THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 CHATTERTON
 
 CHATTERTON 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID MASSON, LL.D., 
 
 EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 NEW AND REVISED EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 27 PATERNOSTER ROW 
 1899
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 33H3 
 M3S 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 THIS Biography, published originally in 1856 as 
 part of a volume of Collected Essays, and sub- 
 sequently in similar companionship, is now re-issued 
 by itself, after having been for a considerable time 
 out of print. There has been some revision through- 
 out, and the concluding chapter has been much 
 enlarged. 
 
 EDINBURGH : 
 
 November 1899.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I. BRISTOL 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WILKES AND LIBERTY ... 3 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE OF BRISTOL . n 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON .... 90 
 
 PART II. LONDON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 SHOREDITCH . . . . . -.Ill 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 TOWN-TALK LONG AGO . . . . ., 134
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE . IS 2 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN . . 217 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY .... 273
 
 PART I 
 
 BRISTOL
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WILKES AND LIBERTY 
 
 WAS there ever a time that did not think highly of 
 its own importance ? Was there ever a time when 
 the world did not believe itself to be going to pieces, 
 and when alarming pamphlets on ' the present crisis ' 
 did not lie unbought on the counters of the book- 
 sellers ? Poor mortals that we are, how we do make 
 the most of our own little portion in the general 
 drama of history ! Nor are we quite wrong, after all. 
 There is nothing really to laugh at in our laborious 
 anxieties about this same 'present crisis,' which is 
 always happening, and never over. 'We live in 
 earnest times ' : what is there in the incessant repe- 
 tition of this stereotyped phrase but an explicit 
 assertion by each generation for itself that the great 
 sense of life, transmitted already through so many 
 generations, is now, in turn, passing through in 
 The time when we ourselves are alive, the time when 
 our eyes behold the light, and when the breath is 
 strong in our nostrils, that is the crisis for us ; and,
 
 4 CHATTERTON 
 
 although it belongs to a higher than we to determine 
 the worth of what we do, yet that we should do 
 everything with a certain amount of vehemence and 
 bustle seems but the necessary noise of the shuttle 
 as we weave forth our allotted portion of the general 
 web of existence. 
 
 Well, many years ago, there was a ' crisis ' in 
 England. It was the time, reader, when our great- 
 great-grandfathers, intent on bringing about your 
 existence and mine, were, for that purpose, paying 
 court to our reluctant great-great-grandmothers. 
 George III., an obese young sovereign of thirty-three, 
 had been then ten years on the throne. Newspapers 
 were not so numerous as now ; Parliament was not 
 open to reporters ; and, had gentlemen of the Liberal 
 press been alive, with their present political opinions, 
 every soul of them would have been hanged. 
 Nevertheless, people got on very well ; and there 
 was enough for a nation of seven millions to take 
 interest in and talk about when they were in an 
 inquisitive humour. Lord North, an ungainly country 
 gentleman, with goggle eyes and big cheeks, had 
 just succeeded the Duke of Grafton as the head of a 
 Tory ministry ; Lord Chatham, throwing off his gout 
 for the occasion, had, at the age of sixty-two, 
 resumed his place as the thundering Jove of the
 
 WILKES AND LIBERTY 5 
 
 Opposition ; Bute and other Scotsmen were still 
 said to be sucking the blood of the nation ; and 
 Edmund Burke, then in the prime of his strength 
 and intellect, was publishing masterly pamphlets, 
 and trying to construct, under the auspices of the 
 Marquis of Rockingham, a new Whig party. Among 
 the notabilities out of Parliament were Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson, then past his sixty-first year, and a most 
 obstinate old Tory, his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 fourteen years younger, Goldy, several years younger 
 still, and Garrick, fifty-four years of age, but as 
 sprightly as ever. In another circle, but not less 
 prominently before the town, were Parson Home 
 and Mrs. Macaulay ; and all England was ringing 
 with the terrible letters of the invisible Junius. But 
 the man of the hour, the hero of the self-dubbed 
 crisis, was John Wilkes. 
 
 Arrested in 1763, on account of the publication 
 of No. 45 of the North Briton, in which one of the 
 King's speeches had been severely commented on ; 
 discharged a few days afterwards in consequence of 
 his privilege as a Member of Parliament ; lifted in- 
 stantaneously by this accident into an unexampled 
 blaze of popular favour ; persecuted all the more on 
 this account by the Court party ; at last, in January 
 1764, expelled from his seat in the House of
 
 6 CHATTERTON 
 
 Commons by a vote declaring him to be a seditious 
 libeller ; put on his trial thereafter before the court 
 of Queen's Bench, and escaping sentence only by a 
 voluntary flight to France : this squint-eyed per- 
 sonage, known up to that time only as a profligate 
 wit about town, who lived on his wife's money and 
 fascinated other women in spite of his ugliness, had 
 now been for six years the idol and glory of 
 England. For six years ' Wilkes and Forty-five ' had 
 been chalked on the walls, ' Wilkes and Liberty ' had 
 been the cry of the mobs, and portraits of Wilkes 
 had hung in the windows of the print-shops. Re- 
 membering that he was the champion of liberal 
 opinions, even pious Dissenters had forgotten his 
 atheism and his profligacy. They distinguished, 
 they said, between the man himself and the cause 
 which he represented. 
 
 For a year or two the patriot had been content 
 with the mere echo of this applause as it was wafted 
 to him in Paris. But, cash failing him there, and the 
 Parliament from which he had been ejected having 
 been dissolved, he had returned to England early in 
 1768, had offered himself as a candidate for the City 
 of London, had lost that election, but had almost 
 instantly afterwards been returned for the County of 
 Middlesex. Hereupon he had ventured to surrender
 
 WILKES AND LIBERTY 7 
 
 himself to the process of the law ; and the result had 
 been his condemnation, in June 1768, to pay a fine 
 of 1000, and undergo an imprisonment of twenty- 
 two months. Nor had this been all. No sooner had 
 Parliament met than it had proceeded to expel the 
 member for Middlesex. Then had begun the tug of 
 war between Parliament and the People. Thirteen 
 days after his expulsion, the exasperated electors of 
 Middlesex had again returned Wilkes as their repre- 
 sentative, no one having dared to oppose him. Again 
 the House had expelled him, and again the electors 
 had returned him. Not till after the fourth farce of 
 election had the contest ceased. On that occasion 
 three other candidates had presented themselves ; 
 and one of them, Colonel Luttrell, having polled 296 
 votes, had been declared by the House to be duly 
 elected, notwithstanding that the votes for Wilkes 
 had been four times as numerous. Tremendous, then, 
 had been the outcry of popular indignation. During 
 the whole of the years 1768 and 1769 ' the violation 
 of the right of election by parliamentary despotism ' 
 had been the great topic of the country ; and in the 
 beginning of 1770 this was still the question of the 
 hour, the question forced by the people into all other 
 discussions, and regarding which all candidates for 
 popular favour, from Chatham himself down to the
 
 8 CHATTERTON 
 
 parish beadle, were obliged distinctly to declare 
 themselves. 
 
 Meanwhile Wilkes was in the King's Bench, 
 Southwark. His consolations, we may suppose, 
 were that by all this his popularity had been but 
 increased, that Parson Home and the Society for the 
 Protection of the Bill of Rights had organised a sub- 
 scription in his favour which would more than pay 
 his fine, and that the whole country was waiting to 
 do him honour on the day when he should step out 
 of prison. 
 
 It came at last: Tuesday, the i/th of April 1770. 
 There was a considerable show of excitement all day 
 in the vicinity of the prison ; and it was with some 
 difficulty that the patriot, getting into a hackney- 
 coach late in the afternoon, made his way, past the 
 cordial clutches of the mob, into the country. That 
 evening and the next there were huzzas and illu- 
 minations in his honour; the house of Beckford, 
 the Lord Mayor, in the then aristocratic region of 
 Soho Square, was conspicuously decorated with the 
 word ' Liberty ' ; and public dinners to celebrate the 
 release of the patriot were held in various parts of 
 the City. 
 
 The rejoicings were not confined to London. In 
 many other towns in England there were demonstra-
 
 WILKES AND LIBERTY 9 
 
 tions in honour of Wilkes. A list of the chief places 
 may still be culled from the newspapers of the day. 
 From those newspapers we learn, what indeed might 
 have been independently surmised, that not the least 
 eager among the towns of England in this emulous 
 show of regard for Wilkes was the ancient mercan- 
 tile city of Bristol. The following appeared in the 
 Public Advertiser of London, as from a Bristol 
 correspondent, on the very day of Wilkes's release : 
 
 ' Bristol, April \^th. We hear that on Wednesday next, 
 being the day of Mr. Wilkes's enlargement, forty-five 
 persons are to dine at the "Crown," in the passage leading 
 from Broad Street to Tower Lane. The entertainment is 
 to consist of two rounds of beef, of 45 Ibs. each ; two legs 
 of veal, weighing 45 Ibs. ; two ditto of pork, 45 Ibs. ; a pig, 
 roasted, 45 Ibs. ; two puddings of 45 Ibs. ; 45 loaves; and, 
 to drink, 45 tankards of ale. After dinner, they are to 
 smoke 45 pipes of tobacco, and to drink 45 bowls of 
 punch. Among others, the following toasts are to be 
 given : i. Long live the King; 2. Long live the supporters 
 of British Liberty; 3. The Magistrates of Bristol. And 
 the dinner to be on the table exactly 45 minutes after two 
 o'clock.' 
 
 Whether the precise dinner thus announced by 
 the Bristol correspondent of the Public Advertiser 
 was held or not must, we fear, remain a mystery ; 
 but that there were several dinners in Bristol on 
 the occasion is quite certain. On Thursday, the 
 , in particular, a public entertainment (possibly
 
 io CHATTERTON 
 
 the above, with the day altered) was given in 
 honour of the patriot by ' an eminent citizen,' and 
 attended by many of the most influential men in 
 the place. 
 
 Ah ! the poetry of coincidences ! On that same 
 Thursday evening, while the assembled guests in the 
 ' Crown ' were clattering their glasses in the hot 
 room, puffing their tobacco-smoke, and making the 
 roof ring with their tipsy uproar, there was walking 
 moodily through the streets of Bristol a young 
 attorney's apprentice, who, four days before, had 
 been discharged from his employment because he 
 had alarmed his master by threatening to commit 
 suicide. This attorney's apprentice was Thomas 
 Chatterton.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE OF BRISTOL 
 
 IT was in the month of August 1760 that a poor 
 widow, who supported herself and two children by 
 dressmaking, and by keeping a small day-school in 
 one of the back streets of Bristol, gained admission 
 for her younger child, a boy of seven years and 
 nine months old, into Colston's School, a charitable 
 foundation similar in some respects to Christ's 
 Hospital in London. The husband of this widow, 
 a rough, drunken fellow, who had been a singer or 
 sub-chanter in the cathedral choir of Bristol, as 
 well as the master of a kind of free school for boys, 
 had died a month or two before his son's birth. An 
 old grandmother, however either the widow's own 
 mother or her husband's was still alive, dependent, 
 in some degree, on the family. 
 
 For nearly seven years, or from August 1760 to 
 July 1767, the boy remained an inmate of Colston's 
 School, wearing, as the Christ's Hospital boys in 
 
 London did, a blue coat and yellow stockings, 
 
 11
 
 12 CHATTERTON 
 
 and receiving, according to the custom of the 
 institution, such a plain education as might fit him 
 for an ordinary mercantile or mechanical occupa- 
 tion. But from the very first the boy was singular. 
 For one thing, he was a prodigious reader. The 
 Bible, theological treatises, scraps of history, old 
 magazines, poetry, whatever in the shape of a printed 
 volume came in his way all were eagerly pounced 
 upon and devoured ; and it was not long before his 
 reputation in this respect enabled him to lay one or 
 two circulating libraries under friendly contribution. 
 Then, again, his temper, people remarked, had some- 
 thing in it quite unusual in one so young. Generally 
 very sullen and silent, he was liable to sudden and 
 unaccountable fits of weeping, as well as to violent 
 fits of rage. He was also extremely secretive, and 
 fond of being alone ; and on Saturday and other 
 holiday afternoons, when he was at liberty to go 
 home from school, it was a subject of speculation 
 with his mother, Mrs. Chatterton, and her acquaint- 
 ances, what the boy could be doing, sitting alone 
 for hours, as was his habit, in a garret full of all 
 kinds of out-of-the-way lumber. 
 
 When he was about ten years of age, it became 
 known to some of his seniors that the little Bluecoat 
 was in the habit of writing verses. It is supposed
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 13 
 
 that a taste for that exercise had been roused in 
 him, as well as in other boys in Colston's School, 
 by the usher or under-master of the school, a Mr. 
 Thomas Phillips, who himself dabbled in literature, 
 and contributed to periodicals. If so, however, the 
 little pupil does not seem to have taken even the 
 usher into his confidence originally, but to have 
 proceeded on his own account. His first known 
 attempt in verse had been a pious little achievement, 
 entitled ' On the Last Epiphany ; or, Christ's coming 
 to Judgment'; and so proud had he been of this 
 performance, and so ambitious of seeing it in print, 
 that he boldly dropped it, one Saturday afternoon, 
 into the letter-box of Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 
 a weekly newspaper in high local repute. It 
 appeared in the columns of that newspaper on the 
 8th of January 1763. From that day Chatterton 
 was a sworn poet. Piece after piece was dropped by 
 him during a period of three years into the letter-box 
 of the accommodating Journal. Only one of these, 
 however, is it necessary to mention particularly a 
 little lampoon, printed on the 7th of January 1764, 
 and entitled 'The Churchwarden and the Apparition; 
 a Fable.' A Mr. Joseph Thomas, a brickmaker by 
 trade, chancing in that year to hold the office of 
 churchwarden for the parish of St. Mary Redcliffe,
 
 14 CHATTERTON 
 
 had greatly scandalised the public mind by causing 
 the old churchyard to be levelled, and the surplus 
 earth and clay to be carted away, as people said, 
 for his own professional uses. For this outrage on 
 decorum he was much attacked by the local press, 
 and nowhere more severely than in the above- 
 mentioned verses of the little Bluecoat ; in whom, 
 by the bye, there must have been a kind of heredi- 
 tary resentment of such a piece of sacrilege, as his 
 ancestors, the Chattertons, had been sextons of the 
 church of St. Mary Redcliffe for a period of one 
 hundred and fifty years continuously. The office 
 had, in fact, only passed out of the family on the 
 death of an older brother of his father, named John 
 Chatterton. 
 
 The date does not seem quite certain, but it was 
 probably nearly three years after this occurrence, 
 and when Chatterton was above fourteen years of 
 age, and one of the senior boys in the Bluecoat 
 School, that he stepped, one afternoon, into the shop 
 of a Mr. Burgum, partner of a Mr. Catcott in the 
 pewter trade. 
 
 ' I have found out a secret about you, Mr. 
 Burgum,' he said, going up to the pewterer at his 
 desk. 
 
 ' Indeed : what is it ? ' said Mr. Burgum.
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 15 
 
 ' That you are descended from one of the noblest 
 families in England.' 
 
 ' I did not know it,' said the victim. 
 
 ' It is true, though,' said Chatterton ; ' and, to 
 prove it, I will bring you your pedigree written 
 out, as I have traced it by the help of books of 
 the peerage and old parchments.' 
 
 Accordingly, a few days afterwards, he again 
 called, and presented the astonished pewterer with 
 a manuscript copybook, headed in large text as 
 follows : ' Account of the Family of the De Berghams, 
 from the Norman Conquest to this Time ; collected 
 from original Records, Tournament Rolls, and the 
 Heralds of March and Garter Records, by T. 
 Chatterton.' In this document the Burgum pedigree 
 was elaborately traced up, through no end of great 
 names and illustrious intermarriages, to one ' Simon 
 de Seyncte Lyze, alias Senliz,' who had come into 
 England with the Conqueror, married a daughter of 
 the Saxon chief Waltheof, become possessed of 
 Burgham Castle in Northumberland and other 
 properties, and been eventually created Earl of 
 Northampton. 
 
 Pleased with the honours thus unexpectedly 
 thrust upon him, the pewterer gave the Bluecoat five 
 shillings for his trouble. To show his gratitude,
 
 i6 CHATTERTON 
 
 Chatterton soon returned with 'A Continuation of 
 the Account of the Family of the De Berghams from 
 the Norman Conquest to this time.' In the original 
 pedigree the young genealogist had judiciously 
 stopped short at the sixteenth century. In the 
 supplement, however, he ventures as far down as the 
 reign of Charles II., back to which point the pewterer 
 is left to supply the links for himself. But the chief 
 feature in the pedigree, as elaborated in the second 
 document, is that, in addition to other great names, 
 it contains a poet. This poet, whose name was John 
 de Bergham, was a monk of the Cistercian order in 
 Bristol ; he had been educated at Oxford ; and he was 
 ' one of the greatest ornaments of the age in which 
 he lived.' He wrote several books, and translated 
 some part of the Iliad, under the title of ' Romance 
 of Troy.' To give Mr. Burgum some idea of the 
 poetic style of this distinguished man, his ancestor, 
 there was inserted a short poem of his in the ancient 
 dialect, entitled ' The Romaunte of the Cnychte ' ; 
 and, to render the meaning of the poem more 
 intelligible, there was appended a modern metrical 
 paraphrase of it by Chatterton himself. 
 
 By the tclat of this wonderful piece of genea- 
 logical and heraldic ingenuity done for Mr. Burgum, 
 as well as by the occasional exercise in a more or
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE i 
 
 less public manner of his talent for verse-making, 
 Chatterton, already recognised as the first for attain- 
 ments among all the lads in Colston's School, 
 appears to have won a kind of reputation with a few 
 persons of the pewterer's stamp out of doors honest 
 people, with small pretensions to literature them- 
 selves, but willing to encourage a clever boy whose 
 mother was in poor circumstances. 
 
 It was probably through the influence of such 
 persons that, after having been seven years at the 
 school, he was removed from it, in July 1767, to 
 be apprenticed to Mr. John Lambert, a Bristol 
 attorney. The trustees of Colston's School paid to 
 Lambert, on the occasion, a premium of ten pounds ; 
 and the arrangement was that Chatterton should be 
 bound to him for seven years, during which period 
 he was to board and lodge in Mr. Lambert's house, 
 his mother undertaking to wash and mend for him. 
 There was no salary ; but, as happens in such cases, 
 there were probably means in Bristol by which a lad 
 writing a neat clerk's hand, as Chatterton did, could 
 hope to earn now and then a few stray shillings. 
 At any rate, he had the prospect of finding himself, 
 at the end of seven years, in a fair way to be a 
 Bristol attorney. 
 
 Lambert's office-hours were from eight in the 
 B
 
 1 8 CHATTERTON 
 
 morning till eight in the evening, with an interval 
 for dinner. From eight till ten in the evening the 
 apprentice was at liberty ; but he was required to 
 be home at his master's house, which was at some 
 distance from the office, punctually by ten. An 
 indignity which he felt very much, and more than 
 once complained of, was that by the household 
 arrangements, which were under the control of an 
 old lady, his master's mother, he was sent to take 
 his meals in the kitchen, and made to sleep with the 
 footboy. To set against this, however, there was the 
 advantage of plenty of spare time ; for, as Lambert's 
 business was not very extensive, the apprentice was 
 often left alone in the office with nothing special to 
 do, and at liberty to amuse himself as he liked. 
 From copying letters and precedents, he could turn 
 to Camderis Britannia, an edition of which lay on 
 the office-shelves, to Holinshed's Chronicles, to 
 Speghfs Chaucer, to Geoffrey of Monmouth, or to any 
 other book that he could borrow from a library and 
 smuggle in for his private recreation. Sometimes 
 also, the tradition goes, his master, entering the office 
 unexpectedly, would catch him writing verses, and 
 would lecture him on the subject. Once the offence 
 was still more serious. An anonymous abusive 
 letter had been sent to Mr. Warner, the head-master
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 19 
 
 of Colston's School ; and, by the texture of the paper 
 and other evidences, this letter was traced to the 
 ex-Bluecoat of Mr. Lambert's office, whose reasons 
 for sending it had probably been personal. On this 
 occasion his master was so exasperated as to strike 
 him. 
 
 A young attorney's apprentice, of proud and sullen 
 temper, discontented with his situation, ambitious, 
 conscious of genius, yet treated as a boy and menial 
 servant : such was Chatterton during the two years 
 that followed his removal from the Bluecoat School. 
 To this add the want of pocket-money ; for, busy as 
 he was with his master's work and his own secret 
 exercises in the way of literature, it is still authenti- 
 cally known that he found time of an evening not 
 only to drop in pretty regularly at his mother's 
 house, but also to do as other attorneys' apprentices 
 did, and prosecute such little amusements as all 
 apprentices like to find practicable. Altogether, the 
 best glimpse we have of Chatterton in his commoner 
 aspect as an attorney's apprentice in Bristol is that 
 which we get from a letter written by him, during his 
 first year with Mr. Lambert, to a youth named Baker, 
 who had been his chum at Colston's School, and had 
 emigrated to America. Baker had written to him 
 from South Carolina, informing him, amongst other
 
 20 CHATTERTON 
 
 things, that he had fallen in love with an American 
 belle, of the name of Hoyland, whose charms had 
 obscured his memory of the Bristol fair ones, and 
 begging him, it would also appear, to woo the Muses 
 in his favour, and transmit him across the Atlantic 
 a poem or two, to be presented to Miss Hoyland. 
 Chatterton complies, and sends a long letter, begin- 
 ning with a few amatory effusions to Miss Hoyland, 
 such as Baker wanted, and concluding thus 
 
 1 March 6th, 1768 
 
 ' DEAR FRIEND, I must now close my poetical labours, 
 my master being returned from London. You write in a 
 very entertaining style ; though I am afraid mine will be 
 to the contrary. Your celebrated Miss Rumsey is going to 
 be married to Mr. Fowler, as he himself informs me. Pretty 
 children ! about to enter into the comfortable yoke of matri- 
 mony, to be at their liberty ; just apropos to the old saw, 
 "But out of the frying-pan into the fire." For a lover, 
 heavens mend him! but for a husband, oh, excellent! What 
 a female Machiavel this Miss Rumsey is ! A very good 
 mistress of nature, to discover a demon in the habit of a 
 parson ; to find a spirit so well adapted to the humour of 
 an English wife ; that is, one who takes off his hat to every 
 person he chances to meet, to show his staring horns ! . . . O 
 mirabile, what will human nature degenerate into ? Fowler 
 aforesaid declares he makes a scruple of conscience of being 
 too free with Miss Rumsey before marriage. There's a 
 gallant for you ! Why, a girl with anything of the woman 
 would despise him for it. But no more of this. I am glad 
 you approve of the ladies in Charlestown, and am obliged to 
 you for the compliment of including me in your happiness.
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 21 
 
 My friendship is as firm as the white rock when the black 
 waves war around it and the waters burst on its hoary top ; 
 when the driving wind ploughs the sable sea, and the rising 
 waves aspire to the clouds, turning with the rattling hail. 
 So much for heroics; to speak plain English, I am, and 
 ever will be, your unalterable friend. I did not give your 
 love to Miss Rumsey, having not seen her in private ; and 
 in public she will not speak to me, because of her great 
 love to Fowler, and on another occasion. I have been 
 violently in love these three-and-twenty times since your 
 departure, and not a few times came off victorious. I am 
 obliged to you for your curiosity, and shall esteem it very 
 much, not on account of itself, but as coming from you. 
 The poems, etc., on Miss Hoyland, I wish better, for her 
 sake and yours. The Tournament I have only one canto 
 of, which I send herewith ; the remainder is entirely lost. 
 I am, with the greatest regret, going to subscribe myself 
 your faithful and constant friend till death do us part. 
 
 ' THOMAS CHATTERTON. 
 To MR. BAKER, Charlestown, South Carolina.' 
 
 When Chatterton wrote this letter he was fifteen 
 years and four months old. To its tone as illustra- 
 tive of certain parts of his character we shall have 
 yet to refer ; meanwhile let us attend to the mention 
 made in it of the Tournament, one canto of which is 
 said to be sent along with it. The poem here meant 
 is doubtless the antique dramatic fragment published 
 among Chatterton's writings in the assumed guise 
 of an original poem of the fifteenth century, descrip- 
 tive of a tournament held at Bristol in the reign of
 
 22 CHATTERTON 
 
 Edward I. From the manner of the allusion it is 
 clear that as early as this period of Chatterton's 
 life that is, before the close of the first year of his 
 apprenticeship he was in the habit of showing 
 about to some of his private friends poems in an 
 antique style, which he represented as genuine 
 antiques copied from old parchments in his pos- 
 session. It was not, however, till about six months 
 after the date of the foregoing epistle that he made 
 his debut, in the professed character of an antiquarian 
 and proprietor of ancient manuscripts, before the 
 good folks of Bristol generally. 
 
 In September 1768 a new bridge was opened at 
 Bristol with much civic pomp and ceremony. While 
 the excitement was still fresh, the antiquaries of the 
 town were startled by the appearance in Felix 
 Farley's Journal of a very interesting account of 
 the ceremonies that had attended the similar open- 
 ing, several centuries before, of the old bridge 
 which had just been superseded. This account, 
 communicated by an anonymous correspondent 
 signing himself ' Dunhelmus Bristoliensis,' purported 
 to be taken from an old manuscript contemporary 
 with the occurrence. It described how the opening 
 of the old bridge had taken place on a ' Fridaie ' ; 
 how, on that 'Fridaie,' the ceremonies had been begun
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 23 
 
 by one ' Master Greggorie Dalbenye,' who went 
 ' aboute the tollynge of the tenth clock ' to inform 
 Master Mayor ' all thyngs were prepared ' ; how the 
 procession to the bridge had consisted, first, of ' two 
 Beadils streying fresh stre,' then of a man dressed 
 as 'a Saxon Elderman,' then of 'a mickle strong 
 manne in armour carrying a huge anlace [i.e. sword],' 
 then of ' six claryons and minstrels,' then of ' Master 
 Mayor' on a white horse, then of 'the Eldermen 
 and Cittie Brothers ' on sable horses, and, finally, 
 of 'the preests, parish, mendicant, and seculor, some 
 synging Saincte Warburgh's song, others sounding 
 claryons thereto, and others some citrialles'; how, 
 when the procession had reached the bridge, the 
 ' manne with the anlace ' took his station on a mound 
 reared in the middle of it ; how the rest gathered 
 round him, 'the preests and freers, all in white 
 albs, making a most goodlie shewe,' and singing 
 ' the song of Saincte Baldwyn ' ; how, when this 
 was done, ' the manne on the top threwe with greet 
 myght his anlace into the see, and the claryons 
 sounded an auntiant charge and forloyn ' ; how 
 then there was more singing, and at the town-cross 
 a Latin sermon ' preeched by Ralph de Blundeville ' ; 
 and how the day was ended by festivities, the per- 
 formance of the play of ' The Knyghtes of Bristowe '
 
 24 CHATTERTON 
 
 by the friars of St. Augustine, and the lighting of 
 a great bonfire on Kynwulph Hill. 
 
 The antiquaries of the town were eager to know 
 the anonymous ' Dunhelmus Bristoliensis ' who had 
 contributed this perfectly novel document to the 
 archives of Bristol ; and they succeeded in identify- 
 ing him with Mr. Lambert's singular apprentice 
 the discoverer, as they would now learn, of a similar 
 piece of antiquity in the shape of a pedigree for 
 Mr. Burgum, the pewterer. Examined, coaxed, and 
 threatened, on the subject of his authority, Chatter- 
 ton prevaricated, but at last adhered to the assertion 
 that the manuscript in question was one of a collec- 
 tion which had belonged to his father, who had 
 obtained them from the large chest or coffer in the 
 muniment-room of the church of St. Mary Redcliffe. 
 And here, whether owing to his obstinacy or to the 
 stupidity of the inquisitors, the matter was allowed 
 to rest 
 
 The general impression that followed the dis- 
 covery of the author of the communication relative 
 to the opening of the old bridge was that Mr. 
 Lambert's apprentice was really a very extraordi- 
 nary lad, who, besides being a poet in a small way, 
 was a dabbler in antiquities, and had somehow or 
 other become possessed, as he said himself, of
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 25 
 
 valuable materials respecting the history of Bristol. 
 Accordingly he became, in some sense, a local 
 celebrity. Among the persons who now took him 
 by the hand, if they had not been already acquainted 
 with him, at least three were of some name and 
 importance in Bristol : Mr. George Catcott, the 
 partner of Mr. Burgum ; his brother, the Rev. 
 Alexander Catcott, vicar of one of the Bristol 
 parish-churches ; and Mr. Barrett, a surgeon in 
 good practice. Two of these had a reputation for 
 literary ability. Mr. William Barrett, the surgeon, 
 was not only a sedate and prosperous professional 
 man, but also a zealous antiquarian, and was 
 known to be engaged in writing a History of 
 Bristol. The Rev. Mr. Catcott had written a book 
 in support of the Noachian view of the Deluge, and 
 was therefore, according to Chatterton's delineations 
 of him, a kind of oracle on scientific subjects at 
 Bristol tea-parties, where, ' shewing wondering cits his 
 fossil store,' he would expound his orthodox theory 
 of springs, rocks, mountains, and strata. What the 
 clerical Catcott was at refined tea-parties his coarser 
 brother, the pewterer, was at taverns. Chatterton 
 thus hits him off 
 
 ' So at Llewellyn's your great brother sits, 
 The laughter of his tributary wits,
 
 26 CHATTERTON 
 
 Ruling the noisy multitude with ease, 
 Empties his pint, and sputters his decrees.' 
 
 Besides the two Catcotts, Barrett, and Burgum 
 (with whom is associated, in a vague way, the Rev. 
 Mr. Broughton, vicar of St. Mary Redcliffe), the 
 following are more or less heard of as among the 
 acquaintances of Chatterton in Bristol during his 
 apprenticeship in Mr. Lambert's office : Mr. Thomas 
 Phillips, the usher or under-master of Colston's 
 School, already mentioned ; Mr. Matthew Mease, 
 a vintner ; Messrs. Allen and Broderip, two musicians 
 and church-organists of the town ; Mr. Clayfield, 
 a distiller, ' a worthy, generous man ' ; Mr. Alcock, 
 a miniature-painter ; T. Gary, a pipe-maker ; H. 
 Kator, a sugar-baker ; William Smith, a player ; 
 J. Rudhall, an apothecary's apprentice ; and James 
 Thistlethwaite, who had been a Colston's charity-boy 
 with Chatterton, and had been apprenticed to a 
 Bristol stationer. There are references also to some 
 acquaintances of the other sex: Mrs. Baker, Mrs. 
 Carty, Miss Webb, Miss Sandford, Miss Bush, Miss 
 Thatcher, Miss Hill, and others ; the most con- 
 spicuous of all, and the only one between whom 
 and Chatterton one is able to surmise a sentimental 
 relation, being that ' female Machiavel, Miss Rumsey,' 
 so spitefully described in the letter to the trans-
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 27 
 
 atlantic Mr. Baker. On the whole, however, the 
 Catcotts, Barrett, and Burgum, come most into 
 notice. On the Rev. Mr. Catcott, Chatterton, we 
 are to suppose, drops in occasionally, to listen to a 
 prelection on fossils and the Deluge ; Burgum and 
 the other Catcott he may sometimes meet at 
 Matthew Mease's, where Catcott acts the chairman ; 
 and from Barrett, on whom he calls at his surgery 
 once a week or so, he receives sensible advices as to 
 the propriety of making poetry subordinate to his 
 profession, as well as (what he greatly prefers) the 
 loan of medical and uncommon books. 
 
