do to be forever known?"
From the time he had begun to read, a great change had passed over him.
"He grew thoughtful and reserved. He was silent and gloomy for long
intervals together, speaking to no one, and appearing angry when noticed
or disturbed. He would break out into sudden fits of weeping, for which
no reason could be assigned; would shut himself in some chamber, and
suffer no one to approach him, nor allow himself to be enticed from his
seclusion. Often he would go to the length of absenting himself from
home altogether, for the space, sometimes, of many hours; and his sister
remembered him being most severely chastised for a long absence, at
which, however, he did not shed one tear, but merely said, 'It was hard,
indeed, to be whipped for reading.' This was before his entering
Colston's school, but there he kept up the zealous reading. He is
reported to have stood aloof from the society of his schoolmates, to
have made few acquaintances, and only among those whose disposition
inclined them to reflection. His money, all that he could procure, went
to get the perusal of books; and on Sundays, and holidays, and half
holidays, he was either wandering solitarily in the fields, sitting
beside the tomb of Canynge in the church, or was shut up in a little
room at his mother's, attending to no meal-times, and only issuing out,
when he did appear, begrimed with ocher, charcoal, and black-lead.
"From twelve to seven, each Saturday, he was always at home; returning
punctually a few minutes after the clock had struck, to get to his
little room, and to shut himself up. In this room he always had by him a
great piece of ocher in a brown pan; pounce-bags full of charcoal dust,
which he had from a Miss Sanger, a neighbor; also a bottle of black-lead
powder, which they once took to clean the stove with and made him very
angry. Every holiday, almost, he passed at home, and often, having been
denied the key when he wanted it, because they thought he hurt his
health, and made himself dirty, he would come to Mrs. Edkins, and kiss
her cheek, and coax her to get it for him, using the most persuasive
expressions to effect his end; so that this eagerness of his to be in
this room so much alone, the apparatus, the parchments (for he was not
then indentured to Mr. Lambert), both plain as well as written on, and
the begrimed figure he always presented when he came down at tea-time,
his face exhibiting many stains of black and yellow--all these
circumstances began to alarm them; and when she could get into his room,
she would be very inquisitive, and peep about at every thing. Once he
put his foot on a parchment on the floor, to prevent her from taking it
up, saying, 'You are too curious and clear-sighted; I wish you would
bide out of the room; it is my room.' To this she answered by telling
him that it was only a general lumber-room, and that she wanted some
parchment to make thread-papers of; but he was offended, and would not
permit her to touch any of them, not even those that were not written
on; but with a voice of entreaty, said, 'Pray don't touch any thing
here,' and seemed very anxious to get her away; and this increased her
fears, lest he should be doing something improper, knowing his want of
money, and his ambition to appear like others.[9] At last they got a
strange idea that these colors were to color himself with, and that,
perhaps, he would join some gipsies one day or other, as he seemed so
discontented with his station in life, and unhappy."[10]
But the true secret was one far beyond the conception of his simple
relatives. Coining and forging, indeed, he was bent upon, and meant to
join himself, some day or other, to a company which, in their eyes,
would have appeared stranger than a troop of gipsies. He was already,
child as he was, forging the name and deeds of Thomas Rowley, and
fathering upon him the glorious coinage of his own brain. A great and
immortal guest was theirs, and they did not know it. One of themselves
was marked by the passing angel of destiny as the one of all his
generation doomed to the fearful sacrifice of a sad but eternal fame.
The spirit which had stolen upon him and taken possession of him as he
had roamed the dim aisles of the old church, and gazed on the great
sacred scene of the Ascension of Christ, and on the light avenues of
lofty columns, and sat by the tomb of Master Canynge, was now busy with
him. It was this which had made him gloomy and retiring, which had
caused him to burst into passions of tears, for which no reason could be
assigned. A new world had dawned before his inner vision; the
sensibilities of the poet were now quivering in every nerve; mysterious
shapes moved around him, which one day he must report of to the
world--shapes, the offspring of that old church, and its tombs and
monuments, and traceries and emblazonments, mingled with the spirit of
his solitary readings in history, divinity, and antiquities; and that
melancholy foreboding, that _Ahnung_ of the future, as the Germans term
it, which, like a present angel of prophecy, unseen, but felt, hangs on
the heart of youthful genius with an overpowering sadness, was spread
over him like a heavenly cloud, which made the physical face of life
dreary and insipid to him.