 It was amid this little public of heterogeneous in- 
 dividuals clergyman, surgeons, tradesmen, vintners, 
 and young apprentices like himself that Chatterton 
 produced his Rowley Poems and other antique 
 writings. As early as the date of the Burgum 
 pedigree, we have seen, he had ventured to bring 
 out one antique piece, the Romaunte of the Cnychte 
 by the so-called John de Bergham. To this had 
 been added, as early as the commencement of 
 1768, the Tournament, mentioned in the letter to 
 Baker, and perhaps other pieces. Farther, in the 
 account of the opening of the old bridge (September 
 1768), references are introduced to the 'Songe of 
 Saincte Warburgh,' and the ' Songe of Saincte
 
 28 CHATTERTON 
 
 Baldwyn,' showing that those antiques must have 
 been then extant. In short, there is evidence that, 
 before the conclusion of his sixteenth year, Chat- 
 terton had produced at least a portion of his alleged 
 antiques. But the year that followed, or from the 
 close of 1768 to the close of 1769, seems to have 
 been his most prolific period in this respect. In or 
 about the winter of 1768-9 that is, when he had 
 just completed his sixteenth year he produced, in 
 the circle of his friends above mentioned, his ballad 
 of The Bristowe Tragedie, his ' tragical interlude ' 
 of ALlla, in itself a large poem, his Elinoure and 
 Juga, a fine pastoral poem of the Wars of the 
 Roses, and numerous other pieces of all forms 
 and lengths in the same antique spelling. Then 
 also did he first distinctly give the account of those 
 pieces to which he ever afterwards adhered : to wit, 
 that they were, for the greater part, the compositions 
 of Thomas Rowley, a priest of Bristol of the fifteenth 
 century, many of whose manuscripts, preserved in 
 the muniment-room of the church of St. Mary, had 
 come into his hands. 
 
 The Catcotts were the persons most interested in 
 the recovered manuscripts ; and, whenever Chatterton 
 had a new poem of Rowley's on his hands, it was 
 usually to Mr. George Catcott that he first gave a
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 29 
 
 copy of it. To Mr. Barrett, on the other hand, he 
 usually imparted such scraps of ancient records, 
 deeds, accounts of old churches, etc., as were likely 
 to be of use to that gentleman in preparing his 
 History of Bristol. So extensive, in fact, were the 
 surgeon's obligations to the young man that he 
 seems to have thought it impossible to requite them 
 otherwise than by a pecuniary recompense. Accord- 
 ingly, there is evidence of an occasional guinea or 
 half-guinea having been transferred from the pocket 
 of Mr. Barrett to that of Chatterton on the score of 
 literary assistance rendered to Barrett in the pro- 
 gress of his work. From the Catcotts, too, Chatter- 
 ton seems, on similar grounds, to have now and then 
 obtained something. That they were not so liberal 
 as they might have been, however, the following bill 
 in Chatterton's handwriting will show 
 
 ' Mr. G. CATCOTT 
 
 To the Executors of T. ROWLEY. 
 
 To pleasure reed, in readg. his Historic works . . ^"5 5 o 
 ,, ,, ,, his Poetic works . . ^5 5 o 
 
 ;io 10 o' 
 
 Whether the bill was splenetically sent to Catcott, 
 or whether it was only drawn up by Chatterton in a 
 cashless moment by way of frolic, is not certain ; the 
 probability, however, is that, if it was sent, the
 
 30 CHATTERTON 
 
 pewterer did not think it necessary to discharge it. 
 Yet he was not such a hard subject as his partner 
 Burgum, whom Chatterton (no doubt after sufficient 
 trial) represents as stinginess itself. 
 
 But it was not only as a young man of extensive 
 antiquarian knowledge and of decided literary talent 
 that Chatterton was known in Bristol. As the tran- 
 scriber of the Rowley Poems, and the editor of 
 curious pieces of information, derived from ancient 
 manuscripts which he was understood to have in his 
 possession, the Catcotts, Barrett, and the rest had 
 no fault to find with him ; but there were other 
 phases in which he appeared, and which were not so 
 likely to recommend him to their favour, or to the 
 favour of such other influential persons in the com- 
 munity as might have been disposed to patronise 
 youthful ability. 
 
 In a town of 70,000 inhabitants (which was about 
 the population of Bristol at that time) it must be 
 remembered that all the public characters are marked 
 men. The mayor, the various aldermen and 
 common councilmen, the city clergymen, the chief 
 grocers, bankers and tradesmen, the teachers of the 
 public schools, etc., are all recognised as they pass 
 along the streets ; and their peculiarities, physical 
 and moral the red nose of Alderman Such-an-one,
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 31 
 
 the wheezy voice of the Rev. Such-another, and the 
 blustering self-importance of citizen Such-a-third, 
 are perfectly familiar to the civic imagination. 
 Now, it is the most natural of all things for a young 
 man in such a town, just arrived at a tolerable con- 
 ceit of himself, and determined to have a place some 
 day in Mr. Craik's ' Pursuit of Knowledge under 
 Difficulties,' to be seized with a tremendous dis- 
 respect for everything locally sacred, and to delight 
 in avowing the same. What nonsense they do talk 
 in the town-council ! what a miserable set of 
 mercantile rogues are the wealthy citizens ! what an 
 absence of liberality and high general intelligence 
 there is in the whole procedure of the community ! 
 these are the common-places (often, it must be con- 
 fessed, true enough) through which the high-spirited 
 young native of a middle-class British town must 
 almost necessarily pass, on his way to a higher 
 appreciation of men and things. Through the 
 sorrows of Lichfield, the Lichfield youth realises how 
 it is that all creation groaneth and travaileth ; and, 
 pinched by the inconveniences of any other town, 
 the aspirant who is there nursed into manhood 
 begins to snarl at things generally and to take a 
 Byronic view ot the entire universe. 
 
 Chatterton was specially liable to this discontent
 
 32 CHATTERTON 
 
 with all around him. Of a dogged, sullen and 
 passionate disposition, not without a considerable 
 spice of malice ; treated as a boy, yet with a brain 
 believing itself the most powerful in Bristol ; sadly 
 in want of pocket-money for purposes more or less 
 questionable, and having hardly any means of pro- 
 curing it he took his revenge out in satire against 
 all that was respectable in Bristol. If Mr. Thomas 
 Harris, then the Right Worshipful Mayor of the 
 city, passed him on the pavement, either ignorant 
 what a youth of genius he was pushing aside, or 
 looking down somewhat askance, as a mayor will do 
 at an attorney's apprentice that will not take off his 
 hat at the proper moment, the thought that probably 
 rose in his breast was, ' You are a purse-proud fool, 
 Mr. Mayor, and I have more sense in my little finger 
 than you have in your whole body.' If there was a 
 civic dinner, and Chatterton was told of it, he would 
 remark what feeding there would be among the 
 aldermen and city brothers, what guzzling of claret, 
 and what after-dinner speeches by fellows that could 
 not pronounce their h's and hardly knew how to 
 read. If he chanced to sit in church, hearing the 
 Rev. Dr. Cutts Barton, then Dean of Bristol, preach, 
 what would pass in his mind would be, ' You are a 
 drowsy old rogue, Cutts, and have no more religion
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 33 
 
 in you than a sausage.' Even when Dr. Newton, the 
 Bishop of the diocese, editor of Milton and distin- 
 guished prelate as he was, made his appearance in 
 the pulpit, he would not be safe from the excoria- 
 tions of this young critic in the distant pew. 
 Chatterton's own friends and acquaintances, too, 
 came in for their share of his sarcasms. Lambert, 
 we believe, he hated ; and we have seen how he 
 could wreak a personal grudge on an old teacher. 
 The Rev. Mr. Catcott, not a bad fellow in the main, 
 he soon set down, in his own private opinion, as a 
 narrow-minded parson, with no force or philosophy, 
 conceited with his reputation at tea-parties, and a 
 dreadful bore with his fossils and his theory of the 
 Deluge. His brother, the unclerical Catcott, again, 
 had probably more wit and vigour, but dogmatised 
 insufferably over his beer; Burgum was a vain, 
 stingy, ungrammatical goose ; and Mr. Barrett, with 
 all his good intentions, was too fond of giving 
 common-place advices. In short, Bristol was a vile 
 place, where originality or genius, or even ordinary 
 culture and intelligence, had no chance of being 
 appreciated ; and to spend one's existence there 
 would be but a life-long attempt to teach a certain 
 class of animals the value and the beauty of 
 pearls ! 
 
 C
 
 34 CHATTERTON 
 
 Poor unhappy youth ! how, through the mist and 
 din of many years past and gone since then, I seem 
 to see thee walking, in the winter evenings of 1769-70, 
 through the dark streets of Bristol, or out into its 
 dark environs, ruminating such evil thoughts as 
 these ! And what, constituting myself for the 
 moment the mouthpiece of all that society has since 
 pronounced on thy case, should I, leaping back over 
 the long years to place myself by thy side, whisper 
 to thee by way of counsel or reproach ? 
 
 ' Persist ; be content ; be more modest ; think 
 less of forbidden indulgences ; give up telling lies ; 
 attend to your master's business ; and, if you will 
 cherish the fire of genius, and become a poet and 
 a man of name, like the Johnsons, the Goldsmiths, 
 the Churchills, and others whom you think your- 
 self born to equal or surpass, at least study patience, 
 have faith in honourable courses, and realise, above 
 all, that wealth and fame are vanity, and that 
 whether you succeed or fail it will be all the same 
 a hundred years after this.' 
 
 ' Easily said,' thou wouldst answer ; ' cheaply 
 advised ! I also could speak as you do ; if your 
 soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words 
 against you, and shake mine head at you. That 
 the present will pass, and that a hundred years
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 35 
 
 hence all the tragedy or all the farce will have 
 been done and over true ; I know it. Neverthe- 
 less I know also that, minute by minute, hour by 
 hour, day by day, the present must be moved 
 through and exhausted ! " A hundred years after 
 this ! " Did not Manlius the Roman know it ; and 
 yet was there not a moment in the history of the 
 world a moment to be fully felt and gone through 
 by Manlius when, flung from the Tarpeian rock, 
 he, yet living, hung half-way between his gaping 
 executioners above and his ruddy death among 
 the stones below ? "A hundred years after this ! " 
 Pompeius, the Roman, knew it ; and yet was there 
 not a moment in the history of the world a 
 moment fully to be endured by Pompeius when, 
 reading in the treacherous boat, he sat half-way 
 between the ship that bore his destinies and his 
 funeral pile on the Libyan shore? Centuries back 
 in the past those moments now lie engulfed ; but 
 what is that to me ? It is my turn now ; here I 
 am, wretched in this beastly Bristol, where Savage 
 was allowed to starve in prison ; and, by the very 
 fact that I live, I have a right to my solicitude ! ' 
 
 Obstinate boy ! is there then aught that can still, 
 with some show of sense, be advised to you ? Seek 
 a friend. Leave the Catcotts, lay and clerical, the
 
 36 CHATTERTON 
 
 Burgums, the Barretts, the Matthew Meases, and 
 the rest of them, and seek some one true friend, 
 such as surely even Bristol can supply, of about 
 the same age as yourself, or, what were better, 
 somewhat older. See him daily, walk with him, 
 smoke with him, laugh with him, discuss religion 
 with him, hear his experiences, show your poetry 
 to him, and, above all, make a clean breast to him 
 of your various delinquencies. Or, more efficient 
 perhaps still, fall really in love. Avoid the Miss 
 Rumseys, and find out some beauty of a better 
 kind, to whom, with or without hope, you can vow 
 the future of your noblest heart. Find her ; walk 
 beneath her window ; catch glimpses of her ; dream 
 of her ; if fortune favours, woo her, and (true you 
 are but seventeen !) win her. Bristol will then be 
 a paradise ; its sky will be lightsome, its streets 
 beautiful, its mayor tolerable, its clergy respectable, 
 and all its warehouses palaces ! 
 
 Is this also nonsense ? Well, then, my acquaint- 
 ance with general biography enables me to tell you 
 of one particular family at this moment living in 
 Bristol, with which it might be well for you to get 
 acquainted. Mr. Barrett might be able to introduce 
 you. The family I mean is that of the Mores, five 
 sisters, who keep a boarding-school for young ladies
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 37 
 
 in Park Street, 'the most flourishing establishment 
 of its kind in the west of England.' The Miss 
 Mores, as you know, are praised by all the mothers in 
 Bristol as extremely clever and accomplished young 
 women ; and one of them, Miss Hannah, is, like 
 yourself, a writer of verses, and, like yourself, 
 destined to literary celebrity. Now, I do not wish 
 to be mischievous ; but, seeing that posterity will 
 wish that you two, living as you did in the same 
 town, should at least have met and spoken with 
 each other, might I suggest a notion to you? 
 Could you not elope with Hannah More? True, 
 she is seven years your senior, extremely sedate, 
 and the very last person in the world to be guilty 
 of any nonsense with an attorney's apprentice. 
 Nevertheless, try. Just think of the train of con- 
 sequences : the whole boarding-school in a flutter ; 
 all Bristol scandalised ; paragraphs in Felix Farley's 
 Journal; and posterity effectually cheated of two 
 things the tragic termination of your life, and the 
 admirable old maidenhood of hers ! 
 
 Chatterton did not conceal his contempt from the 
 very persons it was most likely to offend. Known 
 not only as a transcriber of ancient English poetry 
 but also as a poet in his own person, he began to
 
 38 CHATTERTON 
 
 support his reputation in the latter character by 
 producing from time to time, along with his 
 Rowley poems, certain compositions of his own 
 in a modern satirical vein. In these compositions, 
 which were written after the manner of Churchill, 
 there was the strangest possible jumble of crude 
 Whig politics and personal scurrility against local 
 notabilities. What effect they were likely to have 
 on Chatterton's position in his native town may be 
 inferred from a specimen or two. How would 
 Broderip, the organist, like this ? 
 
 ' While Broderip's humdrum symphonies of flats 
 Rival the harmony of midnight cats.' 
 
 Or the lay Catcott this allusion to a professional feat 
 of his in laying the topstone of a spire ? 
 
 ' Catcott is very fond of talk and fame, 
 His wish a perpetuity of name ; 
 Which to procure, a pewter altar's made 
 To bear his name and signify his trade, 
 In pomp burlesqued the rising spire to head, 
 To tell futurity a pewterer's dead.' 
 
 And how would the clerical Catcott like this 
 reference to his orthodoxy ? 
 
 ' Might we not, Catcott, then infer from hence 
 Your zeal for Scripture hath devoured your sense?'
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 39 
 Or what would the mayor say to this ? 
 
 'Let Harris wear his self-sufficient air, 
 Nor dare remark, for Harris is a mayor.' 
 
 Or the civic dignity of Bristol generally to this ? 
 
 "Tis doubtful if her aldermen can read : 
 This of a certainty the muse may tell 
 None of her common-councilmen can spell. 5 
 
 Clearly enough an attorney's apprentice that was in 
 the habit of showing about such verses was not in 
 the way to procure patronage and goodwill. If, 
 however, any of his friends remonstrated with him, 
 his answer was ready 
 
 ' Damn'd narrow notions, tending to disgrace 
 The boasted reason of the human race ! 
 Bristol may keep her prudent maxims still ; 
 But know, my saving friends, I never will. 
 The composition of my soul is made 
 Too great for servile, avaricious trade, 
 When, raving in the lunacy of ink, 
 I catch the pen, and publish what I think.' 
 
 Accordingly, Chatterton continued to support, in the 
 eyes of the portion of the community of Bristol that 
 knew him, a twofold character that on the one hand 
 of an enthusiastic youth with much antiquarian know- 
 ledge, the possessor of many antique manuscripts, 
 chiefly poetry of the fifteenth century, and that on
 
 40 CHATTERTON 
 
 the other of an ill-conditioned boy of spiteful 
 temper, the writer of somewhat clever but very 
 scurrilous verses. Nay, more, it was observable 
 that the latter character was growing upon him, 
 apparently at the expense of the former ; for, while 
 up to his seventeenth year (1768-9) his chief re- 
 creation had seemed to be in his antique and 
 Rowley MSS., after that date he seemed to throw his 
 antiques aside, and to devote all his time to imita- 
 tions of the satires of Churchill under such names 
 as The Consuliad, Kew Gardens, etc. And here the 
 reader must permit me a little Essay or Interleaf on 
 the Character and Writings of Chatterton. 
 
 ALL thinking persons have now agreed to abandon 
 that summary method of dealing with human char- 
 acter according to which unusual and eccentric 
 courses of action are attributed to mere caprices 
 on the part of the individuals concerned, mere 
 obstinate determinations to go out of the common 
 route. 
 
 ' The dog, to gain his private ends, 
 Went mad, and bit the man ' 
 
 is a maxim less in repute than it once was. In 
 such cases as that of Chatterton, it is now be-
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 41 
 
 lieved, deeper causes are always operating than 
 the mere wish to deceive people and make a 
 figure. 
 
 Now, in the case of Chatterton, it appears, we 
 must first of all take for granted an extraordinary 
 natural precocity or prematurity of the faculties. 
 We are aware that there is a prejudice against the 
 use of this hypothesis. But why should it be so ? 
 How otherwise can we represent to ourselves the 
 cause of that diversity which we see in men than 
 by going deeper than all that we know of pedigree, 
 and conceiving the birth of every new soul to be, 
 as it were, a distinct creative act of the Unseen 
 Spirit? That now, in some Warwickshire village, 
 the birth should be a Shakespeare, and that, again, 
 in the poor posthumous child of a dissipated Bristol 
 choir-singer the tiny body should be shaken by 
 the surcharge of soul within it, are not miracles in 
 themselves, but only variations in the great standing 
 miracle that there should be birth at all. Nor with 
 the idea of precocity is it necessary to associate 
 that either of disease or of insanity. There was 
 nothing in Chatterton to argue disease in the 
 ordinary sense, or to indicate that, had he lived, 
 he might not, like Pope or Tasso, who were also 
 precocious, have gone on steadily increasing in
 
 42 CHATTERTON 
 
 ability till the attainment of a good old age. And, 
 though it seems certain that there was a tendency 
 to madness in the Chatterton blood Chatterton's 
 sister, Mrs. Newton, having afterwards had an 
 attack of insanity the use of this fact by Southey 
 and others to explain the tenor of Chatterton's 
 life has been too hasty and inconsiderate. On due 
 investigation it might be found that there never 
 was a man of genius who had not some relative 
 in a lunatic asylum, or at least fit for one ; and, 
 so long as we can account for Chatterton's singu- 
 larities in any other way, there is no reason, any 
 more than in the similar instance of Charles Lamb, 
 why we should attribute them to what was at the 
 utmost only a dormant taint of madness in his 
 constitution. 
 
 Assuming, then, that Chatterton, without being 
 either a mere lusus natura or insane, was simply 
 a child of very extraordinary endowments, we 
 would point out, as the predominant feature in his 
 character, his remarkable veneration for the antique. 
 In the boyhood even of Sir Walter Scott, born as 
 he was in the very midst of ballads and traditions, 
 we see no manifestation of a love of the past and 
 the historic nearly so strong as that which pos- 
 sessed Chatterton from his infancy. The earliest
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 43 
 
 form in which this constitutional peculiarity ap- 
 peared in him seems to have been a fondness for 
 the ecclesiastical antiquities of his native city, and, 
 above all, an attachment to the old Gothic Church 
 of St. Mary Redcliffe. 
 
 Some time ago we saw in a provincial Scottish 
 newspaper an obituary notice of a poor idiot named 
 John M'Bey, who had been for about sixty years 
 a prominent character in the village of Huntly in 
 Aberdeenshire. Where the poor creature had been 
 born, no one knew ; he had been found, when 
 apparently about ten years old, wandering among 
 the Gartly Hills, and had been brought by some 
 country people into the village. Here, 'supported 
 by the kindness of several families, at whose kitchen- 
 tables he regularly took his place at one or other 
 of the meals of the day,' he continued to reside 
 ever after, a conspicuous figure in the schoolboy 
 recollections of all the inhabitants for more than 
 half a century. The ' shaggy carroty head, the 
 vacant stare, the idle trots and aimless walks of 
 "Jock," could yet, 1 said the notice, 'be recalled in 
 a moment ' by all that knew him. ' At an early 
 period of his history,' proceeded the notice, 'he 
 had formed a strong affection for the bell in the 
 old ruined church of Ruthven, in the parish of
 
 44 CHATTERTON 
 
 Cairnie ; and many were the visits he paid to that 
 object of, to him, surpassing interest. Having 
 dubbed it with the name of " Wow" he embraced 
 every opportunity at funerals to get a pull of the 
 rope, interpreting the double peals, in his own 
 significant language, to mean, " Come hame, come 
 hame." Every funeral going to that churchyard 
 was known to him ; and, till his old age, he was 
 generally the first person that appeared on the 
 ground. The emblems of his favourite bell, in 
 bright yellow, were sewed on his garments ; and 
 woe to the schoolboy that should utter a word in 
 depreciation of his favourite. When near his end, 
 he was asked how he felt. He said " he was ga'in 
 awa' to the wow, nae to come back again." After 
 his death, he was laid in his favourite burying-place, 
 within sound of his cherished bell.' 
 
 Do not despise this little story, reader. To our 
 fancy it illustrates much. As this poor idiot, de- 
 barred from all the general concerns of life, and 
 untaught in other people's tenets, had invented a 
 religion for himself, setting up as a central object 
 in his own narrow circle of images an old ruined 
 belfry, which had somehow (who knows through 
 what horror of maternity?) caught his sense 
 of mystery, clinging to this object with the whole
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 45 
 
 tenacity of his affections, and even devising 
 symbols by which it might be ever present to him : 
 so, with more complex and less rude accompani- 
 ments, does the precocious boy of Bristol seem to 
 have related himself to the Gothic fabric near 
 which he first saw the light. This church was his 
 fetich, his 'wow.' It was through it, as through 
 a metaphorical gateway, that his imagination worked 
 itself back into the great field of the past, so as 
 to expatiate on the ancient condition of his native 
 ' Brystowe ' and the whole olden time of England. 
 
 This is no mere supposition. ' Chatterton/ says 
 one of his earliest acquaintances, the Mr. William 
 Smith above mentioned, ' was fond of walking in the 
 ' fields, particularly in Redcliffe meadows, and of 
 ' talking of his manuscripts, and sometimes reading 
 ' them there. There was one spot in particular, full 
 ' in view of the church, in which he seemed to take 
 ' peculiar 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, 
 ' he would tell me, " That steeple was burnt down 
 ' " by lightning ; that was the place where they 
 ' " formerly acted plays." ' To the same effect are 
 many allusions to the church found in the Rowley 
 poems : for example, this
 
 46 CHATTERTON 
 
 ' Thou seest this maistrie of a human hand, 
 The pride of Bristowe and the western land.' 
 
 And here we may remind the reader of a circum- 
 stance already mentioned : namely, that the ancestors 
 of Chatterton had for a hundred and fifty years 
 been sextons of this same Church of St. Mary 
 Redcliffe, and that the office had only passed out 
 of the family on the death of his father's elder 
 brother, John. Chatterton's father, too, it should 
 be remembered, was a choir-singer in the church ; 
 and Chatterton himself, while a child, had, in virtue 
 of old family right and proximity of residence, had 
 the run of its aisles and galleries. Can it be, we 
 would ask the physiological philosophers, that a 
 veneration for the edifice of St. Mary Redcliffe, 
 and for all connected with it, had thus come down 
 in the Chatterton blood ; that the defunct old 
 Chattertons, Johns and Thomases in their series, 
 who had in times gone by paced along the interior 
 of the church, jangling its ponderous keys, brush- 
 ing away its cobwebs, and talking with its stony 
 effigies of knights and saints buried below, had 
 thus acquired, in gradually increasing mass, a store 
 of antique associations to be transmitted as a 
 fatal heritage to the unhappy youth in whom 
 their line was to become extinct and immortal?
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 47 
 
 One can imagine that, in part, this was the 
 case. 
 
 But Chatterton's disposition towards the antique 
 did not remain a mere fetichistic instinct of venera- 
 tion for the relic his ancestors had guarded. From 
 his very boyhood he entered with all the zeal of a 
 reader and intelligent inquirer into the service of 
 his hereditary feeling. It would not be long, for 
 example, before, passing from the edifice to its 
 history, as recorded in the annals of Bristol, he 
 would learn to pronounce, with undefinable rever- 
 ence, the name of its founder, William Canynge, 
 the Bristol merchant of the fifteenth century. 
 Whatever particulars were to be gleaned from 
 books regarding the life of this notable personage 
 must have been familiar to Chatterton long before 
 he ceased to be a Bluecoat scholar. How Canynge 
 had been such a wealthy man that, according to 
 William of Worcester, he was owner of ten vessels, 
 and gave employment to one hundred mariners, as 
 well as to one hundred artificers on shore ; how he 
 had been as munificent as he was wealthy ; how he 
 had been mayor of Bristol in 1431, and four 
 separate times afterwards ; how he and the town 
 had become involved in the Wars of the Roses, 
 and how, on the accession of Edward IV., he had
 
 48 CHATTERTON 
 
 made the peace of the town by paying a fine to 
 that monarch ; how, finally, he had become a priest 
 in his old age, and devoted a large part of his 
 fortune to the erection, or rather reconstruction, of 
 the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe : all this know- 
 ledge, easily accessible to an inquiring Bristol boy, 
 Chatterton would collect and ponder. 
 
 Chatterton, however, was not merely an inquisi- 
 tive lad ; he was a young poet, full of enthusiasm 
 and constructive talent. Hence, not satisfied with 
 a meagre outline of the story of Canynge, as it could 
 be derived from the chronicles of Bristol, he set him- 
 to fill up the outline by conjectures and synchronisms, 
 so as to make clear for himself Canynge's Life and 
 Times as a luminous little spot in the general dark- 
 ness of the English past. And here comes in the 
 story of the old parchments. 
 
 Over the north porch of St. Mary Redcliffe was 
 a room known as 'the muniment-room.' Here, at 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century, there lay 
 six or seven locked chests, which were understood 
 to contain old deeds and other writings. One of the 
 chests was traditionally known as ' Mr. Canynge's 
 Coffer.' The keys of this chest had been long lost ; 
 and, when, in the year 1727, it was deemed ex- 
 pedient to secure some title-deeds that were believed
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 49 
 
 to be contained in it, a locksmith was employed to 
 break it open. Such documents as were thought of 
 importance were then removed, and the rest were left 
 in the open chest as of no value. The other chests 
 were similarly treated. Accordingly, parcels of the 
 remaining contents were afterwards, from time to 
 time, carried off by various persons ; and, in particular, 
 it was remembered that, when John Chatterton was 
 sexton, his brother, the choir-singer and teacher of 
 Pyle Street School, had carried off a quantity of them 
 to be used as book-covers or for similar purposes. A 
 bundle of these parchments remained in the posses- 
 sion of Mrs. Chatterton after her husband's death, 
 and such of them as had not been previously snipped 
 into thread-papers came into Chatterton's hands. 
 
 What those old documents really contained we 
 have no means of knowing. That some of them 
 may have been papers of historical value is not 
 improbable. It is certain, at least, that they in- 
 terested Chatterton, that the possession of them 
 nourished his sense of the antique, and that he 
 learned to decipher parts of them, catching out old 
 bits of Latin or French phraseology, which he 
 mis-wrote in copying. We may even go farther, 
 and surmise that out of those papers he may have 
 derived hints that were of use to him in his attempt 
 
 D
 
 50 CHATTERTON 
 
 to represent the circumstances of Canynge's life. 
 They may have helped him, for example, to appro- 
 priate names for some of those fictitious or semi- 
 fictitious personages whom he thought proper to 
 group around Canynge in that tableau or historical 
 romance of Bristol in the Fifteenth Century with the 
 construction of which he regaled himself. 
 
 Of these secondary dramatis persona, grouped in 
 his imagination around Canynge, the most import- 
 ant was a supposed priest described as Thomas 
 Rowley, or, more fully, as ' Thomas Rowlie, parish- 
 preeste of St. John's in the city of Bristol.' The 
 relations between Canynge and Rowley, as bodied 
 forth in Chatterton's conception, were as follows ; 
 Rowley, who had been at school in Bristol with 
 Canynge, became chaplain to Canynge's father. On 
 that old gentleman's death, Canynge, then a rising 
 young merchant, continued the family patronage 
 to his schoolmate, and employed him, amongst 
 other things, in collecting manuscripts and draw- 
 ings for him. About the time of Canynge's first 
 mayoralty, in 1431, Rowley was settled as parish- 
 priest of St. John's ; and from that time forward, 
 for a period of thirty or forty years, the two men 
 continued on terms of the most friendly and cordial 
 intimacy Canynge, the wealthiest man in the west
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 51 
 
 of England, and the civic soul of Bristol, living as 
 a liberal merchant-prince in a noble residence, and 
 Rowley, the man of books and literature, in a 
 modest priest's habitation, made comfortable by his 
 patron's munificence. These two men, with a few 
 others of minor activity Carpenter, Bishop of 
 Bristol, Sir Tibbot Gorges, a country gentleman 
 of the neighbourhood, Sir Charles Baldwin, a brave 
 knight of the Lancastrian faction, Iscam, another 
 priest of Bristol, Ladgate, a monk of London, etc., 
 etc., constituted, in fact, an enlightened little club 
 in Chatterton's ideal Bristol of 1430-60, enlivening 
 that city by their amateur theatricals and other 
 relaxations from more severe business, and rendering 
 it more distinguished for culture than any other 
 town in England, except Oxford and London. The 
 fine old merchant himself occasionally used his pen 
 to some purpose; as in his epigram on the imaginary 
 John a Dalbenie, a hot politician of the town 
 
 ' John makes a jar 'bout Lancaster and York : 
 Be still, good man, and learn to mind thy work ! ' 
 
 Generally, however, he abstained from literature him- 
 self, and preferred reading or hearing the productions 
 of his friends Iscam and Rowley, but especially those 
 of Rowley, who was his poet-laureate. 
 
 Had Chatterton put forth this coinage of his brain
 
 52 CHATTERTON 
 
 in the shape of a professed historical romance, all 
 would have been well. But, from working so lovingly 
 in the matter of antiquity, he had contracted also a 
 preference for the antique inform. As Scott, in the 
 very process of realising the Quentin Durwards, the 
 Mause Headriggs, and the Jedediah Cleishbothams 
 of his fictions, acquired in his own person an antique 
 way of thinking, and a mastery over the antique 
 glossary, if not a positive affection for it, so it became 
 natural to Chatterton, revelling as he did in concep- 
 tions of the antique, to draw on an ancient-fashioned 
 suit of thought, and make use of antique forms of 
 language. Hence, when, prompted by his literary 
 impulse, he sought to embody in verse any of those 
 traditions or fictions relative to the past time of 
 England which his enthusiasm for the antique had 
 led him to fix upon as, for example, the story of 
 the Danish invasions of England, the story of the 
 Battle of Hastings, or the story of a tournament in 
 the reign of Edward I. he found himself obliged by 
 a kind of artistic necessity to impart a quaintness to 
 his style by the use of old vocables and idioms. 
 Persisted in for the mere pleasure of the exercise, 
 the habit would become exaggerated, till at last it 
 would amount to an ungovernable disposition to riot 
 in the obsolete.
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 53 
 
 Even thus far, however, there was nothing blame- 
 worthy. In thus selecting a style artificially antique 
 for the conveyance of his historic fancies, Chatterton, 
 it might be affirmed, had but obeyed the proper 
 instinct of his genius, and chosen that element in 
 which he found he could work best. Every man 
 has his mode, or set of assumed conditions, most 
 favourable for the production and the development 
 of what is best in him ; and in Chatterton's case this 
 mode, this set of conditions, consisted in an affecta- 
 tion of the antique. For, let any one compare the 
 Rowley Poems of Chatterton with his own acknow- 
 ledged productions, and the conclusion will be 
 inevitable that his forte was the antique, and that 
 here alone lay any preternatural power he possessed. 
 There are in his acknowledged poems, indeed, 
 felicities of expression and gleams of genius, show- 
 ing that even as a modern poet he might in 
 time have taken a high rank ; but, to do justice to 
 his astonishing abilities, one must read his antique 
 compositions. In the element of the antique 
 Chatterton moves like a master ; in his modern 
 effusions he is but a clever boy beginning to handle 
 with some effect the language of Pope and Dryden. 
 Moreover, there is a perceptible moral difference 
 between the two classes of his performances. In his
 
 54 CHATTERTON 
 
 antique poems there is freshness, enthusiasm, and a 
 fine sense of the becoming ; throughout the modern 
 ones we are offended by irreverence, malevolence, 
 and a kind of vicious, boyish pruriency. And, con- 
 scious as Chatterton must have been of this differ- 
 ence, aware as he must have been that it was when 
 he wrote in his artificially-antique style that his 
 invention worked most powerfully, his heart beat 
 most warmly, and the poetic shiver ran most keenly 
 through his veins, we cannot wonder that he should 
 have given himself up to this kind of literary recrea- 
 tion rather than to any other. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, meaner causes were all 
 this while at work. There was maliciousness 
 towards individuals; there was craving for notoriety ; 
 there was delight in misleading people ; and, above 
 all, there was want of money. Moreover, for 
 this unhappy combination of moral states and dis- 
 positions it so happened that the Grandfather of 
 Lies had a very suitable temptation ready, in the 
 shape of that most successful literary exploit, the 
 Ossian Poems, then in the first blush of their con- 
 tested celebrity. Yielding to the temptation, 
 Chatterton resolved to turn what was best and most 
 original in his genius, his enthusiasm for the antique, 
 into the service of his worst propensities. In other
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 55 
 
 words, he resolved to adopt, with certain variations 
 and adaptations to his own case, the trick of Mac- 
 pherson. That this was the act of one express and 
 distinct determination of his will a solemn and 
 secret compact with himself, made at a very early 
 period indeed, probably before the conclusion of his 
 fifteenth year there can be no doubt. The elabora- 
 tion of his scheme of imposture, however, was 
 gradual. The first exhibition of it, and probably 
 that which suggested much that followed, was the 
 Burgum hoax, with its after-thought of the old 
 English poet, John de Bergham. Of this original 
 trick the Rowley device was but a gigantic expansion. 
 To invent a poet of the past on whom to father 
 all his own compositions in the antique style, and to 
 give this poet a probable and fixed footing in 
 history, was the essential form of the scheme. That 
 the poet thus invented should be a native of Bristol, 
 and that his date should be in the times of the 
 merchant Canynge, were special accidents deter- 
 mined by Chatterton's position and peculiar oppor- 
 tunities. And thus the two processes of invention, 
 the legitimate and the illegitimate, worked into each 
 other's hands Chatterton's previous conceptions of 
 the life and times of Canynge providing him with a 
 proper chronological and topographical environment
 
 56 CHATTERTON 
 
 for his required poet, and his device of the poet 
 giving richness and interest to his romance of 
 Canynge. Once begun, there were powerful reasons 
 why the deceit should be persevered in. There 
 was the pleasure of the jest itself; there was the 
 secret sense of superiority it gave him ; there was its 
 advantage as a means of hooking half-crowns out 
 of people's pockets ; and, last, though not least, there 
 was the impossibility of retracting without being 
 knocked down by Barrett for damaging his history 
 or kicked by the Catcotts for having made fools of 
 them. Hence, by little and little, the whole organ- 
 isation of the imposture, from the first rumour of old 
 manuscripts to the use of ochre, black lead, and 
 smoke in preparing specimens of them. 
 
 But Chatterton, as has been already hinted, was 
 not a literary monomaniac, a creature of one 
 faculty. His enthusiasm for the antique, although 
 the most remarkable part of him, was not the 
 whole of him. The Rowley habit of thought and 
 expression, though he liked to put it on, was also 
 a thing that he could at pleasure throw off. Though 
 an antiquarian, and a midnight reader of Speght's 
 Chaucer and other black-letter volumes, he was 
 also an attorney's apprentice, accustomed to small 
 flirtations, accustomed to debate and to brawl
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 57 
 
 with other attorneys' apprentices, to read the news- 
 papers and magazines, to be present at street mobs 
 and public meetings, and in every other way to 
 take an apprentice's interest in the ongoings of the 
 day. In short, besides being an antiquarian, and 
 a creative genius in the element of the English 
 antique, Chatterton was also, in the year 1769-70, 
 a complete and very characteristic specimen of that 
 long-extinct phenomenon, a brisk young Englishman 
 of the early part of the reign of George III. In 
 other words, reader, besides being, by the special 
 charter of his genius, a poet in the Rowley vein, he 
 was also, by the more general right of his life at 
 that time, very much such a youngster as your own 
 unmarried great-great-grandfather was. 
 
 And what was that ? Why, reader, your un- 
 married great-great-grandfather, besides wearing a 
 wig (which Chatterton did not), a coat with lapels 
 and flaps, knee-breeches, buckles, and a cocked 
 hat, was also, probably, a wild young dog of a 
 freethinker, fond of Churchill and Wilkes's ' Essay 
 on Woman,' addicted to horrible slang against 
 Bute and the whole Scottish nation, and raving 
 mad about a thing he called Liberty. He read 
 and repeated Junius, made jokes against parsons, 
 and talked Deism and very improper doctrine on
 
 58 CHATTERTON 
 
 various social subjects. Now Chatterton, up to his 
 capacities as a youth of seventeen, was all this. 
 He repudiated orthodoxy, refused to be called a 
 Christian, and held the whole clerical profession in 
 unbounded contempt. He drew up articles of faith 
 on a slip of paper (still to be seen in the British 
 Museum) which he carried in his pocket ; which 
 articles of faith were very much what Pope be- 
 lieved before him, and what Burns, Byron, and 
 others have believed since. In short, he was re- 
 cognised in Bristol circles as an avowed free- 
 thinker. His politics were to correspond. He 
 sneered at Samuel Johnson, and thought him an 
 old Tory bigot who had got a pension for political 
 partisanship ; he delighted in the scandal about 
 Bute and the King's mother ; he thought the King 
 himself an obstinate dolt ; he denounced Grafton 
 and the ministry to small Bristol audiences ; and 
 he desired the nation to rally round Wilkes. 
 
 One remark more is necessary at this point. As 
 Chatterton was the dual phenomenon that we have 
 described as he was composed of a mania for 
 the antique, and of that general assemblage of 
 more ordinary qualities and prejudices which con- 
 stituted the bustling young Englishman of his era 
 so, it appears, the latter part of his character had
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 59 
 
 begun, about his seveententh year, to gain upon 
 him. Abandoning the antique vein, wherein he 
 had, as it were, a native gift ready fashioned from 
 the first, and all but independent of culture, he had 
 begun to court his more general faculties of thought 
 and observation, and to give himself more willingly 
 up to that species of literature in which, equally with 
 any other clever young man, he could hope to attain 
 ease and perfection only by the ordinary processes 
 of assiduity and practice. Had he lived, there was 
 an amount of general vigour and acquisition in him 
 that would have secured him eminence even in this 
 field and have made him one of the conspicuous 
 writers of the eighteenth century; but, dying as 
 he did so early, the only bequest of real value he 
 has left to the world is that more specific and un- 
 accountable product of his genius, the Rowley 
 antiques. 
 
 To a provincial attorney's apprentice, full of 
 literary aspirations, disgusted with his position in 
 life, yet with no immediate prospect of a better, 
 there was but one outlook of any reasonable hope 
 or promise. It was the chance of being able, in the 
 meantime, to form some connection with London 
 periodicals or publishers. Accordingly, this was
 
 60 CHATTERTON 
 
 the chance which Chatterton, whose highest printed 
 venture hitherto had been in the columns of Felix 
 Farley's Bristol Journal, set himself to realise. 
 
 His first attempt was upon Dodsley, the publisher 
 of Pall Mall, the brother and successor in business 
 of the more celebrated Robert Dodsley, the author 
 of the ' Muse in Livery ' and other trifles of some 
 note in their day, and the projector, along with 
 Burke, of the Annual Register. The Dodsleys, it 
 should be mentioned, had published a standard 
 collection of ancient and modern English poetry, 
 to which, it was understood, additions would be 
 made in subsequent volumes. This fact, the 
 notoriety of the Annual Register, then in the tenth 
 year of its existence, and probably also the circum- 
 stance, not likely to be overlooked by a young 
 litterateur, that in that periodical there was a 
 department for literary contributions and poetry, 
 pointed Dodsley out to Chatterton as a likely person 
 for his purpose. Accordingly, one morning towards 
 the Christmas of 1768, the worthy publisher, enter- 
 ing his shop in Pall Mall, finds among his letters 
 one from Bristol, addressed in a neat small hand, 
 and worded as follows 
 
 ' BRISTOL, December 21, 1768 
 SIR, I take this method to acquaint you that I can
 
 procure copies of several ancient poems, and an interlude, 
 perhaps the oldest dramatic piece extant, wrote by one 
 Rowley, a priest of Bristol, who lived in the reigns of 
 Henry vi. and Edward iv. If these pieces will be of 
 service to you, at your command copies shall be sent to 
 you by your most obedient servant, D. B. 
 
 Please to direct to D. B., to be left with Mr. Thomas 
 Chatterton, Redcliffe Hill, Bristol.' 
 
 In reply to this, Dodsley probably sent an in- 
 timation to the effect that he would be glad to 
 see the poems in question, particularly the inter- 
 lude ; for the following letter turned up long after- 
 wards, with the foregoing, among the loose papers 
 in Dodsley's counting-house looks as if Chatterton 
 had at least received a reply to his note : 
 
 BRISTOL, Feb. 15, 1769 
 
 SIR, Having intelligence that the tragedy of ^Ella 
 was in being, after a long and laborious search I was so 
 happy as to attain a sight of it. I endeavoured to obtain 
 a copy of it to send you ; but the present possessor 
 absolutely denies to give me one, unless I give him one 
 guinea for a consideration. As I am unable to procure such 
 a sum, I made a search for another copy, but unsuccess- 
 fully. Unwilling such a beauteous piece should be lost, 
 I have made bold to apply to you. Several gentlemen 
 of learning who have seen it join with me in praising it. 
 I am far from having any mercenary views for myself in 
 the affair, and, was I able, would print it at my own 
 risk. It is a perfect tragedy the plot clear, the language
 
 62 CHATTERTON 
 
 spirited, and the songs (interspersed in it) flowing, 
 poetical, and elegantly simple, the similes judiciously 
 applied, and, though wrote in the age of Henry vi., not 
 inferior to many of the present age. If I can procure 
 a copy, with or without the gratification, it shall be im- 
 mediately sent to you. The motive that actuates me 
 to do this is to convince the world that the monks (of 
 whom some have so despicable an opinion) were not such 
 blockheads as generally thought, and that good poetry 
 might be wrote in the dark days of superstition, as well 
 as in these more enlightened ages. An immediate 
 answer will oblige. I shall not receive your favour as 
 for myself, but as your agent. 
 
 I am, sir, your most obedient servant, 
 
 THOMAS CHATTERTON. 
 
 P.S. My reason for concealing my name was lest my 
 master (who is now out of town) should see my letters, 
 and think I neglected his business. Direct for me on 
 Redcliffe Hill. 
 
 [Here followed an extract from the tragedy, as a 
 specimen of the style.] 
 
 'The whole contains about one thousand lines. If it 
 should not suit you, I should be obliged to you if you 
 would calculate the expense of printing it, as I will 
 endeavour to publish it by subscription on my own 
 account. 
 
 To Mr. JAMES DODSLEY, Bookseller, Pall Mall, London. ' 
 
 This clumsy attempt to extract a guinea from 
 the publisher (Chatterton had probably just finished 
 his own manuscript of ^Ella, and did not like the 
 notion of copying out so long a poem on mere
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 63 
 
 chance) very naturally failed. Mr. Dodsley did 
 not think the speculation worth risking a guinea 
 on ; and ' SElla, a Tragycal Enterlude, or Discoor- 
 seynge Tragedie, wrotten by Thomas Rowllie ; plaiedd 
 before Mastre Canynge, atte hys Howse, nempte the 
 Rodde Lodge ' remained useless among Chatterton's 
 papers. 
 
 Chatterton was not daunted. Among the nota- 
 bilities of the time with whose name his own 
 excursions in the field of literature necessarily 
 made him acquainted, there was one towards whom, 
 for many reasons, he felt specially attracted the 
 ingenious Horace Walpole, then a gentleman of 
 fifty-two, leading his life of luxurious gossip and 
 literary ease between his town house in Arling- 
 ton Street, Piccadilly, and his country seat at 
 Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. Known in the 
 world of letters by his Castle of Otranto, his tragedy 
 of The Mysterious Mother, his Catalogue of Royal 
 and Noble Authors, and other various productions, 
 Walpole was at that time busy in collecting ad- 
 ditional materials for his Anecdotes of Painting in 
 England, the publication of which he had begun in 
 1761. It is on this circumstance that Chatterton 
 fastens. One evening in March 1769, Mr. Walpole,
 
 64 CHATTERTON 
 
 sitting, we will suppose, by his library fire in 
 Arlington Street, has a packet brought him by his 
 bookseller, Mr. Bathoe of the Strand (the first 
 man, by-the-bye, that kept a circulating library in 
 London). Opening the packet, he finds, first of 
 all, the following note 
 
 'SiR, Being versed a little in antiquities, I have met 
 with several curious manuscripts, among which the follow- 
 ing 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 25 ; CORN STREET.' 
 
 Appended to this short note were several pages of 
 antique writing, entitled ' The Ryse of Peyncteyne 
 in Englande, wroten by T. Row lie, 1469, for Mastre 
 Canyngej and commencing as follows ; ' Peynctynge 
 ynn England haveth of ould tyme bin yn use ; for, 
 saieth the Roman wryters, the Brytonnes dyd de- 
 pycte themselves, yn soundrie wyse, of the fourmes 
 of the sonne and moone, wyth the heerbe woade : 
 albeytte I doubte theie were no skylled carvellers.' 
 After which introduction, the document went on to 
 give biographical notices of certain distinguished 
 painters that flourished in England during Saxon 
 times and in the early Norman reigns. Attached
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 65 
 
 to the document were explanatory notes in Chatter- 
 ton's own name. One of these notes informed Walpole 
 who Rowley, the reputed author of the MS., was : 
 ' His merit as a biographer and historiographer is 
 ' great ; as a poet still greater : some of his pieces 
 ' would do honour to Pope ; and the person under 
 ' whose patronage they may appear to the world 
 ' will lay the Englishman, the antiquary, and the 
 ' poet, under eternal obligation.' Another note per- 
 formed a like biographical office for Canynge, 
 that ' Maecenas of his time ' ; and a third conveyed 
 the information that one John, the second Abbot 
 of St. Austin's in Bristol, mentioned in the text as 
 ' the fyrste Englyshe paynstere in oyles,' was also the 
 greatest poet of his age (A.D. 1186), and gave, as a 
 specimen of his poetry, three stanzas on Richard I. 
 Finally, Chatterton offered to put Walpole in pos- 
 session of still other particulars from the same 
 source. 
 
 Whether from the suddenness and naivete of the 
 attack, or from the stupefying effects of the warm 
 air of his library on a March evening, Walpole was 
 completely taken in. He can hardly have glanced 
 over the whole letter when, really interested by its 
 contents, he took his pen and wrote the following 
 reply 
 
 E
 
 66 CHATTERTON 
 
 ARLINGTON ST., March 28, 1769. 
 
 'SiR I cannot but think myself singularly obliged by 
 a gentleman with whom I have not the pleasure of being 
 acquainted, when I read your very curious and kind letter, 
 which I have this minute received. I give you a thousand 
 thanks for it, and for the very obliging offer you make of 
 communicating your manuscript to me. What you have 
 already sent me is valuable, and full of information ; but, 
 instead of correcting you, sir, you are far more able to 
 correct me. I have not the happiness of understanding 
 the Saxon language, and, without your learned notes, 
 should not have been able to comprehend Rowley's 
 text. 
 
 ' As a second edition of my Anecdotes was published last 
 year, I must not flatter myself that a third will be wanted 
 soon ; but I shall be happy to lay up any notices you will 
 be so good as to extract for me and send me at your 
 leisure ; for, as it is uncertain when I may use them, I 
 would by no means borrow or detain your MSS. 
 
 ' Give me leave to ask you where Rowley's poems are to 
 be found. I should not be sorry to print them, or at least 
 a specimen of them, if they have never been printed. 
 
 ' The Abbot John's verses that you have given me are 
 wonderful for their harmony and spirit, though there are 
 some words that I do not understand. You do not point 
 out exactly the time when he lived ; which I wish to know, 
 as I suppose it was long before John van Eyck's discovery 
 of oil-painting : if so, it confirms what I have guessed and 
 hinted in my Anecdotes, that oil-painting was known here 
 much earlier than that discovery or revival. 
 
 ' I will not trouble you with more questions now, Sir ; 
 but flatter myself, from the urbanity and politeness you 
 have already shown me, that you will give me leave to 
 consult you. I hope, too, you will forgive the simplicity
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 67 
 
 of my direction, as you have favoured me with none other. 
 ' I am, sir, your much obliged and obedient servant, 
 
 ' HORACE WALPOLE. 
 
 'P.S. Be so good as to direct to Mr. Walpole, 
 Arlington Street.' 
 
 Chatterton was highly elated. He had received 
 a letter from the great Horace Walpole, written as 
 from an equal to an equal ! How differently men 
 of that stamp treated one from the Catcotts, the 
 Barretts, and other local persons ! In haste to 
 acknowledge such politeness, he sends off a supple- 
 mentary Historic of Peyncters yn England bie 
 T. Rowlie, containing sketches of two new poets, 
 Ecca, a Saxon bishop of the year 557, and 
 Elman, a Saxon bishop of the same epoch, with 
 specimens of their verses translated from the 
 original Saxon by Rowley. He adds some more 
 verses of the Abbot John's, and promises a com- 
 plete transcript of Rowley's works as soon as he 
 shall have had time to make one. At the same 
 time he gives Walpole a confidential account of 
 himself and his prospects. This part of the letter 
 is lost ; but Walpole thus states his recollections of 
 its tenor ; ' He informed me that he was the son 
 of a poor widow, who supported him with great 
 difficulty ; that he was a clerk or apprentice to
 
 68 CHATTERTON 
 
 an attorney, but had a taste and turn for more 
 elegant studies ; and hinted a wish that I would 
 assist him with my interest in emerging out of so 
 dull a profession by procuring him some place in 
 which he could pursue his natural bent.' 
 
 Clearly Chatterton was never so near telling the 
 whole truth as when, touched by Walpole's polite- 
 ness, he thus addressed him as his only available 
 friend. One is sorry that he did not try the effect 
 of a full confession. Had Walpole received a letter 
 from his unknown correspondent conveying, in 
 addition to the foregoing particulars, this farther 
 acknowledgment, that what he had sent to him, 
 Mr. Walpole, was not a real extract from a MS., 
 but a forgery ; that for more than a year he had 
 been palming off similar forgeries on various persons 
 in Bristol, but that now he was heartily tired of the 
 mystification and would fain be out of it ; and that, 
 if Mr. Walpole, with such specimens before 
 him of the writer's powers as those pretended 
 antiques afforded, should be disposed to add the 
 kindness of his practical assistance to that 
 of his forgiveness for the trick attempted 
 on him, he would thereby earn the writer's 
 lasting gratitude, and save a life not wholly 
 irretrievable ; one wonders greatly what, in such
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 69 
 
 circumstances, Horace Walpole would have done. 
 Would the reflection in the library in Arlington 
 Street have been ' The impudent young scoundrel ! 
 I will write to his master ' ; or would it have been 
 ' Poor young fellow ! he throws himself upon me, 
 and I must do something for him ' ? 
 
 Unfortunately, Chatterton did not put it in Wai- 
 pole's option whether he would be thus generous. 
 He left the virtuoso to discover the fact of the 
 imposture for himself. Nor was it difficult to do so. 
 On the very second reading of the communication 
 to which, in a moment of credulity, he had returned 
 so polite a reply, Walpole, sufficiently alive, one 
 would think, to the possibility of a literary trick (his 
 own Castle of Otranto had been published as a pre- 
 tended translation from a black-letter book printed 
 at Naples in 1529. and he had but recently been 
 implicated in the Ossian business), must have begun 
 to suspect that all was not right. A series of Anglo- 
 Saxon painters till then unheard of ; a new poet of 
 the twelfth century writing a poem on Richard I. in 
 perfectly modern metre; and a new poet of the 
 fifteenth advertised as having left numerous poems 
 and other writings still extant in Bristol : all this in 
 one letter was too much ; and little wonder if, as he 
 afterwards said, his reflection was that ' somebody,
 
 70 CHATTERTON 
 
 having met his Anecdotes of Painting, had a mind to 
 laugh at him.' But, when the second letter came, 
 bringing with it a batch of new painters, and 
 specimens of two Saxon poets of the sixth century, 
 and when in this letter the writer explained that he 
 was a poor widow's son with a turn for literature, 
 there could be no longer any doubt in the matter. 
 His friends Gray and Mason, to whom he showed 
 the documents, concurred with him in thinking them 
 forgeries, and 'recommended the returning them 
 without farther notice.' But Walpole, with an 
 amount of good-nature for which he does not get 
 credit, did not act so summarily. He took the 
 trouble, he says, to write to a relation of his, an old 
 lady residing at Bath, desiring her to make inquiries 
 about Chatterton. The reply was a confirmation of 
 Chatterton's story about himself, but 'nothing was 
 returned about his character.' In these circum- 
 stances, Walpole discharged the whole matter from 
 his mind thus 
 
 ' Being satisfied with my intelligence about Chatterton, 
 I wrote him a letter with as much kindness and tenderness 
 as if I had been his guardian ; for, though I had no doubt 
 of his impositions, such a spirit of poetry breathed in his 
 coinage as interested me for him ; nor was it a grave crime 
 in a young bard to have forged false notes of hand that 
 were to pass current only in the parish of Parnassus. I
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 71 
 
 undeceived him about my being a person of any interest, 
 and urged to him that, in duty and gratitude to his 
 mother, who had straitened herself to breed him up to a 
 profession, he ought to labour in it, that in her old age he 
 might absolve his filial debt ; and I told him that, when he 
 should have made his fortune, he might unbend himself 
 with the studies consonant to his inclinations. I told him 
 also that I had communicated his transcripts to much 
 better judges, and that they were by no means satisfied 
 with the authenticity of his supposed MSS.' 
 
 In fancying the impatient ' Bah, old gentleman ! 
 don't I know all that myself?' with which the dis- 
 appointed boy, reading this letter, must have 
 received its advice, the question is apt to recur to us, 
 How is it that, with such evidence before their eyes 
 of the uselessness of advice, people are so stupid as 
 to persist in giving it? But the remark of a late 
 eminent statistician comes to mind. 'Advice,' said 
 he, ' probably saves a percentage.' And certainly 
 this puts the matter on its right basis. 
 
 Chatterton sent two letters in reply to that of 
 Walpole. In the first, the tone of which is some- 
 what downcast, he professes himself unable to 
 dispute with a person of such literary distinction 
 respecting the age of a MS., thanks him for his 
 advice, and expresses his resolution to follow it. 
 ' Though I am but sixteen years old,' he says, ' I 
 have lived long enough to see that poverty attends
 
 72 CHATTERTON 
 
 literature.' The second letter, which is dated April 
 I4th, is more abrupt. Here he expresses his convic- 
 tion that the papers of Rowley are genuine, and 
 requests Walpole, unless he should be inclined 
 to publish the transcripts, to return them, as he 
 wishes to give them to ' Mr. Barrett, an able 
 antiquary, now writing the History of Bristol] and 
 has no other copy. 
 
 When this second note reached Arlington Street, 
 Walpole was on the eve of a journey to Paris ; and, 
 in the hurry, the request to return the MSS. was not 
 attended to. Again Chatterton wrote ; but, as the 
 virtuoso was absent, he received no answer. It was 
 not till after six weeks that Walpole returned to 
 London ; and then so insignificant a matter was not 
 likely to be remembered. Towards the close of 
 July, however, and when he had been again in town 
 five or six weeks, he was reminded of his Bristol 
 correspondent by the receipt of what he thought ' a 
 singularly impertinent note' 
 
 '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 twice for a 
 copy of the MSS. ; no answer from you. An explanation or 
 excuse for your silence would oblige 
 
 ' THOMAS CHATTERTON. 
 
 'July 24.'
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 73 
 
 Walpole's conduct on the receipt of this note we 
 will let himself relate : 
 
 1 My heart did not accuse me of insolence to him. I 
 wrote an answer expostulating with him on his injustice, 
 and renewing good advice; but, upon second thoughts, 
 reflecting that so wrong-headed a young man, of whom 
 I knew nothing, and whom I had never seen, might be 
 absurd enough to print my letter, I flung it into the fire ; 
 and, snapping up both his poems and letters, without 
 taking a copy of either (for which I am now sorry), I 
 returned both to him, and thought no more of him or 
 them.' 
 
 Thus ended the correspondence between Walpole 
 and Chatterton, Walpole soon forgetting the whole 
 affair, and Chatterton persisting in his belief that, 
 had he not committed the blunder of letting his 
 aristocratic correspondent know that he was a poor 
 widow's son, he would have fared better at his 
 hands. No doubt there was something in this. 
 But, of all the unreasonable things ever done by a 
 misjudging public, certainly that of condemning 
 Walpole to infamy for his conduct in this affair and 
 charging on him all the tragic sequel of Chatterton's 
 life is one of the most unreasonable. Why, the 
 probability is that Walpole behaved better than most 
 people would have done in the circumstances ! Let 
 any one in the present day fancy how he would act
 
 74 CHATTERTON 
 
 if some one utterly unknown to him were to try to 
 impose on him in a similar way through the post- 
 office. Would the mere cleverness of the cheat take 
 away the instinctive frown of resentment, and change 
 it into admiring enthusiasm ? That there may 
 possibly have been in London at that time persons 
 of rare goodness, of overflowing tolerance and com- 
 passion, that would have acted differently from the 
 virtuoso of Arlington Street persons who, saying 
 to themselves, ' Here is a poor young man of 
 abilities in a bad way/ would have immediately 
 called for their carpet bags, and set off for Bristol 
 by coach, to dig out the culprit, and lecture him 
 soundly, and make a man of him we will not deny. 
 If that time was like the present, however, such 
 men, we fear, must have been very thinly scattered, 
 and very hard to find. Looking back now, we must, 
 of course, feel that it was a pity the correspondence 
 did not lead to a better issue ; and Walpole himself 
 lived to know this. But, as Burke has said, 'Men 
 are wise with little reflection, and good with little 
 self-denial, in the business of all times except their 
 own.' Let, therefore, such as are disposed to blame 
 Walpole in this affair lay the whole story to 
 heart in the form of a maxim for their own 
 guidance.
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 75 
 
 While the correspondence with Walpole had been 
 going on, Chatterton had not been idle. In the 
 month of January 1769 there appeared in London the 
 first number of a new periodical, called the Town and 
 Country Magazine. It was somewhat on the model 
 of the Gentleman's Magazine, and of those other 
 curious monthly collections of scraps with which our 
 ancestors, strangers to the more elaborate entertain- 
 ment of modern periodicals, used to regale their 
 leisure. Here was an opportunity for the young 
 litterateur of Bristol. Accordingly, in the February 
 number (magazines were then published retrospec- 
 tively, i.e., at the close of the month whose name 
 they bore) there appeared two contributions from 
 the pen of Chatterton : one a prose account of the 
 costume of Saxon heralds, signed ' D.B.' ; the other 
 a little complimentary poem addressed to ' Mr 
 Alcock, the miniature painter of Bristol,' and signed 
 ' Asaphides.' Over these signatures he continued 
 to contribute to the magazine ; and effusions of his, 
 chiefly Ossianic prose-poems, purporting to be from 
 the Saxon or the ancient British, appeared in all the 
 subsequent numbers for the year 1769, except those 
 of June, September, and October. In the number 
 for May appeared one of the finest of his minor 
 Rowley poems. In short, at the publishing office
 
 76 CHATTERTON 
 
 of the Town and Country in London the hand- 
 writing of ' D. B.' of Bristol must have been recog- 
 nised, in 1769, as that of one of the established 
 correspondents of the magazine ; and in Bristol it 
 must have been a fact known and enviously com- 
 mented on among the Carys, the Smiths, the Kators, 
 and other young men of Chatterton's acquaintance, 
 that he could have his pieces printed as often he 
 liked in a London periodical. Chatterton felt the 
 immensity of the honour; and there is extant a 
 somewhat unveracious letter of his to a distant 
 relative, ' a breeches-maker in Salisbury,' in which he 
 brags of it He tells the breeches-maker at the 
 same time of his correspondence with Walpole. 
 ' It ended,' he says, 'as most such do. I differed 
 ' from him in the age of a MS. ; he insists upon 
 ' his superior talents, which is no proof of that 
 ' superiority. We possibly may engage publicly in 
 ' some one of the periodical publications, though I 
 ' know not who will give the onset.' 
 
 The Town and Country Magazine seems to have 
 been the only metropolitan print to which Chatterton 
 was a contributor during the year 1769. But 
 in the beginning of 1770 he succeeded in another 
 venture, and became the correspondent also of a 
 London newspaper.
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 77 
 
 The newspapers of that day were by no means 
 such as we now see. The largest of them consisted 
 of but a single sheet, corresponding in size with our 
 small evening papers. Their contents, too, were 
 neither so various nor so elaborately prepared as 
 those of our present newspapers. Advertisements, 
 paragraphs of political gossip picked up outside the 
 Houses of Parliament, and scraps of miscellaneous 
 town, country, and foreign news, constituted nearly 
 all that the newspaper then offered to its readers. 
 What we now call ' leading articles ' were hardly 
 known. It was enough for even a metropolitan 
 journal to have one editorial hand to assist the 
 publisher ; and the notion of employing a staff of 
 educated men to write comments on the proceedings 
 of the day was but in its infancy. The place, 
 however, of leading articles by paid attaches of the 
 newspaper was in part supplied by the voluntary 
 letters of numerous anonymous correspondents, 
 interested in politics, and glad to see their lucubra- 
 tions in print. Men of political note sometimes 
 took this mode of serving the ends of their party ; 
 but the majority of the correspondents of news- 
 papers were literary clients of official men, or private 
 individuals scattered up and down the country. 
 Chief of these unpaid journalists, king among the
 
 78 CHATTERTON 
 
 numberless Brutuses, Publicolas, and Catos, that 
 told the nation its grievances through the columns 
 of the newspapers, was the terrible Junius of the 
 Public Advertiser. The boldest of his letters was 
 perhaps that containing his ' Address to the King,' 
 which was published on the iQth December, 1769. 
 The excitement that followed this letter, and above 
 all the report that the publisher, Mr. H. J. Woodfall, 
 was to be brought to account for it before the public 
 tribunals, produced a crisis some called it a panic, 
 some a jubilee in the newspaper world. 
 
 The other newspapers were, of course, anxious to 
 obtain a share of the renown which the threatened 
 prosecution conferred on the Public Advertiser. Ac- 
 cordingly, to reassure its correspondents, and to 
 convince its subscribers of its unflinching liberalism 
 in the midst of danger, the Middlesex Journal, a 
 bi-weekly newspaper of the day, not far behind 
 the Advertiser in credit, hastened to put forth the 
 following manifesto 
 
 'William George Edmunds, of Shoe Lane, in the parish 
 of St. Andrew's, Holborn, Gent, maketh oath and saith, 
 that he will not at any time declare the name of any person 
 or persons who shall send any papers to the Middlesex 
 Journal or Chronicle of Liberty, or any other publication in 
 which he shall be concerned, without the express consent 
 and direction of the author of such paper; and that he
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 79 
 
 will not make any discovery by which any of his authors 
 can be found out ; and that he will give to the public, in 
 the fairest and fullest manner, all such essays, dissertations 
 and other writings, without any alteration, so far as he can 
 or ought, consistently with the duty of an honest man, a 
 good member of society, a friend to his country, and a 
 loyal subject. W. G. EDMUNDS. 
 