This was the boy, of eleven or twelve years old, who had already
commenced satirist, and launched his arrows of sarcasm at offenders in
Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, where "Sly Dick" and "Apostate Will"
were pilloried before the whole city by so young a hand. This was the
boy, of perhaps fourteen, who astonished the worthy pewterer, Burgum, by
bringing to him an historic account of his pedigree, with coats of arms
all elaborately painted on parchment, tracing his descent, with minute
detail of personages, from no less a distance than the Saxon period, and
from no less a person than the great Waltheof, earl of Northumberland,
Northampton, and Huntingdon! Great has been the laughter at poor Burgum
for swallowing the pleasant deceit; but let any one imagine to himself a
charity schoolboy, in old-fashioned costume, and his innocent boy's
face, appearing before him, and presenting to him so matter-of-fact a
document, as found in a chest in the muniment room of St. Mary's Church,
in which this boy was known to pore and hunt about. Could any suspicion
of such a boy's forgery of the document at first be entertained? Would
any feelings but those of wonder and curiosity be excited? Burgum was
completely taken in; and a thousand others who have since laughed at him
would have been taken in too. And now began to be sounded about that
famous story of the iron-bound chest of Master Canynge, in the muniment
room over the north porch of St. Mary Redcliffe Church, from which
Chatterton's father had been allowed to carry home whole heaps of
parchments, and from which heaps Chatterton professed to have drawn this
pedigree of the De Bergham family. This was a most prolific source of
strange documents, which from time to time came issuing forth in the
shape of transcripts by the boy Chatterton. His fifteenth year, however,
saw him, in one day, metamorphosed from a Colston's charity boy into a
lawyer's apprentice. He was bound to one Lambert, a man of little
practice, and who, besides, is termed "a vulgar, insolent, imperious
man; who, because the boy wrote poetry, was of a melancholy and
contemplative disposition, and disposed to study and reading, thought
him a fit object of insult and contemptuous rage." Need we ask why his
mother bound him to such a man? To whom _can_ the poor bind their
children? Had Lambert been a pleasant fellow, and in great practice, he
would have had rich men's sons offered, and would have demanded a fee
that would effectually exclude the poor. Here his life was the life of
insult and degradation, which might pretty safely be calculated upon
with such a man and such a practice. Twelve hours he was chained to the
office, _i. e._, from eight in the morning till eight at night, dinner
hour only excepted; and in the house he was confined to the kitchen,
slept with the footboy, and was subjected to indignities of a like
nature, at which his pride rebelled, and by which his temper was
imbittered. Yet here it was, during this life of base humiliation, that
Thomas Chatterton worked out the splendid creations of his imagination.
In less than three years of the life of a poor attorney's apprentice,
fed in the kitchen, and lodged with the footboy, did he here achieve an
immortality such as the whole life of not one in ten millions is
sufficient to create.
In the long, solitary hours of this empty office--for, not having any
business, even the master was very often absent--he had ample leisure
and secure opportunity to give scope to the feelings and fancies which
had sprung up in the aisles of St. Mary's, but which had since grown
with the aliment of historic and poetic knowledge gathered from Fuller,
Camden, Chaucer, and the old chroniclers. From time to time, as I have
said, came flying forth some precious old piece of local history, which
astonished the good people of Bristol, and were always traced to this
same wonderful lad, and his inexhaustible parchments from the old chest.
A new bridge is built, and in Felix Farley's Journal appears an account
of the opening of the old bridge ages before, with all the ceremonies
and processions of civil officers, priests, friars, and minstrels, with
all their banners and clarions. Then Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, is writing
his history of the place, and lacks information respecting the ancient
churches; and, lo! the prolific MSS. of Maister Canynge supply not only
histories of all churches, but of castles and palaces, with the
directions of the ancient streets, and all the particulars of the city
walls, and all their gates. Never was an historian so readily and so
affluently supplied! Whoever now sees the ponderous quarto of Barrett's
History of Bristol, with all the wonders palmed upon the author by
Chatterton, must be equally amazed at the daring of the lad and the
credulity of the man. He restored in a fine drawing the ancient castle,
in a style of architecture such as surely never was seen in any castle
before. There were towers of a most lofty and unique description, yet
extremely beautiful; there were battlements as unique as if the ancient
knights who defended them had left their shields lying upon them; there
were tiers of arches, circles, and stars, one above another, in fronts
of the most fanciful kind; there were other parts where pilasters ran
from ground to battlement, ornamented with alternating cross keys, human
figures, lozenges, ovals, zigzag lines, and other ornaments, such as
never could have originated but in a poetical and daring brain; yet was
the whole worthy of the residence of some knight or king of old romance.