 'Sworn at the Mansion House, London January ist, 
 1770, before me, W. BECKFORD, Mayor.' 
 
 'N.B. Mr. E. makes it a general rule to destroy all 
 MSS. as soon as they are composed for the press. If any 
 gentleman, however, is desirous of having his MSS. re- 
 turned to him, Mr. E. begs that the words "to be returned," 
 may be in large letters at the end of the originals. In that 
 case they shall be preserved and delivered up to any person 
 who shall bring an order for that purpose in the same 
 handwriting as the original.' 
 
 As this manifesto of Mr. Edmunds, copied by 
 us from the Middlesex Journal for February 
 6th 1770, was repeated in succeeding numbers, 
 it probably caught Chatterton's eye in Bristol, 
 and determined his already cherished intention of 
 trying his hand at a newspaper article. At 
 all events, he plunged at once in medias res. 
 There had just been a change of Ministry. The 
 Duke of Grafton, the favourite victim of Junius, 
 had resigned and given place, for some secret 
 Court reason, to the goggle-eyed Lord North. 
 Chatterton, hearing much talk about this affair,
 
 8o CHATTERTON 
 
 thinks it a good topic for his purpose, and, stealing 
 a forenoon from his office-work, pens, in a style 
 mimicked after that of Junius, a ' Letter to the 
 Duke of G n/ in which he informs that illus- 
 trious personage that his resignation has ' caused 
 more speculation than any harlequinade he has 
 already acted/ and tells him that, as he had been 
 all along the tool of Bute, to whom he was at 
 first recommended by his 'happy vacuity of in- 
 vention,' so now it is Bute's influence that has 
 dismissed him. This missive he dates 'Bristol, 
 February 16,' and signs ' Decimus.' Mr. Edmunds, 
 receiving it in his sanctum in Shoe Lane, glances 
 over it, thinks it tolerably smart, and prints it. 
 Whether the Duke of Grafton ever saw it, poor 
 man, we do not know. If he did, ' One wasp 
 more ' would be his very natural reflection ; and 
 he would go on sipping his chocolate. 
 
 Chatterton's next contribution to the Middlesex 
 Journal, or at least the next that Mr. Edmunds 
 thought proper to print, was one with the same 
 signature, dated ' Bristol, April 10, 1770,' and 
 addressed to that much abused lady, the Princess 
 Dowager of Wales, the mother, and, as people 
 said, manager of the king. Here is a specimen 
 Junius, it will be observed, to the very cadence :
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 81 
 
 'By you, men of no principles were thrust into offices 
 they did not know how to discharge, and honoured with 
 trusts they accepted only to violate ; being made more 
 conspicuously mean by communicating error and often 
 vice to the character of the person who promoted them. 
 None but a sovereign power can make little villains 
 dangerous ; the nobly vicious, the daringly ambitious, only 
 rise from themselves. Without the influence of ministerial 
 authority, Mansfield had been a pettifogging attorney, and 
 Warburton a bustling country curate. The first had not 
 lived to bury the substance of our laws in the shadows of 
 his explanations ; nor would the latter have confounded 
 religion with deism, and proved of no use to either. . . . 
 The state of affairs very much resembles the eve of the 
 troubles of Charles i. Unhappy monarch, thou hast a 
 claim, a dear-bought claim, to our pity ; nothing but thy 
 death could purchase it. Hadst thou died quietly and 
 in peace, thou hadst died infamous ; thy misfortunes were 
 the only happy means of saving thee from the book of 
 shame. What a parallel could the freedom of an English 
 pen strike out ! ' 
 
 This letter was written on a Tuesday. On the 
 Saturday, or, more probably, on the Monday 
 following, there was a tremendous incident. 
 
 Chatterton, among his other eccentricities, had 
 often been heard to talk familiarly of suicide. 
 One evening, for example, pulling out a pistol in 
 the presence of some of his companions, he had 
 placed it to his forehead, saying ' Now, if one had 
 but courage to draw the trigger ! ' Nor was this 
 
 F
 
 82 CHATTERTON 
 
 mere juvenile affectation. Hateful from the first, 
 Chatterton's position in Bristol had by this time be- 
 come unendurable to him. All his literary honours, 
 his contributorship to a London magazine and his 
 correspondence with a London newspaper now in- 
 cluded, were as nothing when put in the balance 
 against his present servitude. If there were seasons 
 when, sanguine in his hopes of a better future, he 
 was able to keep his disgust within bounds, there 
 were others when it rose to a perfect frenzy. 
 
 Such a season seems to have been the week in 
 which the foregoing letter was written for the 
 Middlesex Journal. By some pressure of circum- 
 stances Chatterton was that week reduced to the 
 necessity of asking Burgum for a loan of money ; 
 which Burgum, at the last moment, refused. 
 Chatterton has thus perpetuated the fact 
 
 ' When wildly squandering everything I got 
 On books and learning, and the Lord knows what, 
 Could Burgum then my critic, patron, friend 
 Without security attempt to lend ? 
 No, that would be imprudent in the man : 
 Accuse him of imprudence if you can ! ' 
 
 This disappointment throws him into a humour 
 bordering on the suicidal ; and, left alone in his 
 master's office on the Saturday forenoon following, 
 he displays it by penning a kind of satirical will
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 83 
 
 or suicide's farewell to the world. This extra- 
 ordinary document, which is still extant, is headed 
 thus ' All this wrote between 1 1 and 2 o'clock, 
 Saturday, in the utmost distress of mind, April 14, 
 1770' ; and, after some fifty lines of verse addressed 
 to Burgum, the Rev. Mr. Catcott, and Barrett, it 
 proceeds as follows 
 
 'This is the last Will and Testament of me, Thomas 
 Chatterton, of the city Bristol, being sound in body, or 
 it is the fault of my last surgeon : the soundness of my 
 mind the coroners are to be judges of desiring them to 
 take notice that the most perfect masters of human 
 nature in Bristol distinguish me by the title of ' the mad 
 genius ' ; therefore, if I do a mad action, it is conformable 
 to every action of my life, which all savoured of 
 insanity. 
 
 ' Item. If, after my death, which will happen to-morrow 
 night before eight o'clock, being the Feast of the Resurrec- 
 tion, the coroner and jury bring it in lunacy, I will and 
 direct that Paul Farr, Esq., and Mr. John Flower, at their 
 joint expense, cause my body to be interred in the tomb 
 of my fathers, and raise the monument over my body to 
 the height of four feet five inches, placing the present flat 
 stone on the top, and adding six tablets.' 
 
 [Here follow directions for certain engravings to be 
 placed on the six tablets : viz., on two of them, fronting 
 each other, certain heraldic achievements ; on another, an 
 inscription, in old English characters, to his ancestor, 
 Guatevine Chatterton, A.D, 1210; on another, an inscrip- 
 tion, in the same character, to another ancestor, Alanus 
 Chatterton, A.D. 1415 ; on another an inscription, in
 
 84 CHATTERTON 
 
 Roman letters, to the memory of his father; and on the 
 remaining one this epitaph to himself 
 
 'TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 'THOMAS CHATTERTON 
 
 ' Reader, judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe 
 ' that he shall be judged by a supreme power : to that 
 ' power alone is he now answerable.'] 
 
 'And I will and direct that, if the coroner's inquest 
 bring it in felo de se, the said monument shall be, notwith- 
 standing, erected. And, if the said Paul Farr and John 
 Flower have souls so Bristolish as to refuse this my request, 
 they will transmit a copy of my will to the Society for 
 supporting the Bill of Rights, whom I hereby empower to 
 build the said monument according to the aforesaid direc- 
 tions. And, if they, the said Paul Farr and John Flower, 
 should build the said monument, I will and direct that the 
 second edition of my Kew Gardens shall be dedicated to 
 them in the following dedication : " To Paul Farr and 
 John Flower, Esqrs., this book is most humbly dedicated 
 by the Author's Ghost." 
 
 'Item, I give all my vigour and fire of youth to Mr. 
 George Catcott, being sensible he is most in want of it. 
 
 ' Item. From the same charitable motive, I give and 
 bequeath unto the Rev. Mr. Camplin, sen., all my humility. 
 To Mr. Burgum all my prosody and grammar, likewise one 
 moiety of my modesty ; the other moiety to any young lady 
 who can prove, without blushing, that she wants that valu- 
 able commodity. To Bristol all my spirit and disinterest- 
 edness, parcels of goods unknown on her quays since the 
 days of Canning and Rowley. ('Tis true, a charitable 
 gentleman, one Mr. Colston, smuggled a considerable 
 quantity of it ; but, it being proved that he was a Papist, 
 the worshipful society of aldermen endeavoured to throttle
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 85 
 
 him with the oath- of allegiance.) I leave also my religion 
 to Dr. Cutts Barton, Dean of Bristol, hereby empowering 
 the sub-sacrist to strike him on the head when he goes to 
 sleep in church. My powers of utterance I give to the 
 Rev. Mr. Broughton, hoping he will employ them to a 
 better purpose than reading lectures on the immortality of 
 the soul. I leave the Rev. Mr. Catcott some little of my 
 free-thinking, that he may put on spectacles of reason, and 
 see how vilely he is duped in believing the Scriptures 
 literally. (I wish he and his brother George would know 
 how far I am their real enemy : but I have an unlucky 
 way of raillery ; and, when the strong fit of satire is upon 
 me, I spare neither friend nor foe. This is my excuse for 
 what I have said of them elsewhere.) I leave Mr. Clay- 
 field the sincerest thanks my gratitude can give; and I 
 will and direct that, whatever any person may think the 
 pleasure of reading my works worth, they immediately 
 pay their own valuation to him, since it is then become 
 a lawful debt to me, and to him as my executor in this 
 case. 
 
 ' I leave my moderation to the politicians on both sides 
 of the question. I leave my generosity to our present 
 right worshipful mayor, Thomas Harris, Esq. I give my 
 abstinence to the company at the Sheriffs' annual feast in 
 general, more particularly the aldermen. 
 
 ' Item. I give and bequeath to Mr. Matthew Mease a 
 mourning ring with this motto, "Alas, poor Chatterton!" 
 provided he pays for it himself. Item. I leave the young 
 ladies all the letters they have had from me, assuring them 
 that they need be under no apprehensions from the appear- 
 ance of my ghost, for I die for none of them. Item. I leave 
 all my debts, the whole not five pounds, to the payment of 
 the charitable and generous Chamber of Bristol, on 
 penalty, if refused, to hinder every member from a good 
 dinner by appearing in the form of a bailiff. If, in defiance
 
 86 CHATTERTON 
 
 of this terrible spectre, they obstinately persist in refusing 
 to discharge my debts, let my two creditors apply to the 
 supporters of the Bill of Rights. Item. I leave my mother 
 and sister to the protection of my friends, if I have any. 
 
 ' Executed in the presence of Omniscience, this i4th of 
 April, 1770. 
 
 ' THOMAS CHATTERTON.' 
 
 Whether this dreadful document got immediately 
 abroad among Chatterton's friends does not appear. 
 Another document, however, written at the same 
 time and in the same mad mood, was sufficiently 
 alarming to produce a catastrophe. The Mr. Clay- 
 field mentioned with such peculiar respect in the 
 preceding paper, a distiller of means and respect- 
 ability, and a friend of Mr. Lambert's, seems to have 
 been a person of more than usual consideration in 
 the eyes of Mr. Lambert's apprentice. To him, 
 accordingly, rather than to any other person in 
 Bristol, he chose to indite a letter conveying his 
 intention of suicide. This letter not actually sent 
 to Mr. Clayfield by Chatterton, but inadvertently 
 left about, it would appear, with that gentleman's 
 address upon it was prematurely delivered to him. 
 Startled by its contents, he lost no time in communi- 
 cating them to Mr. Lambert. There was an im- 
 mediate consultation among Chatterton's friends, and 
 Mr. Barrett undertook to see the infatuated lad, and
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 87 
 
 reason with him on the folly and criminality of his 
 conduct Accordingly, a long conversation took 
 place between them, in which, to use his own words, 
 he took Chatterton to task for the ' bad company and 
 principles he had adopted,' and lectured him seri- 
 ously ' on the horrible crime of self-murder, however 
 glossed over by present libertines.' Chatterton was 
 affected, and shed tears. The next day, however, he 
 sent Mr. Barrett the following letter, the original of 
 which may be seen in the British Museum 
 
 'SiR Upon recollection I don't know how Mr. Clay- 
 field could come by his letter, as I intended to give him a 
 letter, but did not. In regard to my motives for the 
 supposed rashness, I shall observe that I keep no worse 
 company than myself: I never drink to excess, and have, 
 without vanity, too much sense to be attached to the 
 mercenary retailers of iniquity. No, it is my PRIDE, my 
 damn'd native unconquerable PRIDE, that plunges me into 
 distraction. You must know that nineteen-twentieths of 
 my composition is pride. I must either live a slave, a 
 servant, to have no will of my own which I may freely 
 declare as such, or DIE. Perplexing alternative ! but it 
 distracts me to think of it ! I will endeavour to learn 
 humility, but it cannot be here. What it may cost me in 
 the trial Heaven knows. 
 
 ' I am your much obliged unhappy humble servant, 
 ' Thursday Evening. T. C.' 
 
 Before this letter had been written by Chatterton, 
 one thing had been fully determined with regard to
 
 88 CHATTERTON 
 
 him. Mr. Lambert was no longer to keep him in his 
 service. Even had the lawyer himself been willing 
 to make the attempt, the lawyer's mother, who kept 
 house for him an old lady between whom and 
 Chatterton, there had never, we have reason to think, 
 been any cordiality would certainly not have listened 
 to such a thing. What ! sleep under the same roof 
 with a violent young fellow that had threatened to 
 make away with himself? Find the garret in a 
 welter some morning with the young rascal's blood, 
 and have a coroner's inquest in the house ? Better 
 at once give him up his indentures, and be rid of 
 him ! With this advice of the old lady even the 
 calmer deliberations of Chatterton's own friends, 
 Barrett, Catcott and the rest, could not but agree. 
 So, on or about Monday the i6th of April 1770, it 
 was intimated to Chatterton that he was no longer 
 in the employment of Mr. Lambert. 
 
 Tuesday the i/th, it will be remembered, was the 
 day of Wilkes's release from prison; and on Thursday 
 the iQth the very day, as we guess, on which the 
 foregoing letter to Mr. Barrett was written there 
 took place in Bristol that dinner in honour of the 
 patriot at which, according to the announcement in 
 the Public Advertiser, the more prominent Liberals 
 of the town were to assemble at ' the Crown, in the
 
 THE ATTORNEY'S APPRENTICE 89 
 
 passage from Broad Street to Tower Lane,' to eat 
 their forty-five pounds of meat, drink their forty-five 
 tankards of ale and their forty-five bowls of punch, 
 and smoke their forty-five pipes of tobacco. Were 
 we wrong in fancying that, while those Bristol 
 Wilkesites were making merry in the tavern, 
 Chatterton may have been moodily perambulating 
 the adjacent streets ? Shall we be wrong if we fancy, 
 farther, that the story of Mr. Lambert's apprentice 
 and his intended suicide may have been talked over 
 by the happy gentlemen, when, having finished their 
 toasts, they sat down at leisure to their pipes and 
 the remaining punch ?
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 
 
 CAST out of all chance of a livelihood in his native 
 town, there was but one course open to Chatterton : 
 to bid farewell to Bristol and attorneyship, and 
 try what he could do in the great literary mart of 
 London. Sanguine as were his hopes of success, 
 it can have cost him but little thought to make up 
 his mind to this course, if indeed he did not secretly 
 congratulate himself that his recent escapade had 
 ended so agreeably. Probably there was but one 
 thing that stood in the way of an immediate de- 
 claration by himself, after the fracas was over, that 
 this was the resolution he had come to the want, 
 namely, of a little money to serve for outfit. No 
 sooner, therefore, was this obstacle removed by the 
 charitable determination of his friends, Mr. Barrett, 
 Mr. Clayfield, the Catcotts, etc., to make a little 
 subscription for him, so as to present him with 
 the parting gift of a few pounds, than the tide of
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 91 
 
 feeling was turned, and from a state of despondency 
 Chatterton gave way to raptures of unbounded joy. 
 London ! London ! A few days, and he should 
 have left the dingy quays of abominable Bristol, 
 and should be treading, in the very footsteps of 
 Goldsmith, Garrick, and Johnson, the liberal London 
 streets ! 
 
 Chatterton remained exactly a week in Bristol 
 after his dismissal from Mr. Lambert's : i.e. from 
 the 1 6th to the 24th of April. A busy week we 
 may suppose that to have been for Mrs. Chatterton 
 and her daughter ; so much sewing to be done, so 
 many other little preparations to be made for the 
 poor boy's departure. This dreadful occurrence 
 notwithstanding, and all that idle people are saying 
 about it, do not they know him better than anybody 
 else does, and may he not yet, they say to each 
 other, make his way in the world as creditably as 
 any of the best in Bristol ? So, in their humble 
 apartments, the widow and her daughter ply their 
 needles, talking of Thomas and his prospects as 
 hopefully as they can. 
 
 The subject of their conversation, meanwhile, is 
 generally out, going from street to street, and taking 
 leave of his friends. Barrett, the two Catcotts, Mr. 
 Alcock, Mr. Clayfield, Burgum, Matthew Mease,
 
 92 CHATTERTON 
 
 and his younger friends, the Carys, Smiths, and 
 Kators he makes the round of them all, receiving 
 their good wishes, and making arrangements to 
 correspond with them. To less intimate acquaint- 
 ances, too, met accidentally in the streets, he has 
 to bid a friendly good-bye. Moreover, there are 
 his numerous feminine friends the Miss Webbs, the 
 Miss Thatchers, the Miss Hills, etc., not to omit 
 that ' female Machiavel,' Miss Rumsey who have all 
 heard, with more or less concern, that they are 
 about to lose their poet, and are, of course, anxious 
 to see him before he goes. Of some acquaintances 
 of this class, probably the more humble of them, 
 he appears to have taken a kind of collective fare- 
 well. Long afterwards, at least, a Mrs. Stephens, 
 the wife of a cabinet-maker in Bristol, used to tell 
 that she remembered, as an incident of her girl- 
 hood, Chatterton's 'taking leave of her and some 
 others, on the steps of Redcliffe Church, very cheer- 
 fully,' before his going to London. 'At parting, 
 he said he would give them some gingerbread, 
 and went over the way to Mr. Freeling's to buy 
 some.' In connection with which little anecdote 
 we have a mysterious little scrap of document to 
 produce. It has to be prefaced, however, by a 
 remark or two,
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 93 
 
 A great deal of nonsense has been written on the 
 question of Chatterton's moral character. Natur- 
 ally resenting the harsh way in which Chalmers and 
 other earlier biographers of Chatterton handled his 
 memory, the writers of some more recent notices have 
 certainly made out, in favour of ' the marvellous 
 boy,' a certificate of good behaviour to which he 
 was not entitled, and for which he would not have 
 thanked them. The evidence on which they 
 have laid most stress in this connection is 
 that of Chatterton's sister, as given by her in her 
 letter to the Rev. Sir Herbert Croft, eight years 
 after Chatterton's death, and published by that 
 gentleman in his singular book, Love and Madness. 
 The following is a passage from that touching and 
 simple epistle, spelt as in the original : 
 
 ' He wrote one letter to Sir Horace Warlpool ; and, 
 except his corrispondence with Miss Rumsey, the girl 
 I have mentioned, I know of no other. He would 
 frequently walk the Colledge Green with the young 
 girls that statedly paraded there to shew their finery. 
 But I realy beleive he was no debauchee (tho some 
 have reported it), the dear unhappy boy had faults 
 enough I saw with concern. he was proud and ex- 
 ceedingly impetious, but that of venality [the writer 
 thought this a fine word for what she meant] he could 
 not be justly accused with. Mrs. Lambert informed 
 me, not 2 months before he left Bristol, he had never
 
 94 CHATTERTON 
 
 been once found out of the office in the stated hours, 
 as they frequently sent the footman and other servants 
 to see Nor but once stayed out till 1 1 o'clock : then he 
 had leave, as we entertained some friends at our house 
 at Christmas.' 
 
 This very distinct piece of evidence in favour of 
 Chatterton's punctual conduct as an apprentice has 
 been strained into a testimony of much wider signi- 
 ficance. A fruitless attempt, we fear ! The worth 
 of a sister's assurance that her deceased brother could 
 not be justly accused of ' venality ' it is not difficult 
 to estimate ; besides which, it is accompanied with the 
 information that the common report was to the con- 
 trary, and with the allusion to the habit of ' walking 
 with the girls on the College Green,' whatever that 
 may mean. Then, again, we have the fact that Mr. 
 Barrett, in his remonstrance with him respecting his 
 alarming letter to Mr. Clayfield, attributed his bad 
 state of mind to the influence of bad company. His 
 own allusions, too, scattered through his writings, 
 seem quite decisive, even if we should not take into 
 very special account the almost constant tone which 
 runs through all that portion of his writings that is 
 not in the antique vein, evidently the productions, 
 as most of those modern pieces are, of a clever boy 
 eager (as boys often are till some real experience of
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 95 
 
 the heart has made them earnest and silent) to assert 
 his manhood among his compeers by the irreverent 
 freedom of his language. And, after all, have we 
 not the native probabilities of the case itself? Are 
 young men in general, and attorneys' apprentices in 
 particular, usually so immaculate in conduct that it 
 becomes necessary to argue out something like a 
 perfectly virtuous character for Chatterton before 
 venturing to introduce him to the admirers of genius 
 and literature? Should we fail in doing this, will 
 Byron, Burns, and the rest, refuse to shake hands 
 with him? It is a pity, certainly, that one should 
 have to ask such a question. Young men of genius 
 may take warning. A convenient theory of ' wild 
 oats ' has been provided and put in circulation for 
 their use by the thoughtless and the interested ; but 
 better for themselves in the end if they decidedly 
 reject it. Were Byron and Burns, or were Chatterton 
 himself, to speak now, this would be their advice. 
 Happiest is he who, needing no benefit from the 
 theory, yet can weigh it, and temper his judgments 
 with charity. 
 
 And now for our document. If the reader were to 
 go to the Reading- Room of the British Museum and 
 ask for the Chatterton MSS. (a considerable portion 
 of all the surviving MSS. of Chatterton is in the
 
 96 CHATTERTON 
 
 Museum, the remainder being in Bristol and else- 
 where), he would have several volumes brought to 
 him, containing papers and parchments of various 
 shapes and sizes, some stained, smoked, and written 
 like antiques, others undisguisedly modern. If, after 
 overcoming the strange feeling that here in his 
 hands are the very sheets over which so many years 
 ago Chatterton bent, tracing with nimble fingers the 
 black characters over the white pages, the reader 
 should examine the papers successively and indi- 
 vidually, he would come upon one that would puzzle 
 him much. It is a dingy piece of letter-paper, once 
 folded as a letter, and containing a very ugly scrawl 
 in an uneducated feminine hand. 
 
 Here it is, printed as in the original 
 
 ' Sir, I send my Love to you and Tell you This if you 
 prove Constant I not miss but if you frown and Torn away 
 I can make oart of battered Hay pray excep of me Love 
 Hartley an send me word Cartingley. Tell me How 
 maney ouncs of Green Gingerbread Can Sho the baker of 
 Honiste. 
 
 ' My House is not belt with Stavis. I not be Coarted 
 by Boys nor navis. I Haive a man and a man Shall Haive 
 me, if I whaint a fool I Send for Thee. 
 
 ' If you are going to the D 1 wish you a good 
 
 Gonery.' 
 
 What in all the world have we here ? Exercising 
 our utmost ingenuity for the purpose of determining,
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 97 
 
 if possible, what petty, and perhaps not very reput- 
 able, Bristol occurrence of the year 1770, this mystic 
 piece of ill-written doggerel (the reader will observe 
 that part of the letter is in a kind of cripple rhyme) 
 has come down to us to perpetuate and represent, we 
 can honestly arrive but at one conclusion that it is 
 the spiteful epistle of some obscure female, avenging 
 herself, with all the energy of feminine malice, for the 
 spretcs injuria forma or some other fancied wrong. 
 Did we dare to copy the version of the letter, or 
 rather jocular answer to it, written in Chatterton's 
 own hand on the back of the sheet, in the shape of 
 a few extremely impolite and not at all quotable 
 Hudibrastic lines, the hypothesis would appear inevit- 
 able. In short, we explain the matter thus ; Among 
 the various acquaintances of Chatterton interested in 
 the news of his approaching departure is some one 
 of the other sex, labouring under the provocation of 
 some injury, or fancied injury, not now ascertainable. 
 This Bristol Juno sees, with pangs incredible, her faith- 
 less Jove dispensing the gingerbread he has bought 
 at ' Mr. Freeling's over the way ' among the nymphs 
 waiting for it on the steps of Redcliffe Church ; she 
 goes home, and discharges all her malevolence in one 
 fell epistle, into which, with vast literary effort, she 
 contrives to introduce an allusion to the gingerbread; 
 
 G
 
 98 CHATTERTON 
 
 this epistle, intended to pierce her Jove's heart like 
 a poisoned arrow, she sends to him anonymously ; 
 and he, reading it, and recognising the hand of the 
 distempered donor, enjoys the joke amazingly, and 
 expresses his opinion of it and her by scribbling his 
 wicked answer on the other side. Strange bit of 
 defunct real life thus to be dug up again into the 
 light ! The departure of poor Chatterton for London 
 from his native place was not, it would thus appear, 
 an event which all Bristol viewed with indifference. 
 Whether the Clayfields, the Barretts, and the Cat- 
 cotts of his acquaintance cared much about the 
 matter or not, whether Miss Rumsey shed tears or 
 not, we cannot say ; but here, at least, was one 
 sluttish denizen of some mean Bristol street in whose 
 breast Chatterton left a rankling sense of wrong or 
 jealousy, and who was powerfully enough excited by 
 the news of his departure to immortalise her concern 
 therein by penning a spiteful letter, in which she told 
 
 him he was reported to be ' going to the D ,' and 
 
 wished him a good journey. 
 
 Chatterton was not going to the D directly : 
 
 he was only going to London, to follow the profes- 
 sional walk of literature. Persons going on that 
 journey from the provinces now-a-days (and it must
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 99 
 
 have been the same in Chatterton's time) usually 
 carry three things with them, in addition to the 
 mere essentials of luggage a little money, a small 
 bundle of MSS., and a few letters of introduction. 
 How was Chatterton furnished in these several 
 respects ? 
 
 As regards money, the most essential of the three, 
 but very poorly, we fear. It would throw more light 
 than a hundred disquisitions on the real facts of 
 Chatterton's London career were we able to calculate 
 to the precise shilling the sum of money which he 
 took with him from Bristol. Unfortunately, there are 
 no data for such a calculation. All that remains in 
 the shape of information on this point is a vague 
 tradition, the exact worth of which we do not know, 
 that the understood arrangement among the chari- 
 table persons who had agreed to get up a little 
 subscription for him against his departure was that 
 they should subscribe a guinea each. Subjecting 
 this tradition to a strict act of judgment, directed by 
 a knowledge of the laws of human nature in general 
 and the circumstances of Chatterton's Bristol position 
 in particular, one may say that the entire sum that 
 could possibly be in Chatterton's purse in the week 
 before he left Bristol did not (any contribution his 
 mother could make included) exceed ten guineas.
 
 ioo CHATTERTON 
 
 Take a more probable estimate still, and deduct the 
 expenses of the outfit and journey, and we may say 
 that Chatterton was elated with the prospect of 
 invading London with a pecuniary force of exactly 
 five guineas. 
 
 But he had plenty of manuscripts. In one bundle 
 he had the whole of the Rowley Poems and other 
 antiques sElla, The Brislowe Tragedie, Goddwyn, 
 The Tournament, The Battle of Hastings, The 
 Parliamente of Sprytes, etc., ; all written and finished 
 at least twelve months before, and forming matter 
 enough to fill, if printed, one considerable volume. 
 These, if he could either dispose of them in the 
 mass, or sell them individually, would form a 
 sufficient stock to begin with. On ^Ella, in 
 particular, he naturally set great value. It was his 
 masterpiece, worth a great deal of money even as 
 an imitation of the antique, and worth ten times 
 more if he could succeed in getting it accepted as a 
 genuine English poem of the fifteenth century. If 
 he should not be able to part with it advantageously 
 under either guise, he would at any rate have it by 
 him, to be printed some day or other at his own 
 expense, and to make him famous as a poet and 
 antiquarian ! Then, in another bundle, he had his 
 miscellaneous modern pieces in prose and verse his
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 101 
 
 Kew Gardens, his Consuliad> and other such satires 
 after the manner of Pope and Churchill, with numer- 
 ous songs, elegies, and other poetical trifles, and an 
 assortment of odds and ends bearing on English 
 antiquities. For these he cared far less himself than 
 for his Rowley Poems ; but he had already ascer- 
 tained that they were more disposable as literary 
 ware, and accordingly he had of late almost abandoned 
 the antique vein in their favour. They might be of 
 use to him in his dealings with the magazines and 
 newspapers ; and, if they should turn out not to 
 be exactly suitable, he had a ready pen, and 
 a head full of all kinds of historical knowledge, 
 and should find no difficulty especially after 
 his sister had forwarded to him his little collec- 
 tion of books in throwing off such papers by 
 the dozen ! 
 
 Lastly, as regards the matter of introductions. It 
 may seem strange to such as are accustomed to 
 think such things essential to a young man migrat- 
 ing from his native place, but we positively cannot 
 find that Chatterton took one letter of introduction 
 from Bristol with him. That Matthew Mease may 
 have told him of some vintner of his acquaintance, 
 living somewhere in Whitechapel, that would be glad 
 to see him if he told him he knew Mat Mease of
 
 102 CHATTERTON 
 
 Bristol ; that Mr. Clayfield, or Mr. Barrett, or even 
 his master, Mr. Lambert, may have recommended 
 him to call at his leisure on certain well-to-do 
 Smiths or Robinsons they had dealings with ; that 
 his younger friends, the Mr. Carys and Mr. Rudhalls 
 and Miss Rumseys and Miss Webbs, may have given 
 him commissions and instructions destined to bring 
 him into connection with metropolitan aunts living 
 in Cam den Town, and long-forgotten cousins that 
 had situations in the Custom House ; nay, that Mrs. 
 Chatterton herself, taxing, with the grandmother's 
 help, her genealogical memory, may have excogitated 
 for the occasion a stray relative or two in London 
 that it might be well to visit : all this is, of course, 
 extremely probable. But (and the reason, in all 
 likelihood, was that his whole circle of acquaintance 
 could not muster such a thing) not a single letter to 
 a literary notability did this 'mad genius' of Bristol, 
 going on his expedition to set the Thames on fire, 
 take in his portmanteau to be of use to him. Two 
 things only seem to have been decided : first, that, 
 on arriving in London, he should go to lodge at the 
 house of a Mr. Walmsley, a plasterer in Shoreditch, 
 where a Mrs. Ballance, a distant relative of his 
 mother's, and who had already been written to on 
 the subject, resided ; and, secondly, that his care on
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 103 
 
 his arrival should be to seek out Mr. Edmunds at 
 the Middlesex Journal office in Shoe Lane, and beat 
 up the editorial quarters of the Town and Country 
 Magazine. These were to be his foci in London ; 
 and thence, by the force of his genius, he was to 
 weave out new acquaintanceships, and spread him- 
 self in all directions ! Nor, on the whole, was this 
 plan perhaps the worst. Young authors coming to 
 set the Thames on fire are by no means always 
 welcome visitors to those more elderly practitioners 
 of the same craft who, having become convinced by 
 experience of the incombustibility of the river, have 
 settled down on its banks with chastened hopes 
 and more practical intentions ; and it is better 
 in the long run for young authors themselves to 
 purchase every inch of way they make into people's 
 good graces by some equivalent addition of new 
 work done and tendered. And yet who will say that 
 introductions are of no use? The kind word of 
 encouragement spoken now and then by the veteran 
 litterateur to his younger brother, the business note 
 written now and then in his service when anything in 
 the shape of work turns up, the friendly invitation 
 now and then when a few of the same craft are to 
 meet : these courtesies, which it is in the power 
 of introductions, in the proportion perhaps of one
 
 104 CHATTERTON 
 
 effective to ten given, to procure how much wear 
 and tear of heart may they not save, how many paths 
 through poverty to a rank London churchyard may 
 they not make smoother ! These, a little extended 
 and adjusted, would of themselves constitute in these 
 days, and while more systematic promises are in 
 abeyance, a very good organisation of literature. 
 Nor, thank God, are these wanting. That hard, 
 austere man of letters, young poet, who receives 
 you so grimly, is so severe on your fallacies and 
 commonplaces, says not a word to flatter you, and 
 would almost drive you from literature to making 
 shoes, let but an opportunity really to serve you present 
 itself, and you shall find that man as true as steel and 
 as kind as a woman ! That other man of letters, with 
 the flashing wit and the impetuosity that stuns and 
 blasts you, I could tell you of generous actions done 
 by him ! And him, again, the broad, sagacious man 
 of abundant humour and encyclopaedic lore, or him 
 on whose silver hairs the honours of a long celebrity 
 sit so gracefully what debts of gratitude, were they 
 reckoned up, would be found owing by contem- 
 poraries to them ! Such men there are in London 
 in our own days, each cordial and assisting after his 
 own method and in his own sphere; nor was London 
 wanting in such in the days of Chatterton. Remem-
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 105 
 
 bering this, and thinking which special man out of the 
 700,000 and odd souls then inhabiting London it 
 might have been best for Chatterton to have come 
 into connection with, one cannot but speculate what 
 might have been the result had Chatterton taken 
 with him from Bristol but one letter of introduction, 
 addressed to Oliver Goldsmith. ' To Dr. Goldsmith, 
 at No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple, favoured by 
 Mr. Chatterton ' one lingers in fancy over the 
 probable consequences of a letter bearing that super- 
 scription. But it did not so happen. 
 
 It was on Tuesday, the 24th of April, and, as near 
 as we can guess, between eight and nine in the 
 evening, that Chatterton, who had probably never 
 been a single whole day out of Bristol before, took 
 his final farewell of it. By the help of the Gentle- 
 mans Magazine for April 1771, which contains a 
 register of the weather for the same month in the 
 previous year, we are able to tell pretty exactly the 
 state of the weather at the time. Monday, the 23rd., 
 had been ' a cloudy day, very cold, with some little 
 hail and a strong north-west wind;' and on Tuesday, 
 the 24th, though the wind had veered round to the 
 south-west, it was still 'cold and cloudy.' On the 
 evening of that cloudy day, when it is already
 
 106 CHATTERTON 
 
 almost dark, and the streets are damp with ap- 
 proaching rain, three figures stand at an inn door 
 in Bristol, waiting for the starting of the London 
 coach. They are Chatterton, wrapped up for his 
 journey, a tight, well-built youth, of middle size ; 
 his sister, a grown young woman, two years older 
 than himself; and his mother, a sad-looking elderly 
 person, in a cloak. Round about the coach, and 
 greatly in the way of the porters, who are putting 
 on the luggage, are one or two young men that have 
 gone there to bid Chatterton once more good-bye. 
 They stand and talk for a few minutes in the midst 
 of the bustle, while the passengers are hurrying 
 backwards and forwards between the coach and the 
 lighted passage of the inn. At last all is ready ; the 
 luggage is put up, and the other passengers have 
 taken their seats. ' Good-bye, Tom ; God bless you ; 
 and mind to write as soon as you get to London, 
 falters the widow for the last time. Tom hears 
 her; bids her good-bye, his sister good-bye, the 
 rest good-bye ; and springs into his place in what 
 was then called 'the basket' of the coach, i.e., an 
 exterior accommodation slung low down to the 
 body. 'All right/ cries the guard, and blows his 
 horn ; the coachman cracks his whip, the horses' hoofs 
 clatter ; and away along the ill-lit streets goes the
 
 BOUND FOR LONDON 107 
 
 clumsy vehicle, out towards the suburbs of Bristol, 
 Chatterton slung in the basket. The widow stands 
 at the inn door watching it till it disappears ; then, 
 taking her daughter's arm, and gathering her cloak 
 around her, walks home with a heavy heart through 
 the drizzle.
 
 PART II 
 LONDON
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SHOREDITCH 
 
 READER, were you ever in Shoreditch? If you are 
 an inhabitant of London, you may know all about 
 it ; if not, get a map of London, and you will see 
 that the locality named Shoreditch forms part of 
 one of the great highways leading northwards from 
 the centre of the city towards the suburbs. The 
 part of this highway nearest the city, including 
 about half a mile of houses on both sides, is called 
 Bishopsgate Street, from the fact that here stood 
 one of the ancient gates of the city, erected by a 
 Saxon bishop of some early century ; beyond that for 
 about a quarter of a mile, the thoroughfare is called 
 Norton Folgate, or, as it was originally pronounced, 
 the Northern Foldgate ; after which, extending for 
 another quarter of a mile, and terminating in 
 Hackney, is Shoreditch proper, the principal street 
 of a populous parish of the same name. Tradition 
 ascribes the origin of the name to the circumstance 
 
 111
 
 112 CHATTERTON 
 
 that Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV., ended 
 her life here 
 
 ' Within a ditch of loathsome scent, 
 Which carrion dogs did much frequent,' 
 
 as the ballad says : but old Stow settles that matter 
 by saying he could prove by record that as early 
 as four hundred years before his time the place had 
 been called Soersditch. However this may be, the 
 place deserves, or till recently did deserve, its name. 
 There is, indeed, no very obvious vestige of a ditch 
 now thereabouts, whatever a more strict investigation 
 might disclose ; but the neighbourhood has not, on 
 the whole, a very attractive look. The aspect which 
 Shoreditch proper now presents is that of a broad, 
 bustling street of old-fronted houses, full of hetero- 
 geneous shops, some of them exhibiting consider- 
 able displays of cheap hats, haberdashery, shoes, 
 ready-made clothes, and groceries, but others 
 belonging rather to the costermonger species. 
 Narrower streets, of more mean appearance, branch 
 out from it on both sides. Altogether, Shoreditch 
 is not the part of London where a literary man 
 of the present day would voluntarily seek lodgings ; 
 and the case was probably much the same in Chat- 
 terton's time. Indeed, long before that, Shoreditch, 
 partly perhaps on account of the peculiar suggestive-
 
 SHOREDITCH 113 
 
 ness of its name, had obtained an unenviable reputa- 
 tion as a low neighbourhood. 'To die in Shoreditch' 
 was synonymous, in the writings of the wits of 
 Dryden's time, with dying like a profligate and 
 having hags for one's nurses. 
 
 It was here, however, that Chatterton lodged 
 when he first came to London. We have already 
 mentioned that the only definite arrangement he 
 seems to have made for his sojourn in London, 
 before leaving Bristol, consisted in his having 
 written to Mrs. Ballance, a distant relative of his 
 mother, who lived in the house of a Mr. Walmsley, 
 a plasterer, in Shoreditch, asking her to secure a 
 lodging for him against his arrival. Mrs. Ballance, 
 whom we picture as an elderly woman, the widow 
 of some seafaring man, living in London in a 
 meagre, eleemosynary way, appears to have replied 
 to this letter by writing to Mrs. Chatterton that 
 Thomas had better come at once to Mr. Walmsley's. 
 where he could be accommodated in the meantime 
 at least, and where she would do her best to make 
 him comfortable. 
 
 Accordingly, it was to Mr. Walmsley's in Shore- 
 ditch that Chatterton, on his arrival in London, on 
 the evening of Wednesday the 25th of April I77> 
 contrived to make his way. Where the Bristol 
 
 H
 
 ii4 CHATTERTON 
 
 coach of that day stopped we do not know, though 
 even that might be ascertained if one were very 
 curious about it ; but, as it must have been in the 
 yard of some inn near the heart of the City, Chatter- 
 ton had not far to go before introducing himself to 
 Mrs. Ballance, if, indeed, the good woman did not 
 make her appearance at the coach to meet her 
 young relative. It shows the impatience and the 
 spirit of the young stranger thus deposited in the 
 streets of London that, late as it was when he 
 arrived at Mr. Walmsley's (it must have been 
 between five and six o'clock in the evening), and 
 tired as he must have been with his twenty hours' 
 journey, he did not remain long within doors, 
 but, having seen his boxes safe, and escaped the 
 assiduities of Mrs. Ballance, sallied out for a ramble, 
 and to make calls on the persons through whose 
 patronage he hoped to gain a footing in literary 
 circles. So much, at least, we infer from the 
 following letter to his mother, written on the 
 morning of the 26th, after he had slept his first 
 night at Mr. Walmsley's, and giving an account of 
 his journey and his first proceedings in London 
 
 'LONDON, April 26, 1770 
 
 DEAR MOTHER, Here I am, safe and in high spirits. 
 To give you a journal of my tour would not be unneces-
 
 SHOREDITCH 115 
 
 sary. After riding in the basket to Brislington, I mounted 
 the top of the coach, and rid easy, and was agreeably en- 
 tertained with the conversation of a Quaker in dress, but 
 little so in personals and behaviour. This laughing Friend, 
 who is a carver, lamented his having sent his tools to 
 Worcester, as otherwise he would have accompanied me 
 to London. I left him at Bath; when, finding it rained 
 pretty fast, I entered an inside passenger to Speenhamland, 
 the half-way stage, paying seven shillings. 'Twas lucky I 
 did so, for it snowed all night, and on Marlborough Downs 
 the snow was near a foot high. 
 
 'At seven in the morning I breakfasted at Speenham- 
 land, and then mounted the coach-box for the remainder 
 of the day, which was a remarkable fine one. Honest 
 Gee-ho complimented me with assuring me that I sat 
 bolder and tighter than any person who ever rid with him. 
 Dined at Stroud most luxuriously with a young gentleman, 
 who had slept all the preceding night in the machine, and 
 an old mercantile genius, whose schoolboy son had a great 
 deal of wit, as the father thought, in remarking that Windsor 
 was as old as our Saviour's time. 
 
 1 Got into London about five o'clock in the evening. 
 Called upon Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Fell, Mr. Hamilton, and 
 Mr. Dodsley. Great encouragement from them ; all 
 approved of my design. Shall soon be settled. Call 
 upon Mr. Lambert; show him this; or tell him, if I 
 deserve a recommendation, he would oblige me to give 
 me one : if I do not, it will be beneath him to take 
 notice of me. Seen all aunts, cousins all well and I 
 am welcome. Mr. T. Wensley is alive, and coming home. 
 Sister, grandmother, etc., remember. I remain your dutiful 
 son, T. CHATTERTON.' 
 
 It is a curious corroboration of Chatterton's
 
 ii6 CHATTERTON 
 
 account of the weather during his journey that in 
 the meteorological registers of the Gentleman's 
 Magazine Wednesday the 25th of April 1770 
 the day on which Chatterton sat beside the driver 
 of the Bristol coach all the way from Speenhamland 
 to London is entered as a day of ' smart frost, very 
 bright and very cold,' snow having fallen in some 
 parts of the country during the previous night. It 
 was on the evening of this bright, cold day, there- 
 fore (or, notwithstanding the wording of his letter, 
 was it not rather next morning?), that Chatterton, 
 setting out from Mr. Walmsley's, contrived, by in- 
 quiring his way of people he met, to pilot himself 
 along Shoreditch, Norton Folgate, and Bishopsgate 
 Street, towards the City, bent as he was on calling 
 without delay on the four publishers mentioned in 
 his letter Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Fell, Mr. Hamilton, 
 and Mr. Dodsley. Let us see if we can make out 
 anything respecting those gentlemen. They were 
 the first persons Chatterton visited in London, and 
 some of them had not a little to do with his sub- 
 sequent fate. 
 
 Mr. Edmunds has been already introduced to the 
 reader. He was the proprietor, editor, and pub- 
 lisher of the Middlesex Journal, a bi-weekly news- 
 paper, to which, we have seen, Chatterton had sent
 
 SHOREDITCH 117 
 
 several communications from Bristol. His offices 
 
 were in Shoe Lane, Holborn. Of Mr. Hamilton 
 
 we learn something from that interesting collec- 
 tion of scraps, Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the 
 Eighteenth Century. He was the printer and 
 proprietor of the Town and Country Magazine; in 
 which capacity Chatterton had, as we know, for 
 some time corresponded with him. He was the 
 son of one Archibald Hamilton, a Scotsman 
 who, having been obliged to quit Edinburgh in 
 1736 for having been actively concerned in the 
 Porteous Riot, had settled in London as a printer, 
 and had made a considerable fortune. The son of 
 this Archibald, enjoying the benefit of his father's 
 connection, had also set up as a printer. He had, 
 says Nichols, two printing-offices, one 'in the coun- 
 try, on the road between Highgate and Finchley,' 
 the other in town, 'near St. John's Gate, Clerken- 
 well ' ; and it was probably in allusion to this 
 circumstance that, when he started a new magazine, 
 in the beginning of 1769, he named it the Town 
 and Country Magazine. The magazine, Nichols 
 
 informs us, had 'a prodigious sale.' Nichols 
 
 also gives us some particulars respecting Dodsley, 
 in addition to those already communicated to the 
 reader. Having succeeded his brother Robert,
 
 ii8 CHATTERTON 
 
 whose junior he was by twenty-two years, in the 
 year 1759, James Dodsley had carried on the book- 
 selling business in Pall Mall so profitably as to be 
 already a wealthy man. When he died in 1797, he 
 left a fortune of 70,000; and a good part of this 
 sum must have been accumulated before 1770, when 
 he was forty-five years of age. ' By a habit of ex- 
 cluding himself from the world,' says Nichols, ' Mr. 
 James Dodsley, who certainly possessed a liberal 
 heart and a strong understanding, had acquired 
 many peculiarities.' One of these is mentioned as 
 specially characteristic. ' He kept a carriage many 
 years, but studiously wished his friends should not 
 know it ; nor did he ever use it on the eastern side 
 of Temple Bar/ The inscription on the tablet 
 erected to the memory of the bookseller in St. 
 James's Church, Westminster, where he was buried, 
 is to the same effect ' He was a man/ says the 
 epitaph, 'of a retired and contemplative turn of 
 mind, though engaged in a very extensive line of 
 public business ; he was upright and liberal in his 
 dealings, a friend to the afflicted in general, and to 
 the poor of this parish in particular/ in fact, an 
 
 eccentric, shy, good sort of man. Finally, what 
 
 of Mr. Fell ? From what Chatterton says of him, 
 we learn that he was printer, publisher, and editor
 
 SHOREDITCH 119 
 
 of the Freeholder's Magazine, a periodical conducted 
 in the interest of Wilkes, to which, as well as 
 to the Town and Country, Chatterton had recently 
 sent articles for insertion. 1 We imagine him to have 
 been a needy, nondescript kind of publisher, with 
 a place of business in Paternoster Row, and not so 
 respectable as either Edmunds or Hamilton, not 
 to speak of Dodsley. 
 
 Such were the four persons upon whom we 
 are to imagine the impetuous young fellow who 
 had just come off the Bristol coach dropping in 
 unexpectedly long, long ago. His hopes from 
 Edmunds were, of course, chiefly in connection 
 with the Middlesex Journal. Through Fell he might 
 strengthen his footing in the Freeholder's Magazine, 
 and have access to whatever else might be going on 
 under the auspices of Wilkes. From Hamilton he 
 looked for further employment on the Town and 
 Country. From Dodsley his expectations were pro- 
 bably still higher. Besides being the publisher of 
 the Annual Register, Dodsley was a bookseller on 
 a large scale, and a publisher of poetry ; it was to 
 him that Chatterton had applied by letter sixteen 
 
 1 From a note in the Aldine Edition of Chatterton's works (1875), 
 I find that his satirical poem called The Consuliad had appeared in 
 the Freeholder's Magazine for January 1770, signed *C.,' and dated 
 ' Bristol, Jan. 4, 1770.'
 
 120 CHATTERTON 
 
 months before as a likely person to publish his 
 one or two letters had probably passed between 
 them since; and, in resolving to introduce himself 
 personally to this magnate of books, Chatterton had, 
 doubtless, dreams not only of the opening of the 
 Annual Register to his casual scribblings, but also 
 of the appearance of his Rowley performances some 
 day or other in the form of one or more well printed 
 volumes, the wonder of all the critics. It was with 
 these views on the persons severally concerned that 
 Chatterton made his four rapid calls. The enter- 
 prise was certainly less Quixotic than if a young 
 literary provincial now-a-days were, on the first 
 day of his being in London, to call on Murray or 
 Longman or Messrs. Macmillan, then to beat up the 
 office of the Daily News in search of the editor, 
 after that to seek an interview with the editor of 
 The Fortnightly, and finally to go and see what 
 could be done on the Illustrated News or the Graphic. 
 Still, with all allowance for the difference between 
 that day and this, the idea of achieving interviews 
 with four different editors and publishers in one 
 ramble was somewhat bold. As regards mere time 
 and distance, to compass calls, in such circum- 
 stances, on four different persons one of them 
 living in Shoe Lane, another at St. John's Gate,
 
 SHOREDITCH 121 
 
 Clerkenwell, a third in Pall Mall, and the fourth 
 somewhere else can have been no easy task. But 
 Chatterton was a resolute youth, with plenty of the 
 faculty of self-assertion, and capable, as we imagine, 
 not only of making four calls in one walk, but also 
 of going through each without any unnecessary 
 degree of bashfulness. We have no doubt that he 
 saw Hamilton, Fell, Edmunds, and Dodsley himself, 
 with the most perfect self-assurance ; that he ex- 
 plained his case to them, and stated what he wanted 
 from them, very distinctly ; and that, with the ad- 
 vantage he had in having corresponded with all of 
 them before, he came off from the interviews in a 
 satisfactory manner. As to how they received 
 him, and what they said to him, we have but his 
 own words to his mother 'Great encouragement 
 from them ; all approved of my design.' The mean- 
 ing of this is somewhat problematical. Dodsley, 
 we imagine, nervous and shy person as he was, may 
 have been a little discomposed by the talk of the 
 impetuous young visitor who had so unceremon- 
 iously burst in upon him, and, while listening with 
 tolerable courtesy to what he said, may have been 
 mentally resolving to have nothing more to do 
 with that odd Bristol lad, if once he could get him 
 out. Hamilton and Edmunds, we fancy, were civil
 
 122 CHATTERTON 
 
 and general, with perhaps an intention to let the 
 lad write for them, if he chose to do so. Fell, 
 as a needier man, and more ready to catch at a 
 promising literary recruit, was probably the most 
 cordial of all. 
 
 And so, tired and happy, the young stranger 
 bent his steps homewards in the direction of Shore- 
 ditch. Ah ! one wonders whether, in passing along 
 Shoe Lane after his interview with Edmunds, brush- 
 ing with his shoulder the ugly black wall of that 
 workhouse burying- ground on the site of which 
 Farringdon Market now stands, any presentiment 
 occurred to him of a spectacle which, four short 
 months afterwards, that very spot was to witness 
 those young limbs of his, now so full of life, tJten 
 closed up stark and unclaimed in a workhouse shell, 
 and borne carelessly and irreverently by one or two 
 men along that very wall to a pauper's hasty grave ! 
 No, he paces all unwittingly, poor young heart, 
 that spot of his London doom, where even now, 
 remembering him, one shudders as one walks. God, 
 in his mercy, hangs the veil. 
 
 In what precise part of Shoreditch that house 
 of Mr. Walmsley was in which Chatterton lodged 
 when he first came to London, and to which, on that
 
 SHOREDITCH 123 
 
 memorable day, he returned through many dark and 
 strange streets, we do not know. London Directories 
 of the year 1770 are not things easy to be found ; 
 and, could we find one, we should not be very 
 likely to find Mr. Walmsley's name in it. In these 
 circumstances, the literary antiquary, as he walks 
 along Shoreditch, may be allowed to single out, 
 as the object of his curiosity, any old-looking house 
 he pleases along the whole length of the thorough- 
 fare on either side, it being stipulated only that 
 the house so selected shall be conceivable as having 
 once been the abode of a plasterer. For our part, 
 we have an incommunicable impression as if the 
 house were to be sought in the close vicinity of the 
 terminus of the Eastern Counties Railway, or where 
 Shoreditch passes into Norton Folgate. Let that 
 fancy stand, therefore, in lieu of a better. 
 
 Here, then, Chatterton slept his first night in 
 London. Here, on the following morning, he 
 breakfasted in the company of his relative, Mrs. 
 Ballance, giving her the news of Bristol, and 
 receiving from her such bits of news in return as 
 she had to communicate, including the intelli- 
 gence that Mr. T. Wensley a seaman or petty 
 officer, as we learn from a subsequent allusion, on 
 board a King's ship, but a native of Bristol, and
 
 124 CHATTERTON 
 
 on that account known to the Chatterton family 
 was alive, and on his way home. Hence also he 
 sets out to visit those aunts and cousins mentioned 
 in the letter as being all well and glad to see him, 
 who, it is to be hoped, did not live far from 
 Shoreditch. Here, some time or other in the 
 course of the day Thursday, the 26th, his first 
 real day in London, and ' a very coarse, wet, cold 
 day' it was, says the Gentleman's Magazine he 
 writes his letter home, so as to send it by that 
 day's post. And here, during the remaining days 
 of that month Friday, the 27th, 'a very coarse, 
 wet day, but not so cold ' ; Saturday, the 28th, 
 'a heavy morning, bright afternoon, cold wind'; 
 Sunday, the 29th, ' a very bright day, hot sun, 
 cold wind ' ; and Monday, the 3Oth, ' chiefly bright, 
 flying clouds, no rain and warm ' ; he soon finds 
 himself fairly domiciled, becoming more familiar 
 with the Walmsleys and Mrs. Ballance, whom he 
 sees in the mornings, and starting off every forenoon 
 for a walk, along Norton Folgate and Bishopsgate 
 Street, towards those quarters of the metropolis 
 where the chief attractions lay. 
 
 Chatterton lived in Mr. Walmsley's house in 
 Shoreditch about six weeks in all, or from the 24th 
 of April to the beginning of June. We are
 
 SHOREDITCH 125 
 
 fortunately able to give a somewhat particular 
 account of the economy of Mr. Walmsley's family, 
 and of the kind of accommodation which Chatter- 
 ton had there, and the impression he made on the 
 various members of it during his stay. The Rev. 
 Sir Herbert Croft, already mentioned as one who 
 took much pains more pains, in fact, than any- 
 body else from that time to this to inform himself 
 of the real particulars of Chatterton's life, hunted 
 out the Walmsley family in Shoreditch while the 
 memory of Chatterton was still fresh, and ascer- 
 tained all he could from them regarding the 
 habits of the singular being whose brief stay among 
 them had been an event of such consequence in the 
 history of their humble household. The following 
 is an extract from Sir Herbert's Love and Madness, 
 embodying all that he could gather about Chatterton 
 from this source 
 
 'The man and woman where he first lodged are 
 still [1780] living in the same house. He is a plasterer. 
 They, and their nephew and niece (the latter about as old 
 as Chatterton would be now, the former three years 
 younger), and Mrs. Ballance who lodged in the house 
 and desired them to let Chatterton, her relation, live there 
 also have been seen. The little collected from them you 
 shall have in their own words . . . 
 
 ' Mrs. Ballance says he was as proud as Lucifer. He 
 very soon quarrelled with her for calling him "Cousin
 
 126 CHATTERTON 
 
 Tommy," and asked her if she ever heard of a poet's being 
 called Tommy ; but she assured him that 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 that 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) his thoughts 
 were gone about something else. . . . He frequently 
 declared that he should settle the nation before he had 
 done; but how could she think that 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 observed little in 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 know anything 
 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, poeiing a 
 song about the streets. ( This night, Mrs. Ballance says,
 
 SHOREDITCH 127 
 
 she knows he lodged at a relation's, because 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. Ballance, 
 who lodged in the house ; but that 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 to be too good for 
 his grandmother, mother, and sister, hereafter. . . . 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 till it was morning, and then, for what 
 he saw, never closed his eyes. 
 
 'The nephew (Chatterton's bed-fellow 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 
 till 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 six- 
 pences, into which he had torn what he had been writing 
 before he came to bed.
 
 128 CHATTERTON 
 
 Bating some spitefulness in the recollection of 
 Chatterton's haughty airs, apparent in the evidence 
 of Mrs. Ballance and the niece, and a slight tendency 
 to the marvellous apparent in that of the nephew 
 (who was but a boy of fourteen when Chatterton 
 shared the room with him), the above presents, we 
 believe, a picture of Chatterton, as he appeared in 
 the narrow Walmsley circle, as accurate as it is 
 vivid. Walmsley himself one rather likes. One 
 fancies him an easy sort of fellow, not troubling 
 himself much about domestic matters, going out to 
 his work in the morning, and leaving his lodger to 
 the care of the women-folk. After he is gone, we 
 are to suppose, Chatterton spends the morning in 
 reading and writing, while Mrs. Walmsley, Mrs. Ball- 
 ance, and the niece are slatterning about the house ; 
 and generally, as the forenoon advances, he goes out 
 for his walk towards the places of London resort. 
 Along Norton Folgate and Bishopsgate Street, 
 passing crowds of people and hackney-coaches, 
 and glancing, with the eye of an antiquarian and a 
 connoisseur in architecture, at such buildings of 
 antique aspect as are or then were conspicuous in that 
 thoroughfare the old church of St. Helen's, the old 
 church of St. Ethelburga, and that much-admired 
 remnant of the civic architecture of the fifteenth
 
 SHOREDITCH 129 
 
 century, Crosby Hall, or Crosby Place, mentioned 
 in Shakespeare's Richard ill. : so the metropolitan 
 reader, if he desires to be exact, may follow Chat- 
 terton in his daily walks from Mr. Walmsley's in 
 Shoreditch. For the rest, his wanderings may be 
 various : frequently, of course, along the main line 
 of Cornhill, past the Bank, as it then was, and the 
 then new Mansion House, into Cheapside ; thence 
 slowly along the purlieus of St. Paul's, with a peculiar 
 lingering among the bookshops of Paternoster Row ; 
 and, further, down Ludgate Hill and up Fleet Street, 
 towards Temple Bar and the Strand. Visits of busi- 
 ness were, we may be sure, not neglected ; and, in 
 achieving his transits from one place to another, 
 Chatterton, like the rest of us, may have been guilty 
 of the folly of attempting short cuts, and so have be- 
 wildered himself in mazes of mean streets, proving 
 their populousness by swarms of children, yet never 
 to be seen by him, or by anybody else, more than 
 once. 
 
 Oh, the weariness of those aimless walks of a 
 young literary adventurer, without purse or friend, 
 in the streets of London ! The perpetual and anxious 
 thought within, which scarcely any street-distraction 
 can amuse ; the listlessness with which, on coming to 
 the parting of two ways, one suffers the least accident 
 
 I
 
 130 CHATTERTON 
 
 to determine which way one will take, both being 
 indifferent ; the vain castle-building in sanguine mo- 
 ments, when thousands of pounds seem possible and 
 near ; the utter prostration of spirit at other moments, 
 when one inspects the shivering beggar that passes 
 with new interest as but another form of one's self, 
 and when every glimpse of a damp, grassless church- 
 yard through a railing acts as a horrible premonition 
 of what may be the end ; the curious and habitual 
 examination of physiognomies met as one goes 
 along ; the occasional magic of a bright eye, or a 
 lovely form, shooting a pang through the heart, and 
 calling up, it may be, the image of a peerless one, 
 distant, denied, but unforgotten, till the soul melts in 
 very tenderness, and all the past is around one again ; 
 the sudden start from such a mood, the flush, the 
 clenched hand, the set teeth, the resolve, the manly 
 hope, the dream of a home quiet and blest after all 
 with one sweet presence : and then, after that, the 
 more composed gait, and the saunter towards the 
 spots one prefers, till the waning day, or the need to 
 work and eat, brings one back fatigued to the lonely 
 room ! And so from day to day a repetition of 
 the same process. Ah, London, London ! thou per- 
 petual home of a shifting multitude, how many a 
 soul there is within thee at this hour, who, listening
 
 SHOREDITCH 131 
 
 to that peculiar roar of thine, which shows the con- 
 course of myriads in thee, and yet feeling excluded, 
 like an unclaimed atom, from the midst of thy bustle, 
 might cry aloud to thee, ' I, too, am strong ; I am 
 young ; I am willing ; I can do something ; leave 
 me not out ; attend to me ; make room for me ; de- 
 vise the means of absorbing me, and such as me, 
 within thy just activity ; and defer not till I and 
 they make thee hearken with our shrieks ! ' But 
 London rolls on ; and men, young and old, do 
 demand impossible things. If it is impossible to 
 make the medium without conform, some power is 
 at least left to shape and rule the spirit within. 
 
 Chatterton, we believe, came to London with as 
 practical and resolute a spirit as any literary ad- 
 venturer before or since. His excitement with his 
 change of position, his confidence in being able to 
 make his way, and his activity in availing himself of 
 every means of doing so, seem to have been really 
 prodigious. Hence, probably, his first walks in 
 London were as little listless as was possible in 
 the circumstances. Instead of idle and aimless 
 saunterings, such as we have described, many of 
 his London walks during the first week or two of 
 his stay at Shoreditch must have been direct visits 
 from spot to spot, and from person to person. By
 
 132 CHATTERTON 
 
 no means diffident or bashful, and, so far as we can 
 see, perfectly heart-whole in respect of all the Bristol 
 beauties he had left, he probably wasted less time 
 than many others with less genius would have wasted 
 in useless regrets and pointless reveries. Compared 
 with his life at Bristol, where he had been the miser- 
 able drudge of a lawyer's office, his present life, now 
 that he was a rover in London, appeared to him, 
 doubtless, all but paradisaic. To work in the 
 morning in his lodging in Shoreditch, with some- 
 times a saucy word for his landlady's niece ; then 
 to go out to make calls, and see sights in various 
 quarters, buying a tart at a pastrycook's for his 
 dinner, spending a shilling or two in other little 
 purchases, and quite alive always to the distraction of 
 a pretty face wherever he chanced to be; then to come 
 home again at an earlier or a later hour, and to sit 
 up half the night writing and tearing papers, greatly 
 to the bewilderment and alarm of that very ill-used 
 boy, Master Walmsley : here was happiness, here 
 was liberty, here was a set of conditions in which to 
 begin the process of setting fire to the Thames ! So, 
 at least, it seemed to Chatterton himself during his 
 first fortnight in London ; for, when Mrs. Ballance, 
 at the end of that period, ventured to suggest that 
 he should try to get into some office, we have seen
 
 SHOREDITCH 133 
 
 what thanks the poor woman got. To be sure, had 
 Mrs. Chatterton sent her word beforehand what a 
 great man Cousin Tommy was, she would have 
 humoured the gentleman accordingly ! But how 
 was she to know ? Ah, how indeed ?
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 
 
 IN coming to London, Chatterton, of course, came 
 into the midst of all the politics and current talk 
 of the day. Bristol, indeed, as a bustling and 
 mercantile place, had had its share of interest in 
 the general on-goings of the nation ; and regularly, 
 as the coach had brought down the last new 
 materials of gossip from London, the politicians 
 of Bristol had gone through the budget, and given 
 the Bristol imprimatur, or the reverse, to the 
 opinions pronounced by the metropolitan authori- 
 ties. Sometimes, too, Bristol, from its western 
 position and its extensive shipping connections, 
 might have the start even of London in a bit of 
 American news. On the whole, however, going 
 from Bristol to London was like going from dark- 
 ness into light, from the suburbs to the centre, from 
 the shilling gallery to the pit-stalls. Let us see 
 what were the pieces (small enough they seem now) 
 
 134
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 135 
 
 in course of performance on the stage of British 
 life when Chatterton had thus just shifted his place 
 in the theatre in other words, what were the topics 
 which afforded matter of talk to that insatiable 
 gossip, the Town, towards the end of April, and 
 during the whole of May, 1770. 
 