It was beautiful, and might suggest to architects in these threadbare
days ideas of a style piquantly original and refreshing. This was the
view of Bristol Castle in 1138, Rowlie Canonicus, deleniator, 1440, to
be seen in Barrett's History. But deeper and deeper does this fortunate
youth dive into the treasures of the chest, and more and more amazing
are the wonders that he brings up. Never was so rich a chest stowed away
in cloisters of the rich old middle ages. Now came up poets, painters,
carvers, heralds, architects, and stainers of glass, besides warriors of
proudest renown, all flourishing in times that we are wont to deem
barren of such glories; and a more than chivalric reign of Arthur--a
more than Elizabethan constellation of genius in arts and arms,
astonishes the senses of those deeply learned, who fancied that they had
explored all possible mines of the past knowledge. The dark ages grow
brighter and brighter as the necromantic stripling rubs his lamp in the
office of the attorney Lambert, till the living are almost blinded by
the blaze of light from the regions of the forgotten dead. No less than
eleven poets of great fame did he bring to light, of whom Abbot John,
who flourished in 1186, he says, was one of the greatest that ever
lived; and Maister John à Iscam not much less, living in the time of the
great Maister Canynge, himself also a fine poet! But of all men, most
versatile and rich in lore and intellect was Thomas Rowley, the friend
of Canynge, and priest of St. John, in Bristol; and, truly, if the poems
which he put forth in Rowley's name had been Rowley's, Rowley would have
been a famous poet indeed--to say nothing of his sermons, histories, and
other writings.
Spite of the wretchedness of his domestic position in Lambert's house,
this must have been the happiest portion of Chatterton's life. His
bringing out these treasures to the day had given him great
consideration, among not only some of the most leading men, but among
the youth of Bristol. With his excitable temperament, his spirits rose
occasionally into great gayety and confidence. He began to entertain
dreams of a lofty ambition. He had created a new world for himself, in
which he lived. He had made Rowley its great heroic bard. He had raised
Maister Canynge again from his marble rest in the south transept of St.
Mary's, and placed him in his ancient glory in Bristol. Beneath his
hands St. Mary's rose like a fairy fabric out of the earth, and was
consecrated amid the most glorious hymns, and with the most gorgeous
processions of priests and minstrels. Great and magnificent was Canynge
in his wealth and his goodness once more in his native city; and in the
brave lays of Rowley the valiant Ella fought, and the fierce Harold and
William the Norman made the Hill of Battell the eternal monument of the
loss and gain of England.
"He was always," says Mr. Smyth, one of his intimate companions,
"extremely fond of walking in the fields, particularly in Redcliffe
Meadows, and of talking about these manuscripts, and sometimes reading
them there. 'Come,' he would say, 'you and I will take a walk in the
meadow. I have got the cleverest thing for you imaginable; it is worth
half a crown merely to have a sight of it, and to hear me read it to
you.' When we arrived at the place proposed, he would produce his
parchment, show it me, and read it to me. There was one spot in
particular, full in view of the church, in which he would take a
particular delight. He would frequently lay himself down, fix his eyes
upon the church, and seem as if he were in a kind of trance. Then, on a
sudden, abruptly he would tell me, 'That steeple was burned down by
lightning; that was the place where they formerly acted plays.'
"His Sundays were commonly spent in walking alone into the country about
Bristol, as far as the duration of daylight would allow; and from those
excursions he never failed to bring home with him drawings of churches,
or some other objects which had impressed his romantic imagination."
This was one of those brief seasons in the poet's life when the heaven
of his spirit has cast its glory on the nether world. When the light and
splendor of his own beautiful creations invest the common earth, and he
walks in the summer of his heart's joy. Every imagination seems to have
become a reality; every hope to expand before him into fame and
felicity; and the flowers beneath his tread, the sky above him, the air
that breathes upon his cheek--all nature, in short, is full of the
intoxication of poetic triumph. Bristol was become quite too narrow for
him and Rowley; he shifted the field of his ambition to London, and the
whole enchanted realm of his anticipations passed like a Fata Morgana,
and was gone! There came instead, cruel contempt, soul-withering
neglect, hunger, despair, and suicide!
Such was the history of the life of one of England's greatest poets, who
perished by his own hand, stung to the soul by the utter neglect of his
country, and too proud to receive that bread from compassion which the
reading public of Great Britain refused to his poetic labors. Of this,
of Walpole, and Gray, and Sam Johnson, and the like, we will speak more
anon. Here let us pause, and select a few specimens of that poetry which
the people of England, at the latter end of the eighteenth century,
would fain have suffered to perish with its author. That they may be
better understood, we will modernize them.
The chief of his Rowley Poems are, Ella, a tragical Interlude, or
discoursing Tragedy; Godwin, the fragment of another Tragedy; the Battle
of Hastings, the fragment of an Epic; and the Parliament of Sprytes, a
most merry Interlude; with smaller ones.