 First, monopolising nearly the whole ground of the 
 domestic politics of the time, was the everlasting 
 case of Wilkes and Liberty, begun seven years 
 before, when Chatterton was a boy at Colston's 
 School, but still apparently far from a conclusion 
 There had been a change, however, in the relative 
 situations of the parties. 
 
 Amongst the most earnest defenders of Wilkes 
 and advocates of the right of free election were the 
 authorities of the Corporation of the City of London, 
 then under the mayoralty of the celebrated Beckford. 
 With other corporations and public bodies, they had 
 sent in petitions to the King on the subject. These 
 petitions having been ungraciously received, Beck- 
 ford and his colleagues had had the boldness to 
 wait on the King (March I4th) and address a 
 personal remonstrance to him. The King's reply 
 was as follows 
 
 ' I shall always be ready to receive the requests and to 
 listen to the complaints of my subjects ; but it gives me
 
 136 CHATTERTON 
 
 great concern to find that any of them should have been 
 so far misled as to offer me an address and remonstrance 
 the contents of which I cannot but consider as disrespect- 
 ful to me, injurious to my parliament, and irreconcilable to 
 the principles of the constitution.' 
 
 Having read this speech, the King gave the Lord 
 Mayor and others of the deputation his hand to 
 kiss ; after which, as they were withdrawing, he 
 turned round to his courtiers and laughed. ' Nero 
 fiddled whilst Rome was burning,' was the grandilo- 
 quent remark of Parson Home on the occasion ; 
 and, though this was a little too strong, it is certain 
 that the city people were very angry. So, out of 
 revenge, and partly as a compensation to Wilkes 
 for his exclusion from the House of Commons, they 
 made Wilkes an alderman. The patriot had hardly 
 been out of prison a week when, on 24th of 
 April the day on which Chatterton left Bristol 
 he was sworn in as alderman for the ward 
 of Farringdon Without and received a magnificent 
 banquet on the occasion. This accession of Wilkes 
 to the Corporation of the City of London was not 
 only a defiance to the Court and the ruling party ; 
 it was also intended to increase the power of the 
 City to annoy those enemies in future. With such 
 a man as Beckford for mayor, and with such men 
 as Wilkes, Sawbridge, Townshend, and Crosby on
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 137 
 
 the bench of aldermen all popular men and of 
 strong liberal opinions what might the Corpora- 
 tion not do ? 
 
 The same part which was being acted in the 
 City by Lord Mayor Beckford and his colleagues 
 was acted within the more important sphere of 
 Parliament by the Opposition in both Houses. 
 The Parliament of that session had been opened 
 on the pth of January, and it was to be prorogued 
 on the i pth of May. The case of Wilkes had been 
 before it from first to last, so that it had discussed 
 little else. Uniting in this case, and making it the 
 ground of a common antagonism to the Court and 
 the Ministry, the various elements of the Opposition 
 had constituted themselves into a powerful phalanx, 
 the leaders of which in the one House were Lord 
 Chatham, the Marquis of Rockingham, the Dukes 
 of Richmond, Portland, and Devonshire, and Lords 
 Shelburne and Temple, and in the other House 
 Edmund Burke, Colonel Barre, George Grenville, 
 and others. It was ' Wilkes, Wilkes,' with those 
 men every day of the session, whenever, in fact, 
 they wished to have a wrestling-match with the 
 Ministers. Thus, on the very first day of the 
 session, Chatham had made a motion on the subject 
 in the House of Lords ; on which occasion, to
 
 138 CHATTERTON 
 
 the surprise of everybody, Lord Chancellor Camden 
 seceded from his colleagues, and expressed his dis- 
 approbation of their policy. He was forthwith de- 
 prived of the seals, and the Lord Chancellorship went 
 a-begging. Then followed, as we know, the resigna- 
 tion of the premiership by the Duke of Grafton, and 
 the formation of a second edition of the same cabinet 
 under Lord North. It was in this unpopular North 
 administration of 1770 that young Charles Fox, then 
 the greatest rake and gambler about town, first took 
 office as a junior lord of the Admiralty ; and the 
 earliest parliamentary displays of this future chief 
 of the Whigs were in the cause of that very policy 
 to the denunciation and destruction of which he 
 afterwards devoted his life. Many were the gibes 
 against this young orator of the North party, whose 
 abilities were already recognised, and whose swarthy 
 complexion and premature corpulence (he was only 
 twenty-one when the wits nicknamed him Niger 
 Fox the Fat) made him a good butt for personal 
 attacks ; and a caricature of the day is still extant, 
 with the title of ' The Death of the Foxes,' in which 
 Lord Holland, as the old fox, and his son Charles, 
 as the young one, are represented hanging from a 
 gallows, while Farmer Bull and his wife are rejoicing 
 over their emancipated poultry. Fox was, of course,
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 139 
 
 no friend to Wilkes ; and, in the lower House, it 
 devolved on him to resist the motions of Burke and 
 Barre* in Wilkes's case. It was in the House of Lords, 
 however, that the agitation on that case was chiefly 
 kept up. Among the most decisive measures of the 
 Opposition was a renewed motion of Chatham's in 
 that house on the ist of May that is, some days 
 after Wilkes's release and promotion to the dignity 
 of alderman ' to appeal and rescind the resolutions 
 of the House of Commons in regard to the expulsion 
 and incapacitation of Mr. Wilkes.' There was a 
 stormy debate, in which the principal speakers were, 
 on the one side, the Duke of Richmond, Lord 
 Chatham, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Camden, Lord Shel- 
 burne, and Lord Stanhope, and, on the other, the 
 Duke of Grafton, Lord Denbigh, Lord Mansfield, 
 Lord Egmont, Lord Pomfret, Lord Weymouth, and 
 Lord Gower. The motion was lost by a majority 
 of eighty-nine against forty-three votes. If one may 
 judge from the following paragraph in the London 
 Evening News of May the 8th, the excitement in 
 town, in the week following this motion, must have 
 been even greater than usual 
 
 ' Tuesday ', May %th. Yesterday a great number of people 
 assembled in the lobby of the House of Commons and the 
 avenues adjoining, in consequence of a report which had
 
 140 CHATTERTON 
 
 been spread that Mr. Alderman Wilkes intended to go 
 thither that day to claim a seat. The crowd was so 
 great that members were hindered from passing and re- 
 passing ; whereupon the gallery was ordered to be locked 
 and the lobby to be cleared. But Mr. Wilkes did not go 
 to the House.' 
 
 As Parliament was prorogued on the iQth of 
 May, there was an end, for that season, to all parlia- 
 mentary discussion of the case of Wilkes. Members, 
 to use the words of Junius, ' retired into summer 
 quarters to rest from the disgraceful labours of the 
 campaign ' ; and Wilkes had to be content with 
 sitting on the bench as an alderman, and organising, 
 with Beckford, Sawbridge, and the rest of the city- 
 folk, a new deputation to gall the King. One of 
 the most famous incidents of the time was the inter- 
 view of this deputation with the King on the 23rd 
 of May, an interview which was not procured with- 
 out difficulty. The deputation having been intro- 
 duced into the royal presence, the Lord Mayor, 
 Beckford, read a 'humble remonstrance' to his 
 Majesty with as much spice in it, however, as the 
 form of such documents allowed on the decisive 
 terms in which he had been pleased to characterise 
 their address and petition of the I4th of March. 
 The King was implored to 'break through all the 
 secret and visible machinations to which the City
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 141 
 
 of London had owed its late severe repulse,' and to 
 ' disclaim the malignant and pernicious advice ' 
 which had induced him to meet the former deputa- 
 tion with so sharp an answer: 'an advice of most 
 dangerous tendency, inasmuch as thereby the exer- 
 cise of the clearest rights of the subject namely, 
 to petition the King for redress of grievances, to 
 complain of the violation of the freedom of election, 
 to pray dissolution of parliament, to point out mal- 
 practices in administration, and to urge the removal 
 of evil ministers hath, by the generality of one 
 compendious word, been indiscriminately checked 
 with reprimand.' No sooner had the King heard 
 this than, facing Beckford in a way that showed his 
 natural obstinacy, he read the following answer 
 
 ' I should have been wanting to the public, as well as 
 to myself, if I had not expressed my dissatisfaction at the 
 late address. My sentiments on that subject continue 
 the same; and I should ill deserve to be considered as 
 the Father of my people if I should suffer myself to be 
 prevailed upon to make such an use of my prerogative 
 as I cannot but think inconsistent with the interest, and 
 dangerous to the constitution, of the kingdom.' 
 
 Whereupon Beckford, excited beyond all regard for 
 the usual formalities of royal audiences, is said to 
 have burst forth in an extempore speech 
 
 ' Most gracious Sovereign, will your Majesty be pleased
 
 I 4 2 CHATTERTON 
 
 so far to condescend as to permit the mayor of your loyal 
 City of London to declare in your royal presence, on 
 behalf of his fellow-citizens, how much the bare appre- 
 hension of your Majesty's displeasure would at all times 
 affect their minds. The declaration of that displeasure 
 has already filled them with inexpressible anxiety, and 
 with the deepest affliction. Permit me, Sire, to assure 
 your Majesty, that your Majesty has not, in all your 
 dominions, any subjects more faithful, more dutiful, or 
 more affectionate to your Majesty's person and family, 
 or more ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes in 
 the maintenance of the true honour and dignity of your 
 crown. 
 
 ' We do, therefore, with the greatest humility and sub- 
 mission, most earnestly supplicate your Majesty that you 
 will not dismiss us from your presence without expressing 
 a more favourable opinion of your faithful citizens, and 
 without some comfort, without some prospect at least 
 of redress. 
 
 ' Permit me, Sire, further to observe that whoever has 
 already dared, or shall hereafter endeavour, by false in- 
 sinuations and suggestions, to alienate your Majesty's 
 affections from your loyal subjects in general, and from 
 the City of London in particular, and to withdraw your 
 confidence in and regard for your people, is an enemy 
 to your Majesty's person and family, a violator of the 
 public peace, and a betrayer of our happy constitution as 
 it was established at the glorious Revolution.' 
 
 This bold harangue, so contrary to all rules of 
 etiquette, caused a consternation among the courtiers; 
 the King, who had been trapped into hearing it by 
 the surprise of the moment, resented it as an insult ;
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 143 
 
 and the deputation retired with the consciousness 
 that the breach between the City of London and the 
 King had been made wider than ever. Beckford, 
 however, gained great credit by his conduct ; the 
 speech that he had made to the King (or the above 
 improved edition of it) was in everybody's lips ; and, 
 for the time, he rose to as high a popularity as 
 Wilkes. 
 
 While the case of Wilkes, with the numerous 
 questions that had grown out of it, thus formed 
 the chief matter of controversy in the politics of 
 the day, there was another question fraught, as 
 the issue proved, with still more remarkable con- 
 sequences which, after having been a topic of 
 occasional discussion for several years, began, about 
 the time of Chatterton's arrival in London, to 
 assume a more pressing and public aspect. This 
 was the question of the disaffection of the American 
 Colonies. 
 
 In the year 1764-5, as all readers of History 
 know, the Parliament of Great Britain gave the 
 first deadly shock to the allegiance of the American 
 Colonies to the British Crown by decreeing the 
 imposition on those Colonies of a general stamp 
 tax. The Colonies, severally and conjointly, had 
 protested and petitioned against this act of authority;
 
 144 CHATTERTON 
 
 and in 1767 the stamp tax had been exchanged for 
 a duty on paper, glass, painters' colours, and teas. 
 This, however, had not satisfied the Americans. 
 From year to year the topic had been brought up 
 in Parliament, along with that of Wilkes the 
 politicians and writers who took the side of Wilkes 
 generally also sympathising with the resistance of 
 the American Colonists to the Home Government, 
 while the Court party, who opposed Wilkes, were 
 also eager for maintaining the prerogative of Britain 
 over the Colonies. Things had come to such a 
 pass that many shrewd persons foresaw a war with 
 the Colonies, and prophesied their separation from 
 the mother-country. It was the fear of this result 
 that prompted the administration of Lord North, 
 in the beginning of 1770, to repeal so much of the 
 Act of 1767 as imposed duties on glass, paper, 
 and painters' colours, retaining only the duty on 
 tea. As, by such an arrangement, the obnoxious 
 principle, to which the Americans were repugnant, 
 was still maintained and asserted, there was little 
 doubt that it would prove of no avail. But, before 
 news could arrive of the manner in which the 
 Americans had received it, a piece of intelligence 
 crossed the Atlantic which increased the bitterness 
 of the ministerial feeling against the intractable folk
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 145 
 
 on the other side of the water. On the 26th of 
 April, Chatterton's first day in London, there 
 appeared in the London evening papers paragraphs 
 conveying the news of a serious riot which had 
 occurred in the streets of Boston on the I3th of 
 March. The riot had originated in a quarrel between 
 some of the soldiers who had been quartered in the 
 town greatly against the wishes of the inhabitants 
 and the men at a rope-manufactory belonging to 
 a Mr. Gray. The people of Boston, highly incensed 
 against the military both on account of their in- 
 solent behaviour and because they had been sent 
 among them to enforce the odious Tax Act, took 
 part with the rope-makers. There was a violent 
 disturbance of the peace ; the troops fired on the 
 people, and some unoffending persons were killed ; 
 the whole town rose ; and, to prevent still worse 
 results, the military commander had to withdraw 
 the soldiers to some distance. ' Had they not been 
 withdrawn/ said a private letter from Boston, which 
 appeared in the London Morning Post, 'the Bostonians 
 would have set fire to their beacon, a tar-barrel 
 stuck on the top of a mast on a high hill, and raised 
 the country for eighty miles round.' 
 
 Such was the news which the American post 
 brought to London on the day when Chattcrton 
 
 K
 
 146 CHATTERTON 
 
 began his residence in Shoreditch. For a week, or 
 more, the town was full of it, the Wilkes party 
 rejoicing over it as a new embarrassment to Minis- 
 ters, and the Ministers themselves not knowing very 
 well what to say or think about it. From that time 
 a war with the Colonies seemed a probable event. 
 
 In addition to the protracted Wilkes controversy, 
 and to this matter of the Boston riot and its con- 
 nection with colonial policy, there were, of course, 
 a variety of minor incidents, of more or less interest, 
 affording materials for gossip to the town during 
 the first five or six weeks of Chatterton's sojourn in 
 it. At that time, as in this, there were balls, horse- 
 races, theatrical performances, murders, robberies, 
 marriages in high life, fires, etc., all duly an- 
 nounced in the public papers, and all excellent 
 pabulum, for the conversation of the idle and the 
 curious. By way of sample, and that readers may 
 the more easily fill out the picture for themselves, 
 there may be here strung together a few of those 
 defunct minutice, gathered quite miscellaneously from 
 the columns of the contemporary London news- 
 papers : 
 
 Wednesday, April 25 (day of Chatterton's arrival in 
 London) 'Ranelagh House will be opened this evening
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 147 
 
 with the usual entertainments. Admittance, 23. 6d. each 
 person ; coffee and tea included. The house will continue 
 to be open on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays till 
 farther notice. N.B. There will be an armed guard on 
 horseback to patrol the roads.' Advertisement in Public 
 Advertiser of that day. 
 
 Same evening. At Drury-lane, the following perform- 
 ances : The Clandestine Marriage. Lord Ogleby, by Mr. 
 Dibdin ; Miss Sterling, by Miss Pope. After which, The 
 Padlock, a musical piece. Benefit of Mr. Dibdin. 
 
 Same day. A levee at St. James's. 
 
 Thursday, April 26 (Chatterton's first day in London, 
 and day of the arrival of the news of the Boston 
 Riot). A masquerade at the Opera House, given by the 
 club at Arthur's : present more than 1,200 of the nobility, 
 ambassadors, etc. 
 
 Same day. A bill of indictment found at Hicks's Hall 
 against the author or editor of the Whisperer, one of the 
 fiercest of the anti-ministerial periodicals. Warrant for his 
 apprehension issued on the 28th. 
 
 Same evening. At Drury-lane, The Beggar's Opera, with 
 The Minor. Mr. Bannister's benefit. 
 
 Monday, April 30 (fifth day of Chatterton in London). 
 At Covent-Garden, Addison's tragedy of Cato revived, 
 with The Rape of Proserpine. 
 
 Wednesday, May 2 (Chatterton a week in London). 
 At Drury-lane, Hamlet the part of Hamlet by Garrick; 
 after which, Queen Mab. Benefit night of Signor Grimaldi, 
 Mr. Messenk, and Signor Giorgi. 
 
 Monday, May 7 (the day on which, as above stated, a 
 crowd gathered at the door of the House of Commons on 
 the false news that Wilkes was to go to the House and 
 claim his seat). 'Rumour that a lady of high quality 
 would appear that evening at the Soho Masquerade in the
 
 148 CHATTERTON 
 
 character of an Indian princess, most superbly dressed, 
 and with pearls and diamonds to the price of ^100,000. ; 
 her train to be supported by three black young female 
 slaves, and a canopy to be held over her head by two 
 black male slaves. To be a fine sight.' 
 
 Wednesday, May 16. 'Thirteen convicts executed 
 together at Tyburn, conveyed in five carts ; mostly boys, 
 the eldest not being more than twenty-two years of age. 
 Some of them were greatly affected; others appeared 
 hardened.' 
 
 Saturday, May 19. Parliament prorogued, as stated 
 above. 
 
 Wednesday, May 23. The famous interview of the City 
 deputation with the King at which Beckford made the 
 speech quoted above. 
 
 Saturday, May 26. Drury-lane season closed. 
 
 Monday, May 28. Covent-garden Theatre closed for 
 the season. 
 
 Same day. 'At two o'clock, A.M., a fire at the house of 
 Messrs. Webb and Fry, paper-stainers, Holborn-hill, near 
 the end of Shoe Lane : four persons burnt to death.' 
 
 Same day. One of ' Junius's ' letters in the Public 
 Advertiser, containing a view of the state of the country, 
 and a cutting criticism of the conduct of Ministers during 
 the session just closed. Only two acknowledged letters of 
 ' Junius ' appeared during the period of Chatterton's resid- 
 ence in London, and this was one of them. 
 
 Wednesday, May 30. 'News arrived that a French 
 East Indian ship had reached Toulon, bringing word 
 of a dreadful earthquake at St. Helena, which had entirely 
 sunk the island in the sea.' Gentleman' sMagazine. 
 
 Thursday, May 31. Foundation-stone of Newgate 
 Prison laid by the Lord Mayor Beckford. 
 
 All April and May. Advertisements of goods, sales, 
 quack medicines, and new books in the newspapers ; also
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 149 
 
 paragraphs innumerable on the case of Matthew and 
 Patrick Kennedy, two brothers, who had been tried and 
 condemned to death for the murder of John Bigby, a watch- 
 man, but who had obtained a free pardon through the 
 influence of their sister Miss Kennedy, a woman of peculiar 
 reputation, and said to be intimate with some high men at 
 Court. An appeal was laid against this settlement of the 
 matter, and a new trial appointed, much to the gratification 
 of the anti-Court party; but, Bigby's widow having got 
 ,380 to keep out of the way, the trial fell to the ground, 
 and the brothers escaped. 
 
 It was into the midst of such incidents of these, 
 episodic as they were to the two great topics of 
 Wilkes and the Constitution and the growing dis- 
 affection of the American Colonies, that Chatterton 
 had transferred himself by his removal from Bristol to 
 London. With some of the little incidents mentioned 
 he may even have come into direct personal contact. 
 If he did not go to see Addison's tragedy of Cato 
 at Covent Garden on the 3Oth of April, it is not 
 likely that he missed the opportunity of seeing 
 Garrick in Hamlet at Drury Lane on the 2nd of May. 
 If the 'fine sight' of the lady of high quality with 
 the hundred thousand pounds' worth of jewels 
 about her, and the three young negresses supporting 
 her train, did not tempt him to the vicinity of the 
 Soho Masquerade on the evening of the /th of May, 
 it is not at all improbable that he formed one of
 
 ISO CHATTERTON 
 
 the crowd that gathered round the door of the House 
 of Commons that evening on the false expectation 
 of seeing Wilkes come to make a scene and get 
 himself committed to custody by the Speaker. 
 Even at the distance of Shoreditch the rumour of 
 the thirteen boys hanged at Tyburn on the morning 
 of the i6th of May must have reached him ; for, 
 common as hangings were then, such an occurrence 
 was sufficiently unusual to make some commotion 
 through all London. The prorogation of Parliament 
 on the ipth of the same month would be a matter 
 to interest him ; much more the royal audience 
 given to the City deputation on the 23rd, and 
 Beckford's famous speech. Shoe Lane being one 
 of his haunts, the charred ruins of the premises 
 of Messrs. Webb and Fry may possibly have 
 attracted his notice on the 28th or 29th of May as 
 he passed along Holborn ; and, a daily frequenter 
 as he was of the coffee-houses where the newspapers 
 were to be seen, he is sure to have been one of the 
 earliest and most eager readers of the Public 
 Advertiser containing Junius's powerful letter of 
 May the 28th. 
 
 Nor is all this mere conjecture. Not only do we 
 know it as a fact that it was part of Chatterton's 
 ambition in coming to London to work himself into
 
 TOWN TALK LONG AGO 151 
 
 connection with the prominent men and interests of 
 the day, and, above all, with the notable personages 
 of the Wilkes party ; we also know it as a fact that, 
 to some small extent at least, he succeeded in doing 
 so. The evidence of this will be produced in the 
 next chapter.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 
 
 CHATTERTON'S London life forms the subject of 
 a brief French romance from the pen of Alfred 
 de Vigny. 
 
 In that writer's pleasing volume of fiction entitled 
 Stella, Chatterton is introduced as the real hero in 
 the story of a so-called Kitty Bell. Kitty Bell is 
 a young married woman who keeps a pastrycook's 
 shop in the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment. Her cakes and confections are celebrated 
 far and wide ; and, partly from this cause, partly 
 from Kitty's own attractiveness, her shop has 
 become a habitual lounge of the legislators of 
 Great Britain as they pass to and from their duties 
 in St. Stephen's. Kitty, however, is as virtuous as 
 she is pretty ; and, though her husband is a sulky 
 brute, and the young lords and members of Parlia- 
 ment are very assiduous in buying cakes from her 
 fair fingers, nothing amiss can be said of her. There 
 
 152
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 153 
 
 is one figure, indeed, occasionally seen hovering 
 about the shop, the apparition of which invariably 
 discomposes her, especially when her husband is 
 near. This turns out to be Chatterton, who, having 
 come to London to push his fortune, has, in order 
 to be near the Houses of Parliament, taken a lodging 
 in Kitty Bell's house. Kitty, with her womanly 
 tact, has contrived to dive into her mysterious 
 lodger's secret. She has ascertained that he is a 
 young man of genius, engaged in the hopeless task 
 of establishing a connection with the public men of 
 the day by means of literary service, and in the 
 meantime without a penny in his pocket. She does 
 all, in the circumstances, that fear of her brute of a 
 husband will permit. She supplies her lodger 
 furtively with tarts ; she screens from her husband 
 the fact that he is unable to pay his rent for the 
 garret he occupies ; and, in short, through pity and 
 interest, she falls most foolishly in love with him. 
 Sustained by her kindness and encouragement, 
 Chatterton perseveres in his enterprise ; he gets 
 acquainted with the Lord Mayor Beckford, and is 
 led to conceive great hopes from promise of his 
 patronage. Beckford, accordingly, calls one day at 
 Kitty Bell's shop, and, by way of fulfilling his 
 promise, offers to make Chatterton his footman !
 
 154 CHATTERTON 
 
 Then comes the catastrophe. Chatterton, in despair, 
 commits suicide ; and poor Kitty Bell is left to serve 
 out cakes and comfits to the British Legislature with 
 a heart no more. 
 
 A very pretty story this ; with, unfortunately, but 
 one objection to it that it is not true ! The true 
 story of Chatterton's London life, one would 
 suppose, is to be preferred to a false one ; and, as 
 the materials for the true story were accessible to 
 Alfred de Vigny in Chatterton's own letters, it is 
 a pity that he was so fond of fiction as not to pay 
 attention to them. Instead of going to lodge at 
 Kitty Bell's, or at any other conceivable pastry- 
 cook's in Westminster, Chatterton, as we know, had 
 gone to lodge at a plasterer's in Shoreditch ; and, 
 if Providence was so kind as to supply him with a 
 fair consoler living under the same roof, this, as we 
 also know, can possibly, in the first stage of his 
 London career, have been no other than the motherly 
 Mrs. Ballance, or, at best, that hussy, the landlady's 
 niece, to whom he 'used sometimes to be saucy.' 
 And so with the rest of the facts. The real progress 
 of Chatterton's endeavours to make himself known 
 the real extent of his success in working himself, 
 from his centre in Shoreditch, into connection with 
 the metropolitan men and interests of the day, as
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 155 
 
 they have been summarily described in the last 
 chapter are to be gathered, so far as they can be 
 gathered at all, from his own letters. 
 
 Chatterton's second letter to his mother was 
 written on the 6th of May, or after he had been 
 exactly ten days in London. It is as follows 
 
 SHOREDITCH, LONDON: May 6, 1770. 
 'DEAR MOTHER, I am surprised that no letter has 
 been sent in answer to my last. I am settled, and in such 
 a settlement as I would desire. I get four guineas a 
 month by one magazine ; shall engage to write a History 
 of England and other pieces, which will more than double 
 that sum. Occasional essays for the daily papers would 
 more than support me. What a glorious prospect ! Mr. 
 Wilkes knew me by my writings since I first corresponded 
 with the booksellers here. I shall visit him next week, 
 and by his interest will ensure Mrs. Ballance the Trinity 
 House. He affirmed that what Mr. Fell had of mine 
 could not be the writings of a youth, and expressed a 
 desire to know the author. By the means of another 
 bookseller, I shall be introduced to Townshend and 
 Sawbridge. I am quite familiar at the Chapter Coffee- 
 house, and know all the geniuses there. A character is 
 now unnecessary ; an author carries his character in his 
 pen. My sister will improve herself in drawing. My 
 grandmother is, I hope, well. Bristol's mercenary walls 
 were never destined to hold me ; there I was out of my 
 element ; now I am in it. London ! good God ! how 
 superior is London to that despicable place Bristol ! Here 
 is none of your little meannesses, none of your mercenary 
 securities, which disgrace that miserable hamlet. Dress, 
 which is in Bristol an eternal fund of scandal, is here only
 
 156 CHATTERTON 
 
 introduced as a subject of praise : if a man dresses well, 
 he has taste; if careless, he has his own reasons for so 
 doing, and is prudent. Need I remind you of the con- 
 trast ? The poverty of authors is a common observation, 
 but not always a true one. No author can be poor who 
 understands the arts of booksellers : without this necessary 
 knowledge the greatest genius may starve, and with it the 
 greatest dunce live in splendour. This knowledge I have 
 pretty well dipped into. The Levant man-of-war, in which 
 T. Wensley went out, is at Portsmouth ; but no news of 
 him yet. I lodge in one of Mr. Walmsley's best rooms. 
 Let Mr. Gary copy the letters on the other side, and give 
 them to the persons for whom they are designed, if not too 
 much labour for him. I remain yours, etc. 
 
 'T. CHATTERTON.' 
 
 'P.S. I have some trifling presents for my mother, 
 sister, Thome, etc.' 
 
 [Here follow the letters to various Bristol acquaint- 
 ances, which Mr. Gary was to copy out and give them] 
 
 ' Mr. T. Cary. I have sent you a task I hope no 
 unpleasing one. Tell all your acquaintances for the future 
 to read the Freeholder's Magazine. When you have 
 anything for publication, send it to me, and it shall most 
 certainly appear in some periodical compilation. Your 
 last piece was, by the ignorance of a corrector, jumbled 
 under the " considerations " in the acknowledgements ; but 
 I rescued it, and insisted on its appearance. Your friend, 
 
 < T. C.' 
 
 ' Direct for me, to be left at the Chapter Coffee-house, 
 Paternoster Row.' 
 
 'Mr. Henry Kator. If you have not forgot Lady Betty, 
 any complaint, rebus, or enigma, on the dear charmer,
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 157 
 
 directed for me, to be left at the Chapter Coffee-house, 
 Paternoster Row, shall find a place in some magazine or 
 other, as I am engaged in many. Your friend, 
 
 'T. CHATTERTON.' 
 
 ' Mr. Wm. Smith. When you have any poetry for 
 publication, send it to me, to be left at the Chapter Coffee- 
 house, Paternoster Row, and it shall most certainly appear. 
 Your friend, T. C.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Baker. The sooner I see you the better. Send 
 me, as soon as possible, Rymsdyk's address. (Mr. Gary 
 will leave this at Mr. Flower's, Small-street).' 
 
 ' Mr. Mason. Give me a short prose description of the 
 situation of Nash ; and the poetic addition shall appear in 
 some magazine. Send me also whatever you would have 
 published, and direct for me, to be left at the Chapter 
 Coffee-house, Paternoster Row. Your friend, 
 
 'T. CHATTERTON.' 
 
 ' Mr. Matthew Mease. Begging Mr. Mease's pardon for 
 making public use of his name lately, I hope he will 
 remember me, and tell all his acquaintances to read the 
 Freeholder's Magazine for the future. 
 
 'T. CHATTERTON.' 
 
 c Tell Mr. Thaire, Mr. Caster, Mr. A. Broughton, Mr. 
 J. Broughton, Mr. Williams, Mr. Rudhall, Mr. Thomas, 
 Mr. Carty, Mr. Hanmor, Mr. Vaughan, Mr. Ward, Mr. 
 Kalo, Mr. Smith, etc., to read the Freeholder's 
 Magazine? 
 
 This is certainly pretty well after only ten days in 
 London. We fear, indeed, that there is a good deal 
 of bragging in the letter, intended to convey to his
 
 158 CHATTERTON 
 
 Bristol acquaintances a more favourable impression 
 of the progress he had already made in the great 
 metropolis than the facts, as known to himself, 
 exactly warranted. Still it is evident that Chatter- 
 ton, when he wrote the letter, was in high spirits. 
 Reducing the expressions of the letter to the real 
 substance of fact on which they may have been 
 founded, we should be inclined to say that the 
 information here given respecting the extent of 
 Chatterton's success in introducing himself to notice 
 during his first ten days in London amounts to 
 something like this : 
 
 Being a youth of prepossessing appearance and 
 address, and having, as we know, a sufficiently 
 good opinion of himself to prevent any of that 
 awkwardness in meeting strangers which arises 
 from excessive modesty, he had made the best use 
 he could of the slight hold he had on Fell, Hamilton, 
 Edmunds, and Dodsley. He had gone to their 
 places of business, perhaps oftener than they cared 
 to see him ; he had talked with them, made pro- 
 posals of literary assistance to them, compelled them 
 into saying something that could be construed as 
 encouragement; he had got from them hints as to 
 other quarters to which he might apply ; he had, 
 probably by their advice, turned his hopes towards
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 159 
 
 the great book-mart of Paternoster Row, where all 
 sorts of speculations he might help in were going 
 on ; and he had thus at last found himself referred 
 to that celebrated place of resort for the booksellers 
 of the day and their literary workmen, the Chapter 
 Coffee-house. Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his Hand- 
 book of London, has provided us with an extract 
 respecting this once famous rendezvous, which will 
 serve to give us a more distinct idea of it as it 
 was in Chatterton's time. 
 
 ' And here my publisher would not forgive me, was I to 
 leave the neighbourhood without taking notice of the 
 Chapter Coffee-house, which is frequented by those 
 encouragers of literature and (as they are styled by an 
 eminent critic) ' not the worst judges of merit,' the book- 
 sellers. The conversation here naturally turns upon the 
 newest publications; but their criticisms are somewhat 
 singular. When they say a good book, they do not mean 
 to praise the style or sentiment, but the quick and exten- 
 sive sale of it. That book is best which sells most ; and, 
 if the demand for Quarles should be greater than for Pope, 
 he would have the highest place on the rubric-post.' The 
 Connoisseur, No. i, Jan. 3ist, 1754. 
 
 Here, then, among the talking groups of booksellers 
 we are to fancy Chatterton a daily visitor during the 
 first week or two of his stay in town reading the 
 newspapers, listening to the conversation, getting 
 acquainted with the 'geniuses' of the place, and
 
 160 CHATTERTON 
 
 giving very small orders to the waiters. The 
 Chapter Coffee-house was evidently a great place in 
 his eyes, and every shilling spent in it he probably 
 regarded as a good investment. All his Bristol 
 friends were to address their letters to him there, 
 and not to Shoreditch. 
 
 More particularly, however, Chatterton's hopes at 
 the period of his first settlement in London seem to 
 have rested on the intimacy he had struck up with 
 Mr. Fell. We have already given our impression of 
 this personage, representing him as a gentleman in 
 pecuniary difficulties, connected with Wilkes, and 
 employing his broken energies, and the capital of 
 other people, in the publication of the Freeholder's 
 Magazine. His reception of Chatterton, we said, 
 appears to have been, and this probably from the 
 state of his own circumstances, more frank and cordial 
 than that of any other of the booksellers Chatterton 
 had called upon. A kind of understanding seems, 
 indeed, to have been at once established between 
 them. On the one hand, Chatterton was to have the 
 pages of the Freeholder's Magazine thrown open to 
 him ; on the other hand, Fell, to whom the service 
 of a clever contributor on any other terms than those 
 of hard cash was probably a convenience, was willing 
 to remunerate his young friend with plenty of
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 161 
 
 promises, and in the meantime with the benefits of 
 his advice and countenance, and as much praise as 
 he liked. The prospect of being introduced to 
 Wilkes was the most attractive bait that could be 
 held out to Chatterton ; and we greatly fear Fell 
 made the most of the fact. ' I assure you, Mr. 
 Chatterton, Mr. Wilkes has a high opinion of you ; 
 he has more than once asked me about writings of 
 yours ; and, when I told him that you were not 
 eighteen, "Upon my soul I don't believe it, Mr. 
 Fell," said he ; " so young a man could not write 
 like that": these were his very words.' Such, as we 
 infer from Chatterton's own account, was the sub- 
 stance of much of his conversation with Fell. 
 
 How much of sincerity there was in Fell's farther 
 promise, that he would introduce Chatterton to 
 Wilkes, one can hardly say. There is certainly some 
 bragging in the manner in which Chatterton an- 
 nounces to his mother the promised introduction : 
 ' I shall visit him (Wilkes) next week, and by his 
 interest, will ensure Mrs Ballance the Trinity House ' 
 (i.e. the charitable allowance granted out of the 
 funds of this foundation to the widows of deserving 
 seamen). Chatterton had shrewdness enough, with 
 all his inexperience and his good opinion of himself, 
 to know that he was putting a little strain on the 
 
 L
 
 162 CHATTERTON 
 
 truth here. So also, probably, in the matter of 
 the proposed introductions to the two popular 
 aldermen, Townshend and Sawbridge. Still it is 
 evident that he had some trust in Fell. To read 
 the Freeholder's Magazine, and to address letters to 
 him at the Chapter Coffee-house in Paternoster 
 Row, were his two injunctions to his friends at 
 home after he had been ten days in London. 
 
 What came of the connection so rapidly formed 
 with Fell and the Freeholder's Magazine will be 
 seen from Chatterton's next letter. It is to his 
 mother 
 
 ' KING'S BENCH, for the present : May 14, 1770 
 
 ' DEAR MADAM, Don't be surprised at the name of the 
 place. I am not here as a prisoner. Matters go on 
 swimmingly. Mr. Fell having offended certain persons, 
 they have set his creditors upon him, and he is safe in the 
 King's Bench. I have been bettered by this accident : his 
 successors in the Freeholder's Magazine, knowing nothing 
 of the matter, will be glad to engage me on my own terms. 
 Mr. Edmunds has been tried before the House of Lords, 
 sentenced to pay a fine, and thrown into Newgate. His 
 misfortunes will be to me of no little service. Last week, 
 being in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre [it might have 
 been to see Garrick again], I contracted an immediate 
 acquaintance (which you know is no hard task to me) with 
 a young gentleman in Cheapside, partner in a music-shop, 
 the greatest in the city. Hearing I could write, he desired 
 me to write a few songs for him : this I did the same night,
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 163 
 
 and conveyed them to him the next morning. These he 
 showed to a Doctor in music, and I am invited to treat 
 with the Doctor, on the footing of a composer for Ranelagh 
 and the Gardens. Bravo, h<y boys, up we go ! Besides 
 the advantage of visiting these expensive and polite places 
 gratis, my vanity will be fed with the sight of my name in 
 copper-plate, and my sister will receive a bundle of printed 
 songs, the words by her brother. These are not all my 
 acquisitions. A gentleman who knows me at the ' Chapter ' 
 as an author would have introduced me as a companion 
 to the young Duke of Northumberland in his intended 
 general tour. But alas ! I speak no tongue but my own. 
 But to return once more to a place I am sickened to write 
 of, Bristol. [Here follow some references to Mr. Lambert 
 and a ' clearance ' from the apprenticeship to be obtained 
 from him.] I will get some patterns worth your acceptance, 
 and wish you and my sister would improve yourselves in 
 drawing, as it is here a valuable and never-failing acquisi- 
 tion. My box shall be attended to ; I hope my books 
 are in it. If not, send them, and particularly Catcott's 
 Hutchinsonian jargon on the Deluge, and the MS. Glos- 
 sary, composed of one small book annexed to a larger. 
 My sister will remember me to Miss Sandford. I have 
 not quite forgot her; though there are so many pretty 
 milliners, etc., that I have almost forgot myself. 
 
 [There are similar remembrances and messages to Mr. 
 Gary ; to Miss Rumsey, who seems to be intending a 
 journey to London, and is requested to send Chatterton 
 her address, if she does come, as ' London is not Bristol,' 
 and they ' may patrol the town for a day without raising 
 one whisper or nod of scandal'; to Miss Baker, Miss 
 Porter, Miss Singer, Miss Webb, and Miss Thatcher, who 
 is assured that, ' if he is not in love with her, he is in love 
 with nobody else ' ; to Miss Love, on whose name he is 
 going to write a song; to Miss Cotton, 'begging her
 
 164 CHATTERTON 
 
 pardon for whatever has happened to offend her, and 
 telling her he did not give her this assurance when in 
 Bristol lest it should seem like an attempt to avoid the 
 anger of her furious brother ' ; finally to Miss Watkins, 
 assuring her ' that the letter she has made herself ridiculous 
 by was never intended for her, but for another young lady 
 in the same neighbourhood, of the same name.' Chatter- 
 ton also asks his sister to send him ' a journal of all the 
 transactions of the females within the circle of their ac- 
 quaintance.'] 
 
 'I promised, before my departure, to write to some 
 hundreds, I believe; but, what with writing for publica- 
 tions and going to places of public diversion, which is as 
 absolutely necessary to me as food, I find but little time to 
 write to you. As to Mr. Barrett, Mr. Catcott, Mr. Burgum, 
 etc., they rate literary lumber so low that I believe an 
 author in their estimation must be poor indeed. But here 
 matters are otherwise: had Rowley been a Londoner, 
 instead of a Bristowyan, I could have lived by copying his 
 works. . . . My youthful acquaintances will not take in 
 dudgeon that I do not write oftener to them ; but, as I had 
 the happy art of pleasing in conversation, my company 
 was often liked where I did not like ; and to continue a 
 correspondence under such circumstances would be ridi- 
 culous. Let my sister improve in copying music, drawing, 
 and everything which requires genius : in Bristol's mercan- 
 tile style those things may be useless, if not a detriment to 
 her ; but here they are highly profitable. 
 
 [A few additional messages to Bristol friends follow, 
 together with a hope that his grandmother 'enjoys the 
 state of health he left her in,' and an intimation, apparently 
 in connection with Mrs. Ballance's business, that he had 
 ' intended waiting on the Duke of Bedford relative to the 
 Trinity House, but his Grace is dangerously ill.'] 
 
 'THOMAS CHATTERTON.'
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 165 
 
 ' Monday evening. 
 1 Direct to me at Mr. Walmsley's, at Shoreditch onfy.' 
 
 To this letter succeeds one written to his sister, 
 dated May the 3oth, from Tom's Coffee-house a 
 house in Devereux Court, Strand, and hardly inferior 
 to the Chapter Coffee-house as a place of resort for 
 wits and men of letters. 
 
 'Tow's COFFEE-HOUSE, LONDON : May 30,1770 
 c DEAR SISTER, There is such a noise of business and 
 politics in the room that any inaccuracy in writing here is 
 highly excusable. My present profession obliges me to 
 frequent places of the best resort. To begin with what 
 every female conversation begins with dress : I employ 
 my money now in fitting myself fashionably, and getting 
 into good company. This last article always brings me 
 in interest. But I have 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. I 
 shall have board and lodging, genteel and elegant, gratis : 
 this article, in the quarter of the town he lives, with worse 
 accommodations, would be ^50 per annum. I shall have 
 likewise no inconsiderable premium ; and assure yourself 
 every month shall end to your advantage. I will send you 
 two silks this summer; and expect, in answer to this, 
 what colours you prefer. My mother shall not be for- 
 gotten. My employment will be writing a voluminous 
 History of London, to appear in numbers, the beginning 
 of next winter. As this will not, like writing political 
 essays, oblige me to go to the Coffee-house, I shall be able 
 to serve you the more by it ; but it will necessitate me to 
 go to Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln, Coventry, and every
 
 166 CHATTERTON 
 
 collegiate church near not at all disagreeable journeys, 
 and not to me expensive. The manuscript glossary I 
 mentioned in my last must not be omitted. If money 
 flowed as fast upon me as honours, I would give you a 
 portion of ,5,000. You have, doubtless, heard of the Lord 
 Mayor's remonstrating and addressing the King; but it 
 will be a piece of news to inform you that /have been 
 with the Lord Mayor on the occasion. Having addressed 
 an essay to his Lordship, it was very well received per- 
 haps better than it deserved ; and I waited on his Lordship 
 to have his approbation to address a second letter to him, 
 on the subject of the remonstrance and its reception. His 
 Lordship received me as politely as a citizen could, and 
 warmly invited me to call on him again. The rest is a 
 
 secret. But the Devil of the matter is, there is no 
 
 money to be got on this side of the question. Interest is 
 on the other side. But he is a poor author who cannot 
 write on both sides. I believe I may be introduced (and, 
 if I am not, I '11 introduce myself) to a ruling power in the 
 Court party. I might have a recommendation to Sir 
 George Colebrook, an East India Director, as qualified for 
 an office no ways despicable ; but I shall not take a step 
 to the sea whilst I can continue on land. I went yesterday 
 to Woolwich to see Mr. Wensley : he is paid to-day. The 
 artillery is no unpleasant sight, if we bar reflection, and do 
 not consider how much mischief it may do. Greenwich 
 Hospital and St. Paul's Cathedral are the only structures 
 which could reconcile me to anything out of the Gothic. 
 [Here are some messages to Mr. Carty about Mrs. Carty, 
 who is ill, advising him to ' leech her temples plentifully, 
 and keep her very low in diet, and as much in the dark as 
 possible ' ; also to Miss Sandford, to Miss Thatcher, and to 
 Miss Rumsey, whom he 'thanks for her complimentary 
 expression' in reply to his last message; though, as she 
 does not say whether she is coming to London or not, he
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 167 
 
 thinks it ' unsatisfactory.'] Essay-writing has this advan- 
 tage you are sure of constant pay ; and, when you have 
 once wrote a piece which makes the author inquired after, 
 you may bring the booksellers to your own terms. Essays 
 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. So says one of 
 the beggars in a temporary alteration of mine in the 
 Jovial Crew 
 
 " A patriot was my occupation ; 
 
 It got me a name, but no pelf; 
 Till, starved for the good of the nation, 
 I begg'd for the good of myself. 
 
 Fal, lal, etc. 
 
 " I told them, if 'twas not for me, 
 
 Their freedoms would all go to pot ; 
 I promised to set them all free, 
 But never a farthing I got. 
 
 Fal, lal, etc." 
 
 On the other hand, unpopular essays will not even 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 the appearance of it. To 
 return to private affairs : Friend Slude may depend upon 
 my endeavouring to find the publications you mention. 
 They publish the Gospel Magazine here. For a whim, I 
 write for it. I believe there are not any sent to Bristol ; 
 they are hardly worth the carriage methodistical and 
 unmeaning. With the usual ceremonies to my mother 
 and grandmother, and sincerely, without ceremony, wish- 
 ing them both happy when it is in my power to make 
 them so, it shall be so and with my kind remembrance
 
 168 CHATTERTON 
 
 to Miss Webb and Miss Thome, I remain, as I ever 
 was, Yours, etc., to the end of the chapter, 
 
 'THOMAS CHATTERTON.' 
 
 ' P.S. I am this moment pierced through the heart by 
 the black eye of a young lady, driving along in a hackney- 
 coach. I am quite in love ; if my love lasts till that time, 
 you shall hear of it in my next.' 
 
 After this letter there is a blank in the correspon- 
 dence, so far as it has been preserved, for three 
 weeks. During those three weeks, however, an event 
 of some importance in Chatterton's London life took 
 place to wit, a change of domicile. 
 
 From the very first, it may be imagined, he had 
 regarded Mr. Walmsley's as only a temporary resi- 
 dence, convenient until he should find a better. The 
 economy of Mr. Walmsley's house can have been by 
 no means to his taste. To have to share a bedroom 
 with Master Walmsley, and to be continually in 
 contact with the various inmates of the plasterer's 
 house, more especially with Mrs. Ballance, who 
 would persist in calling him ' Cousin Tommy,' must 
 have been disagreeable to him on more accounts 
 than one. Besides, had there been no other reason 
 for a change, the distance of Shoreditch from the 
 publishing-offices where he had to make his calls, 
 and from the coffee-houses and other places of resort
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 169 
 
 which he believed himself bound to frequent, would 
 have been a sufficient one. Accordingly, as soon as 
 he began to see his way clear to future employment, 
 he determined to seek another lodging. During the 
 first week of June we may fancy him going about on 
 search through all the likely streets that take his 
 fancy within a moderate range from Paternoster 
 Row. At last, some afternoon, going up Holborn 
 towards the West End, after calling at the office of 
 the Middlesex in Shoe Lane, he is caught by the 
 appearance of Brooke Street, a tidy, quiet-looking 
 street, striking off from Holborn on the right, a little 
 on the City-side of Gray's Inn Lane. He turns aside 
 from Holborn into this street ; sees perhaps various 
 tickets of ' Rooms to let ' hung up in the windows ; 
 but, on the whole, likes best one particular house so 
 distinguished. The tenant is one Frederick Angell, 
 of uncertain occupation ; but, if there is any name 
 on the door, it is not his, but his wife's, thus ' Mrs. 
 Angell, Sack-maker.' (The term ' sack-maker,' from 
 'sack' or ( sac ' the older naturalised French name 
 of a portion of feminine attire which we now render 
 by a later was then equivalent, or nearly so, to our 
 term ' dress-maker.') At the door of this house, after 
 sufficient inspection of it from the outside, he knocks 
 rather loudly. The knock is answered, probably
 
 170 CHATTERTON 
 
 by Mrs. Angell herself a pleasant-looking person, 
 one may imagine her, of matronly age, or nearly 
 so. He states his object ; is shown various rooms 
 of which he may have his choice; and in the end 
 bargains for one, which is both bedroom and sitting- 
 room, almost at the top of the house, but with the 
 window to the front Thither, either the same day 
 or within a day or two, he removes his things, 
 alleging no reason either to Mrs. Walmsley or to 
 Mrs. Ballance, as they afterwards told Sir Herbert 
 Croft, for his leaving them so suddenly. On clear- 
 ing up the room he had occupied, after he was gone, 
 they found the floor 'covered with little pieces of 
 paper, the remains of his poetings.' It seems, how- 
 ever, that he did not all at once cease his visits at 
 Walmsley's house, but for some time at least con- 
 tinued to call there in the course of the day. 
 
 The house in Brooke Street, Holborn, where Mrs. 
 Angell lived, and where, after the first week of June, 
 1770, Chatterton had his lodging, existed, little 
 changed, till within very recent memory. It was 
 that which bore the number 39 on the west side 
 of the street, i.e. the left-hand side as you go into 
 the street from Holborn. In a garret room in that 
 old house which till 1880 was visible without 
 trouble to the outside passengers of every omnibus
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 171 
 
 going down Holborn to the City, or returning up 
 Holborn from the City Chatterton had his abode. 
 A far more cheerful abode, in external respects, 
 it must have been than the one he had left at 
 Shoreditch high up indeed, with only the airy 
 heaven above, and a prospect of roofs and chimneys 
 round, and yet, if he chose to stretch a little over 
 the window, a sight of Brooke Street below and 
 of the thoroughfare of Holborn to the right. The 
 street was respectable itself, with good enough shops 
 in it ; and only at the inner end where it widened 
 into a little irregular space, and bent off into alleys, 
 affording room for a small shabby market for 
 meat and vegetables, known in the neighbourhood 
 as Brooke Market did it lead into still shabbier 
 purlieus. 1 
 
 1 There is a correction in this paragraph of an error in the first 
 edition of this story of Chatterton's life. Trusting to general tradition, 
 and especially to the excellent authority of the late Mr. Peter Cunning- 
 ham in his Handbook of London, I there identified the house in Brooke 
 Street in which Chatterton lodged with that afterwards numbered 4 in 
 the street, situated on the east side, or right-hand side of the street as 
 you go from Holborn which No. 4, at the time I wrote, had been 
 absorbed into one large block of premises at the Holborn end of the 
 street, occupied by a furniture-dealer, whose main door was in 
 Holborn. The mistake was rectified by Mr. W. Moy Thomas, in 
 a letter published in the Athenaum of Dec. 5, 1857 ; and I hardly 
 know a neater piece of historical inquiry than that by which this 
 gentleman enabled himself to make the rectification. He found the 
 books for the collection of the poor-rates in 1772 from that part of 
 Brooke Street (nearly the whole) which is in the ' Upper Liberty
 
 172 CHATTERTON 
 
 So particular a description of the old street might 
 not have been necessary, were it not that it may help 
 to make more intelligible a description of the street 
 in one of its nocturnal aspects given by Chatterton 
 himself in his very next letter. This letter, which 
 is dated the ipth of June, has hitherto been gener- 
 ally supposed to have been written at Shoreditch ; 
 but it is in itself a distinct confirmation of other 
 and independent proof that he had now quitted that 
 neighbourhood. It was written, we calculate, a week 
 or ten days after he had gone to lodge at Mrs. 
 Angell's. 
 
 'June 19, 1770. 
 
 ' DEAR SISTER, I have an horrid cold. The relation 
 of the manner of my catching it may give you more 
 pleasure than the circumstance itself. As I wrote very 
 late Sunday night (or, rather, very early Monday morning), 
 I thought to have gone to bed pretty soon last night ; 
 
 of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn ' ; he found there the name 
 of ' Frederick Angell ' as one of the ratepayers ; and, by an ingenious 
 observation of the exact place in which this name occurred in the 
 list of the ratepayers of the street upon whom the collector had to 
 call in the order of their houses, aided by a reference to Holden's 
 Directory of 1802, in which two of those ratepayers appeared as still 
 alive and tenanting houses then definitely numbered, he arrived at 
 the conclusion (all but absolutely incontrovertible, I think) that 
 the house of Frederick Angell was the No. 39 of the west side 
 described in the text, and not any house on the opposite side of 
 the street. At the time when Mr. Thomas wrote, the house was 
 occupied by a plumber; in 1874 the lower part was occupied by a 
 a cook-shop ; but in 1880 nearly the whole of the west side of Brooke 
 Street, the site of the house included, was utilised for new buildings.
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 173 
 
 when, being half undressed, I heard a very doleful voice 
 singing Miss Hill's favourite Bedlamite song. The hum- 
 drum of the voice so struck me that, though I was obliged 
 to listen a long while before I could hear the words, I 
 found the similitude in the sound. After hearing her, with 
 pleasure, drawl for about half-an-hour, she jumped into a 
 brisker tune, and hobbled out the ever-famous song in which 
 poor Jack Fowler was to have been satirised. " / put my 
 hand into a bush" " / pricked my finger to the bone" " I saw 
 a ship sailing along" " I thought the sweetest flowers to find" 
 and other pretty flowery expressions, were twanged with no 
 inharmonious bray. I now ran to the window, and threw 
 up the sash, resolved to be satisfied whether or no it was 
 the identical Miss Hill in propria persona. But alas ! it 
 was a person whose twang is very well known when she is 
 awake, but who had drunk so much royal-bob (the ginger- 
 bread-baker for that, you know !) that she was now singing 
 herself asleep. This somnifying liquor had made her voice 
 so like the sweet echo of Miss Hill's that, if I had not 
 imagined that she could not see her way up to London, 
 I should absolutely have imagined it hers. [Here for 
 some lines, the letter is hardly legible ; but Chatterton 
 seems to say that in the street under his window he saw, 
 besides the singer, a fellow loitering about in bad female 
 company ; which fellow he had again, that very morning, 
 on his return from ' Marybone Gardens,' seen in custody 
 'at the watch-house in the parish of St. Giles.' He then 
 describes a third figure who completed the picturesque 
 street-group, as follows :] A drunken fisherman, who sells 
 soused mackerel and other delicious dainties, to the 
 eternal detriment of all twopenny ordinaries as his best 
 commodity, his salmon, goes off at three half-pence the 
 piece this itinerant merchant, this moveable fish-stall, 
 having likewise had his dose of bob-royal, stood still for a 
 while, and then joined chorus in a tone which would have
 
 174 CHATTERTON 
 
 laid half-a-dozen lawyers, pleading for their fees, fast 
 asleep. This naturally reminded me of Mr. Haythorne's 
 song of 
 
 "Says Plato, who-oy-oy-oy should man be vain?" 
 
 However, my entertainment, though sweet enough in 
 itself, has a dish of sour sauce served up in it ; for I have 
 a most horrible wheezing in the throat. But I don't 
 repent that I have this cold; for there are so many 
 nostrums here that 'tis worth a man's while to get a 
 distemper, he can be cured so cheap.' 
 
 Chatterton does not despatch this letter im- 
 mediately, but keeps it by him for ten days, when 
 he adds a postscript as follows : 
 
 'June 29th, 1770. My cold is over and gone. If the 
 above did not recall to your mind some sense of laughter, 
 you have lost your ideas of risibility." 
 
 The letter may have made his sister laugh, as was 
 intended ; but on us, at this distance of time, the 
 impression is very different. We have always re- 
 membered one particular passage in Pepys's Diary 
 as perhaps more mystically vivid than anything 
 else in that famous book. It is the passage 
 describing an excursion which Pepys and some 
 companions of his belonging to the Navy-office 
 made down the river Thames. They returned at 
 night, when it was pitch dark, making their way 
 slowly and with much trepidation along the middle
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 175 
 
 of the river as near as they could guess, and hailing 
 the moored craft that they passed, in order to 
 ascertain their whereabouts. Not a soul seemed to 
 be awake on the whole river to answer their cries ; 
 and the only sound they could hear was that of a 
 dog incessantly barking somewhere, either on the 
 south side of the river, or on board of some vessel 
 left to his charge. The barking of that dog has 
 been in our ears ever since ; intimating with a kind 
 of ghastly vividness, which none of all Pepys's other 
 commemorations, though they are vivid enough, 
 can match, that, in those old days of Pepys and his 
 fellow Londoners, the black river flowed then at night 
 just as now, and that a world of now defunct life 
 alternately roared and reposed on its banks. And 
 so with this last-quoted letter of Chatterton. As we 
 read it we are in Brooke Street, Holborn, on a 
 summer night a hundred and thirty years ago. And 
 what do we see? A wretched, drunken woman 
 passing from side to side in the faint light, and 
 disturbing the deserted street with snatches of 
 song ; after a while, a costermonger, also drunk, 
 reeling out from some neighbouring obscurity, and, 
 caught by the music, joining it on his own account 
 with a stentorian bass ; and meantime, standing at 
 a corner, indifferently looking on, a hulking figure
 
 i;6 CHATTERTON 
 
 of 'the dangerous class,' who completes the trio. 
 And is this all ? Hist ! An upper window in one 
 of the houses, in which the light has not yet been 
 put out, is thrown up, and the head and face of a 
 young man emerge : a wonderful head and face, if 
 we could see them ; the face pale, under dark 
 clustering hair, and the eyes a bold and burning 
 grey. He leans out, surveys the street group far 
 below, seems interested ; and, with his face resting 
 on his two hands, and his elbows resting on the 
 window-sill, he remains gazing out half-an-hour or 
 more. Oh month of June, 1770 ! and is this the kind 
 of educating circumstance you provide for Chat- 
 terton, solitary in his London lodging, and alert in 
 his solitude for objects to occupy his eyes, and 
 incite him to new trains of thought? A poor 
 sleeping street, and a serenade of two drunkards ! 
 No, as he gazes, the drunkards reel out of view into 
 other streets, their voices growing fainter as they 
 go ; the hulking fellow at the corner also moves off, 
 destiny guiding him along Holborn to St. Giles's 
 watch-house ; the street then, though still the same 
 narrow and poor one, is swept at least of its human 
 degradation ; the mood of the gazer changes also ; 
 and, though he remains still gazing, it is not at 
 the street any longer, but at the soft summer stars !
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 177 
 
 One letter more closes the series of those sent 
 by Chatterton to Bristol during his first two months 
 in London. It is addressed to his friend T. Gary, 
 and bears no date. From some allusions in the 
 letter, however, we are able to say with tolerable 
 certainty that it was written on June 2Qth or 3Oth, 
 the day before the June magazine-day. A consider- 
 able part of the letter is taken up with an answer 
 to some objections which Gary had made to a 
 panegyric of Chatterton's on Mr. Allen, the organist 
 of Bristol, at the expense of his brother organist 
 Mr. Broderip. The panegyric is undoubtedly that 
 contained in the long poem called Kew Gardens, 
 written before Chatterton had left Bristol, which was 
 then unpublished, but which Gary had, it seems, just 
 been reading in manuscript 
 
 ' What charms has music when great Broderip sweats 
 To torture sound to what his brother sets ! 
 With scraps of ballad-tunes, and gude Scotch sangs, 
 Which god-like Ramsay to his bagpipe twangs, 
 With tatter'd fragments of forgotten plays, 
 With Playford's melody to Sternhold's lays, 
 This pipe of science, mighty Broderip, comes 
 And a strange, unconnected jumble thrums 
 Roused to devotion in a sprightly air, 
 Danced into piety, and jigg'd to prayer, 
 A modern hornpipe's murder greets our ears, 
 The heavenly music of domestic spheres ; 
 The flying band in swift transition hops 
 Through all the tortured, vile burlesque of stops. 
 
 M
 
 i;8 CHATTERTON 
 
 Sacred to sleep, in superstition's key, 
 
 Dull, doleful diapasons die away ; 
 
 Sleep spreads his silken wings, and, lull'd by sound, 
 
 The vicar slumbers, and the snore goes round, 
 
 Whilst Broderip at his passive organ groans 
 
 Through all his slow variety of tones. 
 
 How unlike Allen ! Allen is divine. 
 
 His touch is sentimental, tender, fine ; 
 
 No little affectations e'er disgraced 
 
 His more refined, his sentimental taste ; 
 
 He keeps the passions with the sound in play, 
 
 And the soul trembles with the trembling key.' 
 
 Gary, probably in a letter sent after Chatterton to 
 London, had objected to this as too partial to Allen, 
 and as unfair to Broderip. Chatterton, premising 
 that he believes ' there are very few in Bristol who 
 know what music is,' defends his comparative esti- 
 mate of the two organists, and reiterates his praise 
 of Allen in strong terms, and his contempt for his 
 rival. ' I am afraid, my dear friend,' he says, ' you 
 do not understand the merit of a full piece ; if you 
 did, you would confess to me that Allen is the 
 only organist you have in Bristol.' He then con- 
 tinues 
 
 'A song of mine is a great favourite with the town, 
 on account of the fulness of the music. It has much 
 of Mr. Allen's manner in the air. You will see that 
 and twenty more in print after the season is over. I 
 yesterday heard several airs of my Burletta sung to the 
 harpsichord, horns, bassoons, hautboys, violins, etc., and
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 179 
 
 will venture to pronounce, from the excellence of the 
 music, that it will take with the town. Observe, I write 
 in all the magazines. I am surprised you took no notice 
 of the last London. In that and the magazine coming 
 out to-morrow are the only two pieces I have the vanity 
 to call poetry. Mind the Political Register. I am very 
 intimately acquainted with the editor, who is also editor 
 of another publication. You will find not a little of mine 
 in the London Museum, and Town and Country. The 
 printers of the daily publications are all frightened out of 
 their patriotism, and will take nothing unless 'tis moderate 
 or ministerial. I have not had five patriotic essays this 
 fortnight. All must be ministerial or entertaining. I 
 remain yours, etc. T. CHATTERTON.' 
 
 The last four letters have been presented in their 
 series, with no other remarks than were necessary to 
 make their meaning clear. 1 It is obvious, however, 
 that, if we are to ascertain the coherent story of 
 Chatterton's London life during the two months 
 they include i.e., during the six or seven weeks of 
 his residence at Shoreditch, and the first two or 
 three of his residence in Brooke Street we must 
 go over the ground again for ourselves, weaving the 
 facts together, as already reported or as indepen- 
 dently known, and allowing for exaggerations. 
 
 1 All the letters of Chatterton contained in this chapter, with the 
 exception of that to Gary, were first collected and printed by Sir 
 Herbert Croft in his Love and Madness ; from the second edition of 
 which, published in 1786, I have taken them.
 
 i8o CHATTERTON 
 
 In the first place, it may be repeated, there is 
 abundant evidence that Chatterton's activity during 
 his first two months in London, his perseverance in 
 introducing himself and trying to form connections, 
 was something unparalleled. Very few young men 
 of his age could have gone through this preliminary 
 part of the business with half so much of courage 
 and self-assurance. He seems to have been capable 
 of ringing any number of bells, and sending in his 
 name, known or unknown, to any number of persons, 
 in the course of a forenoon ; and one wonders at how 
 many of all the doors in London he did actually pre- 
 sent himself during his stay there. Fell, Edmunds, 
 Hamilton, and Dodsley were the persons he had 
 begun with ; but he soon added others, and still 
 others, to the circle of those whom he favoured with 
 his calls. That he might the more easily carry out 
 his plan of getting acquainted with people likely to 
 be of use to him, he went daily to the Chapter Coffee- 
 house, Tom's Coffee-house, and like places of resort ; 
 entering, no doubt, into conversation with many who 
 gave him short answers, and wondered who the pert 
 youth was. If we consider how those places were 
 frequented, we can easily suppose t that there were 
 men of note at that time in London who might have 
 afterwards remembered that they had in this way
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 181 
 
 seen Chatterton. ' I am quite familiar,' he says 
 in his letter of the 6th of May, 'at the Chapter 
 Coffee-house, and know all the geniuses there.' One 
 observes, however, that in the postscript to his next 
 letter, of May I4th, he retracts the direction he had 
 given to his mother and his friends to address to 
 him at the Chapter, and bids them address him ' at 
 Mr. Walmsley's, Shoreditch, only.' Had he received 
 any rebuff at the Chapter, that made him discontinue 
 the house? If so, there were other coffee-houses, 
 one of them Tom's. The theatres, too, and other 
 places of amusement served his purpose. By the 
 28th of May, indeed, as has been seen, both Drury 
 Lane and Covent Garden were closed for the season ; 
 but during the preceding month he had no doubt 
 visited both several times, at once enjoying the 
 play and, as on the occasion he mentions in his 
 letter of the I4th, picking up friends in the pit. 
 After the great houses were closed, there were still 
 some minor theatres, besides Ranelagh Gardens and 
 Marylebone Gardens, to furnish music and other 
 entertainments ; and there, too, Chatterton occasion- 
 ally paid his half-crown, flattering himself it was an 
 investment. 
 
 So much for the effort made. What as to 
 the success? After every allowance for his own
 
 182 CHATTERTON 
 
 exaggerations, it appears to have been by no means 
 inconsiderable. 
 
 Evidently, his great object, after his first arrival 
 in London, was to distinguish himself as a political 
 writer on the ' patriotic ' or Opposition side. This 
 was to be his short cut to fame and wealth. To 
 write such letters for the Middlesex Journal, the 
 Freeholder's Magazine, and other Opposition organs, 
 as should rival those of Junius, and make him be 
 inquired after by the heads of the party, and so 
 put forward and provided for: this was the im- 
 mediate form of his ambition. Fell and Edmunds 
 were here his chief reliance ; but, above all, he 
 desired to be introduced to Wilkes. Could that be 
 done, his fortune would be made ! And Fell, as we 
 have seen, was to manage it for him. Unfor- 
 tunately, when the promised time came, Fell was not 
 in a position to keep his promise, having been laid 
 up in the King's Bench for debt, where Chatterton 
 visited him. Edmunds, too, was put out of reach 
 about the same time, having been made an example 
 of by the Government, and thrown into Newgate 
 by way of warning to ' patriotic ' publishers. The 
 incarceration of those two friends of Chatterton at 
 the very time when he was expecting so much from 
 them must, one would think, have been a mis-
 
 fortune. But he represents it otherwise. The 
 Freeholders Magazine had only gone into other 
 hands ; and he should be able to write for it still, 
 and on better terms than if Fell had remained 
 editor ! The Middlesex Journal, too, was still to go 
 on (Hamilton of the Town and Country Magazine 
 had come to the rescue and taken it up) ; so that 
 here also he should be no worse off than before ! 
 Nor were these anticipations falsified. For the Free- 
 holder s Magazine, indeed, he does not appear to 
 have written much after coming to London, though 
 one important contribution of his, of which we shall 
 have to take special note hereafter, did appear in 
 the May number of that periodical, i.e., on the 3ist 
 of May 1770. But for the Middlesex Journal, under 
 Hamilton, he continued to write busily. At least 
 five letters have been disinterred from the columns 
 of that old newspaper, all printed in the month of 
 May 1770, which there is good reason to believe 
 were Chatterton's. 1 They are all signed ' Decimus.' 
 The first, published May loth, is addressed to the 
 
 Earl of H h (Hillsborough, Minister for the 
 
 American Colonies) ; the second, published May 
 I5th, is to the P D of W (i.e. the 
 
 1 These letters were first reprinted from the Middlesex Journal in 
 Dix's Life of Chatterton.
 
 184 CHATTERTON 
 
 Princess Dowager of Wales) ; the third, published 
 May 22nd, is to the Prime Minister, Lord North, 
 himself; the fourth, published May 26th, is not a 
 letter, but a kind of squib, proposing a series of 
 subjects for an exhibition of sign-board paintings ; 
 and the last is a letter 'To the Freeholders of 
 the City of Bristol,' bidding them shake off their 
 lethargy, and imitate the glorious example of 
 London. A sample or two of these effusions may 
 be quoted : 
 
 From the Letter to the Earl of Hillsborough, May 10. 
 ' MY LORD, If a constant exercise of tyranny and cruelty 
 has not steeled your heart against all sensations of com- 
 punction and remorse, permit me to remind you of the 
 recent massacre in Boston. It is an infamous attribute 
 of the ministry of the Thane that what his tools begin 
 in secret fraud and oppression ends in murder and avowed 
 assassination. Not contented to deprive us of our liberty, 
 they rob us of our lives, knowing from a sad experience 
 that the one without the other is an insupportable burden. 
 Your Lordship has bravely distinguished yourself among 
 the ministers of the present reign. Whilst North and the 
 instruments of his royal mistress settled the plan of opera- 
 tion, it was your part to execute; you were the assassin 
 whose knife was ever ready to finish the crime. If every 
 feeling of humanity is not extinct in you, reflect, for a 
 moment reflect, on the horrid task you undertook and 
 perpetrated. Think of the injury you have done to your 
 country, which nothing but the dissolution of a Parliament 
 not representing the people can erase. . . . Think of the 
 recent murders at Boston. O my Lord ! however you may
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 185 
 
 force a smile into your countenance, however you may 
 trifle in the train of dissipation, your conscience must raise 
 a hell within,' etc. 
 
 From the Letter to the Princess Dowager of Wales, May 
 
 15. 'I could wish your R H would know how 
 
 to act worthy your situation in life, and not debase yourself 
 by mingling with a group of ministers the most detestable 
 that ever embroiled a kingdom in discord and commotion. 
 Your consequence in the Council can arise only from your 
 
 power over his M y ; and that power you possess but 
 
 by the courtesy of an unaccountable infatuation. Filial 
 duty has nothing to do with the question : a king has no 
 mother, no wife, no friend, considered as a king : his 
 country, his subjects, are the only objects of his public 
 concern.' . . . 
 
 From the Letter to Lord North, May 22. ' Fly to the 
 Council with your face whitened with fear ; tell them that 
 justice is at the door, and the axe will do its office ; tell 
 them that, whilst the spirit of English freedom exists, 
 vengeance has also an existence, and, when Britons are 
 denied justice from the powers who have the trust of their 
 rights, the Constitution hath given them a power to do 
 themselves justice.' 
 
 From the Squib describing an Exhibition of Sign- 
 paintings, May 26. 'No. 3. "The Union: An English- 
 man sleeping and a Scotchman picking his pocket." 
 
 " The K : a sign for a button-maker. The painter, who 
 
 has not fixed his name to this performance, is certainly a 
 
 very loyal subject. His M has that innocent vacancy 
 
 of countenance which distinguishes the representation of 
 angels and cherubims ; without guilt, without meaning, 
 without everything but an undesigning simplicity. . . ." ' 
 
 from the Letter to the Freeholders of Bristol, May 26. 
 'Gentlemen, As a fellow-citizen, I presume to address 
 you on a subject which I hoped would have animated an
 
 i86 CHATTERTON 
 
 abler pen. At this critical situation, when the fate of the 
 Constitution depends upon the exertion of an English 
 spirit, I confess my astonishment at finding you silent. 
 The second city in England should not be ashamed to 
 copy the first in any laudable measure. . . . Remember 
 the speech of the glorious Canynge, in whose repeated 
 mayoralties honour and virtue were not unknown in the 
 corporation. When the unhappy dissensions first broke 
 out between the houses of Lancaster and York, he im- 
 mediately declared himself for the latter. His lady, 
 fearful of the consequences, begged him to desist, and 
 not ruin himself and family. " My family," replied the 
 brave citizen, " dear to me Heaven can witness how 
 dear ! But, when discord and oppressions begin to dis- 
 tract the realm, my country is my family ; and that it is my 
 duty to protect."' 
 
 These few samples will show how well Chatterton 
 had caught the trick of the Opposition politics of 
 the day, and how expertly he could dress up the 
 popular commonplaces. That his contributions, 
 such as they were, were thought of some value by 
 the conductors of the Middlesex Journal is proved 
 by the fact that there was one of them in at least 
 every alternate number during the whole month of 
 May, and by the additional fact that two or three of 
 them were printed in the chief place in the paper. 
 
 But Chatterton was not content with writing only 
 for the Middlesex. He probably tried others of the 
 Opposition newspapers, including even the great
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 187 
 
 Public Advertiser itself, which Junius had made 
 illustrious. Then, as we shall see, there were various 
 magazines or monthlies, besides the Freeholder's, to 
 which he sent more elaborate contributions in the 
 same political strain, for publication, as was then 
 the custom, at the end of the current month. Of 
 these one was the Political Register. ' Mind the 
 Political Register] he says to his friend Gary in the 
 end of June : ' I am very intimately acquainted with 
 the editor, who is also editor of another publication.' 
 The acquaintance had probably commenced before 
 the end of May ; and it is with the circumstance of 
 his writing for this periodical that we are disposed 
 to connect the story of his introduction to Beckford, 
 as related by himself to his sister in his letter of the 
 3<Dth of that month. The facts seem to be as 
 follows : 
 
 Anxious from the first to get as near the centre 
 of affairs as he could, and disappointed by Fell's 
 mishap of his expected introduction to Wilkes, he 
 had conceived the idea of making a bold stroke to 
 bring himself into direct relations with the man who 
 for the time was even more of a popular hero than 
 Wilkes the Lord Mayor Beckford. His plan was 
 to write a letter to his lordship on affairs in general, 
 and more particularly in praise of his lordship's
 
 i88 CHATTERTON 
 
 bold championship of the City in their struggle 
 with the Government. Such a letter he did write. 
 Here is a specimen of what it said 
 
 ' MY LORD, The steps you have hitherto taken in the 
 service of your country demand the warmest thanks the 
 gratitude of an Englishman can give. That you will per- 
 severe in the glorious task is the wish of every one who 
 is a friend to the constitution of this country. Your 
 integrity ensures you from falling into the infamy of 
 apostasy; and your understanding is a sufficient guard 
 against the secret measures of the Ministry, who are vile 
 enough to stick at no villainy to complete their detestable 
 purposes. Nor can your British heart stoop to fear the 
 contemptible threatenings of a set of hireling wretches 
 who have no power but what they derive from a person 
 who engrosses every power and every vice. ... If the 
 massacre of the Bostonians was not concerted by the 
 Ministry, they were to be enslaved in consequence of a 
 settled plan ; and, as the one was the result of the other, 
 our worthy Ministers were the assassins. Alas ! the un- 
 happy town had not a Beckford ! He would have checked 
 the audacious insolence of the army, and dared, as an 
 Englishman, to make use of his freedom. . . . His 
 Majesty's behaviour when he received the complaints 
 of his people (not to redress them indeed, but to get rid 
 of them an easier way) was something particular : it was 
 set, formal and studied. Should you address him again, 
 my lord, it would not be amiss to tell his Majesty that you 
 expect his answer, and not the answer of his Mother or 
 Ministers. . . . Your lordship has proved the goodness of 
 your heart, the soundness of your principles, and the merit 
 of the cause in which you are engaged, by the rectitude of
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 189 
 
 your conduct. Scandal maddens at your name, because 
 she finds nothing to reproach you with; and the venal 
 hirelings of the Ministry despair of meriting their pay by 
 blackening your character. Illiberal abuse and gross in- 
 consistencies and absurdities recoil upon their author, and 
 only bear testimony of the weakness of his head or the 
 badness of his heart. That man whose enemies can find 
 nothing to lay to his charge may well dispense with the 
 incoherent Billingsgate of a ministerial writer.' 
 
 This letter he intended for the Political Register. 
 But, either before getting it accepted there, or while 
 it was still only in type, he sent a copy of it direct 
 to Beckford. He gave his lordship a day or so to 
 read it, and then ventured on that personal call to 
 which he makes allusion in his letter to his sister 
 of May the 3Oth. His lordship, according to Chat- 
 terton's own account and we see no reason to 
 doubt it received him very politely, and not only 
 expressed approbation of what he had already 
 written, but consented to have a second letter, on 
 the subject of the City Remonstrance and its recep- 
 tion by the king, publicly addressed to him. This 
 call on Beckford took place probably about the 26th 
 of May, or three days after the great affair of the 
 Remonstrance, and when the town was still ringing 
 with it At all events, a letter bearing that date, 
 and addressed to the Lord Mayor, was found in
 
 190 CHATTERTON 
 
 manuscript among Chatterton's papers after his 
 death. This letter, beginning 'When the en- 
 deavours of a spirited people to free themselves 
 from an unsupportable slavery,' was almost certainly 
 the letter he had asked leave to address to Beckford ; 
 and it shows how completely he had succeeded in 
 his object that he was able to make arrangements 
 for its appearance in no less important a periodical 
 than the North Briton. 
 
 The North Briton of that date was a resuscitation 
 of Wilkes's celebrated periodical of the same name, 
 which had been stopped in its 46th number ; and it 
 differed considerably from the ordinary newspapers 
 of the day. It was of small folio size ; and each 
 number usually consisted of one careful essay and 
 no more, occupying about six pages of clear and 
 elegant type, and sold for twopence halfpenny. 
 The editor and proprietor was a person named 
 William Bingley, a printer, whose case was then 
 much before the public. In 1768 he had resumed 
 the publication of the North Briton, after it had 
 been discontinued for some years. In that year, 
 however, having been summoned as a witness in 
 one of the trials between Wilkes and the Govern- 
 ment, he had given a singular proof of his obstinacy 
 by making oath in court that he would answer no
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 191 
 
 interrogatories whatever unless he should be put to 
 the torture. (See Junius, Letter VII.) Committed 
 for contempt to the King's Bench, he had remained 
 there, utterly immoveable either by threats or by 
 promises, for a period of two years, publishing his 
 North Briton all the while, and dating it from his 
 prison ; till, at last, in the first week of June 1770, 
 Government thought it best to let him out. As 
 soon as he was released, he had started a second 
 weekly newspaper, called Bingley's Journal, or the 
 Universal Gazetteer, of the regular newspaper size 
 and form, the first number of which appeared on 
 the Qth of June. The new paper, however, was not 
 to interfere with the North Briton. Both were to 
 be issued every Saturday, at the same price, from 
 Bingley's new premises at the Britannia, No. 31 
 Newgate Street. 
 
 A connection with Bingley must have been 
 thought of some importance by Chatterton ; and it 
 is another proof of his energy that, before Bingley 
 was out of prison a fortnight, he had contrived to 
 obtain such a connection. Above all, to have his 
 letter to Beckford brought out in large fine type in 
 the North Briton, forming by itself one entire 
 number of that paper, must have seemed to Chatter- 
 ton a decided step of literary promotion.
 
 192 CHATTERTON 
 
 The elation which Chatterton felt at the idea of 
 the publication simultaneously of two letters of his 
 to the Lord Mayor in such important prints as the 
 Political Register and the North Briton, and at the 
 prospects of farther recognition which would thus be 
 opened up to him, was doomed to a bitter dis- 
 appointment. After May he seems to have written 
 next to nothing of a political character for the 
 Middlesex, but to have waited for the appearance of 
 his letters and the eclat he anticipated from them. 
 One of them did appear that written first, and sent 
 to the Political Register. It was published in that 
 periodical in the course of June, and bore the signa- 
 ture of ' Probus.' But, before the other could appear, 
 an event happened which made it impossible that it 
 should appear at all. On the 2ist of June, 1770, 
 Beckford died. His death was sudden, the con- 
 sequence of a cold, which an imprudent journey of 
 100 miles had aggravated into rheumatic fever. 
 The town was thunderstruck, and for some days, 
 nothing else was talked of. Only a month before 
 had been that crowning triumph of his life, his pre- 
 sentation of the City Remonstrance to the King : the 
 applauses of that act were still loud ; and London 
 and all England had been expecting no end of 
 similar manifestations of spirit from the bold Lord
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 193 
 
 Mayor. Little wonder that the excitement over his 
 death was for the time enormous. 
 
 Gradually the excitement died away. Beckford's 
 only legitimate son, then a boy of nine years, after- 
 wards to be known far and wide as the author of 
 Vathek, stepped into the inheritance of his father's 
 vast fortune, the wife being amply provided for by 
 her settlement ; several illegitimate children at the 
 same time received 5,000 each; and the City people 
 began to think which of the popular aldermen they 
 should elect for the vacant term of the Mayoralty. 
 But what of poor Chatterton, to whom, with his two 
 letters, and the hopes he had built upon them, the 
 continuance of Beckford's life had been more neces- 
 sary than to all the City besides ? ' When Beckford 
 died/ Mrs. Ballance told Sir Herbert Croft, Chatter- 
 ton, ' was perfectly frantic and out of his mind, and 
 said that he was ruined.' This is probably correct ; 
 and yet there is an authentic little record from which 
 it appears that, after his first frantic regret was over, 
 he tried to console himself ironically in a somewhat 
 singular fashion. On the back of the identical letter 
 which has been mentioned as having been sent to 
 the North Briton, but which, as it could not now 
 appear there, Chatterton had recovered and sent in 
 manuscript to his friend Gary, there is an endorse- 
 
 N
 
 194 CHATTERTON 
 
 ment in Chatterton's hand, evidently for Gary's 
 amusement, as follows 
 
 'Accepted by Bingley. Set for, and thrown out of, the North 
 Briton, 2ist June, on account of Lord Mayor's death : 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Lost by his death on this Essay . . . . I 1 1 6 
 Gained in Elegies . . . . ,220 
 in Essays . . . . ^33 
 
 550 
 
 Am glad he is dead by 3 13 6' 
 
 So far as we are aware, this is the first time that 
 grief was openly estimated in pounds, shillings and 
 pence. The method, however, has some merits, and 
 might, without much injury to truth, come into 
 more general use. 
 
 Beckford's death seems to have had one not unim- 
 portant effect on Chatterton's literary exertions. 
 Even before his interview with Beckford, as his 
 letter to his sister of the 3Oth May shows, he had 
 begun to have doubts as to the advantages of mere 
 political writing at any rate, of political writing on 
 the Opposition side and for the newspapers. For 
 essays of that kind, he says, one was sure of pay ; 
 but the benefit ended there. The 'patriots' being 
 all in search of place for themselves, there was little 
 chance of any further remuneration for articles on 
 their side than the publisher's payment for the copy ! 
 On the other hand, if one wrote for the Ministerial
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 195 
 
 side, no publisher would take the articles, and one 
 must pay to have them printed ; but then, if one could 
 make a hit, the Ministerial men would be glad of 
 such a recruit, and could easily make it worth his 
 while to serve them ! And then follows the maxim, 
 so characteristic of the miserable boy, ' He is a poor 
 author who cannot write on both sides,' with the 
 statement that, if necessary, he will put this maxim 
 in practice by transferring himself to the Court- 
 party. There is evidence that he actually made an 
 attempt to carry the intention into effect. On that 
 very 26th of May on which he penned the letter that 
 was to appear in the North Briton, lauding Beckford 
 and the patriots for their opposition to Ministers, he 
 penned also another letter afterwards found among 
 his papers addressed to Lord North, and signed 
 ' Moderator,' in which, according to Walpole, he 
 passed ' an encomium on Ministers for rejecting the 
 City Remonstrance.' It was probably, therefore, the 
 consciousness of having written those two letters on 
 the same day that caused him to write to his sister 
 so coolly about taking either side ; and what he says 
 about the difficulty of getting Ministerial essays 
 published may have been but the result of his own 
 experience with regard to the 'Moderator' letter. 
 Evidently, however, after his introduction of himself
 
 196 CHATTERTON 
 
 to Beckford, he had resolved to wait the issue of 
 that experiment before taking any farther steps 
 towards the Ministerial side. But, when Beckford 
 died, and all his hopes from that acquaintanceship 
 were over, his conviction of the uselessness of mere 
 political writing in newspapers, especially if on the 
 patriotic side, came back with fresh force. 
 
 There was independent reason why it should be 
 so. Since the end of May there had been a panic 
 among the newspaper-proprietors. As early as the 
 beginning of that month, we have seen, Edmunds of 
 the Middlesex Journal had been prosecuted by 
 Ministers and committed to Newgate. And this 
 was but the beginning of a series of similar; prosecu- 
 tions. After the City Remonstrance of the 23rd of 
 May, and Junius's terrible letter in the Public 
 Advertiser Q{ the 28th, ripping up the conduct of the 
 Parliament just prorogued, and lashing Ministers for 
 all their recent misdemeanours, including the 
 massacre at Boston, the insult to the City, and the 
 escape of the murderers of Bigby, Ministers seem to 
 have made up their minds for a crusade against the 
 Opposition press. On the ist of June Mr. Almon 
 of the London Museum, a friend of Wilkes, was 
 tried in Westminster Hall before Lord Mansfield 
 for circulating a letter of Junius's in that publication;
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 197 
 
 on the 1 3th, a greater culprit, Woodfall of the 
 Public Advertiser, was tried at the King's Bench on 
 a similar charge; and on the I3th of July Mr. 
 Miller, of the London Evening Post, was tried for 
 copying a letter by Junius into his columns. All 
 this had some effect. The proprietors of news- 
 papers began to be chary of printing articles which 
 might be their ruin. Thus, during the month of 
 June, Chatterton seems to have found it impossible 
 to get such articles into the Middlesex Journal as 
 had been willingly taken from him in May. 'The 
 ' printers of daily publications,' he writes to Gary on 
 the 29th of June, ' are all frightened out of their 
 ' patriotism, and will take nothing unless 'tis moderate 
 ' or Ministerial. I have not had five patriotic essays 
 ' this fortnight : all must be Ministerial or entertain- 
 ' ing.' Accordingly, still keeping in reserve the possi- 
 bility of becoming ' Ministerial ' if he should see 
 reason for it, he in the meantime falls back on the 
 'entertaining': i.e., on miscellaneous non-political 
 literature. And this leads us to a separate question. 
 What were Chatterton's literary exertions during his 
 first two months in London apart from his political 
 letters for the newspapers ? 
 
 From the very first he had by no means depended 
 exclusively on political writing. In his letter to his
 
 198 CHATTERTON 
 
 mother of the 6th of May he says, ' I get four guineas 
 a month by one magazine, and shall engage to write 
 a History of England and other pieces, which will 
 more than double that sum ' ; and he clearly dis- 
 tinguishes in the same letter between employment 
 of this kind and 'occasional essays for the daily 
 papers.' Again, in his letter to his sister of May 
 3<Dth, he speaks of an engagement with a speculative 
 bookseller, the brother of a Scotch Lord, who was 
 to give him board and lodging for writing a History 
 of London, to appear in numbers. How much of 
 these statements about engagements to write large 
 historical compilations for the booksellers was actual 
 fact, founded on proposals that passed between 
 the eager youth and the bibliopolic powers of Pater- 
 noster Row and its purlieus, and how much of it was 
 mere hallucination, one cannot now say. Of schemes 
 of this sort, at all events, we hear nothing more; and 
 whatever chances of literary work, as distinct from 
 ordinary newspaper-writing, Chatterton did have in 
 London were limited to his connection with various 
 magazines. 
 
 We are able to enumerate all the magazines with 
 which, during the months of May and June, Chatter- 
 ton is known to have had dealings. First, and by 
 far the most hopeful, as regarded receipts for his
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 199 
 
 exchequer, was the Town and Country, to which he 
 had been a pretty constant contributor since its 
 second number in February 1769. This magazine, 
 which had a very large sale, was published on the 
 last day of every month, at the price of one shilling ; 
 and, though the editor and proprietor, Hamilton, 
 must have been rather surprised when his Bristol 
 correspondent presented himself in his office, at 
 St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, to find him so young, 
 he appears to have behaved civilly, and to have 
 allowed Chatterton to regard the magazine as one of 
 his surest resources now that he had settled in town. 
 Next there was the Freeholder's Magazine, somewhat 
 more political in its character and also published on 
 the last day of each month, price sixpence. With 
 this also Chatterton had been in correspondence 
 before leaving Bristol ; and we have seen that 
 during his first ten days in London he was disposed 
 to regard it, and its editor, Mr. Fell, as his mainstay. 
 After Fell's imprisonment, however, when the maga- 
 zine went into other hands the hands, as appears 
 from an advertisement of the ninth number (that for 
 May 1770), of a certain 'patriotic society/ who em- 
 ployed W. Adland and J. Browne of Red Lion Court, 
 Fleet Street, to print it for them Chatterton says 
 less of it than his letter of May I4th had prepared us
 
 200 CHATTERTON 
 
 to expect. Of greater consequence now in his eyes 
 was the London Museum, a shilling monthly, which 
 was printed, as has been said, by J. Miller, of Queen's 
 Head Passage, and which in May 1770 had attained 
 its fifth number. Next was the Political Register, 
 already described. After it may be mentioned The 
 Court and City Magazine, price sixpence, six numbers 
 old in May 1770, printed by J. Smith of 15 Paternoster 
 Row, and characterised in the advertisements as ' a 
 Fund of Entertainment for the Man of Quality, the 
 Citizen, the Scholar, the Country Gentleman, and the 
 Man of Gallantry, as well as the Fair of every de- 
 nomination.' This magazine had plates, as indeed 
 some of the others had ; and, from the advertised 
 contents of one or two numbers, one infers that the 
 light amatory vein was deemed the most attractive 
 by the publishers. Lastly, there was the Gospel 
 Magazine, begun in 1768, and printed and sold in 
 1770 by M. Lewis, of No. I Paternoster Row. This 
 magazine, the purpose of which, as stated on its title- 
 page, was ' to promote religion, devotion, and piety 
 from evangelical principles,' usually consisted, if one 
 may judge from the contents of a few numbers, of 
 scraps of sermons and short religious biographies, 
 followed by a few pieces of religious verse. 
 
 The editors of Chatterton's Remains, after his
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 201 
 
 death, were not so careful as they might have been 
 in recovering his contributions to the various London 
 magazines, or even in giving the exact dates and 
 references of those which they did recover. The 
 task, in any case, was not an easy one. Chatterton 
 adopted various signatures, and some of his con- 
 tributions may have appeared, as was then common, 
 without any signature at all. It is possible, there- 
 fore, that trifles which have been assumed as his 
 were not really his ; and it is far more possible that 
 trifles which he did write have been neglected. On 
 the whole, we may give the following as a list of at 
 least the chief of Chatterton's appearances in the 
 periodicals mentioned, from his arrival in London 
 to the end of June 1770 : 
 
 In the Freeholder's Magazine for May 1770 appeared a 
 portion of the long satirical poem entitled ' Resignation,' 
 with an editorial note promising the sequel in a future 
 number. This fact, first made public in the Aldine 
 Edition of Chatterton's works (1875), had been ascer- 
 tained for that edition by Mr. Edward Bell, together 
 with the other interesting fact already mentioned (ante 
 p. 119, footnote). 
 
 ' Narva and Mored, an African Eclogue,' in verse, dated 
 May 2, 1770: published in the London Museum for 
 May. 
 
 'Elegy' beginning 'Why blooms the radiance': dated 
 'Shoreditch, May 20,' and published in the Town and 
 Country Magazine for May.
 
 202 CHATTERTON 
 
 'The Prophecy,' a political poem in eighteen stanzas: 
 published in the Political Register for June 1770. 
 
 ' The Death of Nicou, an African Eclogue,' in verse : 
 dated 'Brooke Street, June 12,' and published in the 
 London Museum for June. The dating, it will be seen, 
 is proof positive that Chatterton had removed to Brooke 
 Street early in June. 
 
 'Maria Friendless,' a short tale in prose : dated 'June 15,' 
 and published in the Town and Country Magazine for June. 
 
 ' The False Step : ' a short prose tale, published in the 
 same number of the Town and Country Magazine. 
 
 ' Anecdote of Judge Jeffries ' : a short paragraph, pub- 
 lished in the same number of the Town and Country 
 Magazine. 
 
 ' To Miss Bush of Bristol ' : a lyric in six stanzas, pub- 
 lished in the same number of the Town and Country 
 Magazine. 
 
 A Paper signed ' Hunter of Oddities,' dated ' Slaughter's 
 Coffee-house, June 15,' and describing the conduct of 
 a mad gentleman seen there : published in the same 
 number of the Town and Country Magazine. This 
 was the fourth of a series of papers, all bearing the 
 same signature, and having the same object namely, 
 the description of odd characters encountered in walking 
 about London. There are about twelve papers in all in 
 the series, extending over all the numbers of the maga- 
 zine for 1770. Chatterton was certainly the author of 
 some of them; and, though the rest were published 
 after his death, and even dated after it, this may have 
 been only the editor's way of using copy with which 
 Chatterton had supplied him. 
 
 'Elegy on W. Beckford, Esq.,' in twelve stanzas. This, 
 published somewhere before the end of June, has figured 
 in editions of Chatterton as his sole metrical recognition 
 of Beckford's death. But see next page.
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 203 
 
 If this list were extended by the addition of scraps 
 from the same periodicals which look as if they 
 were Chatterton's, and of similar scraps from the 
 Court and City Magazine, the Gospel Magazine, 
 etc., it might perhaps be more than doubled. We 
 know, for example, that Chatterton must have 
 written more on Beckford's death, both in verse 
 and in prose, than the elegy above-mentioned 
 amounted to. He estimated his earnings from this 
 topic at five guineas. Indeed, it was in connection 
 with this topic that he made the only venture 
 towards independent publication of which there is 
 any record. In the Middlesex Journal of July 3rd 
 there is the following advertisement ' This day was 
 published, price one shilling, an Elegy on the much- 
 lamented death of William Beckford, Esq., late Lord 
 Mayor of, and Representative in Parliament for, the 
 City of London : Printed by G. Kearsly, at No. I 
 Ludgate Street.' A copy of this publication has 
 survived ; and, on comparing it with the Elegy of 
 Chatterton mentioned above, it is found to be the 
 same, but with sixteen additional stanzas. Here are 
 the opening stanzas 
 
 ' Weep on, ye Britons ! give your gen'ral tear ; 
 
 But hence, ye venal hence each titled slave ! 
 
 An honest pang should wait on Beckford's bier, 
 
 And patriot Anguish mark the patriot's grave.
 
 204 CHATTERTON 
 
 ' When like the Roman to his field retired, 
 
 'Twas you (surrounded by unnumber'd foes) 
 Who call'd him forth, his services required, 
 And took from age the blessing of repose.' 
 
 Whether Chatterton gained any part of his five 
 guineas by this publication, or whether he lost some 
 part of them by the venture, we do not know. The 
 Elegy is as good as was going, but is poor enough ; 
 and perhaps it did not sell. 
 
 But we have not yet taken account of all Chatter- 
 ton's efforts to make money and win fame during 
 his first two months in London. Besides writing 
 political articles for the newspapers, and miscellan- 
 eous scraps of a more literary kind for the magazines, 
 he made, as we gather from his letters, a distinct 
 effort towards connecting himself with what may be 
 called generally the minor dramatic literature of the 
 metropolis. 
 
 Within a month after his arrival in London, it 
 has again to be noted, the two great theatres of 
 Drury Lane and Covent Garden were closed for the 
 season. But, though those great theatres were shut, 
 one or two smaller summer theatres were open. At 
 the Haymarket there was about to be brought out, for 
 the delight of the town, Foote's comedy of The Lame 
 Lover ; perhaps the greatest theatrical hit of that year ; 
 and Sadler's Wells was also in its glory. Whatever
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 205 
 
 dreams of future work for those established houses 
 may have crossed Chatterton's mind, there was as 
 yet, of course, no means for realising them ; and all 
 that his ambition did conceive as within its reach 
 for the present was the chance of becoming con- 
 nected with one or other of those places of evening 
 pastime in the open air which competed with the 
 minor theatres for the right to entertain the residue 
 of the London population that was still in town 
 during the summer and autumn months. Of these 
 there were three of some note : Ranelagh Gardens, 
 at Chelsea ; Vauxhall Gardens, on the Surrey side 
 of the Thames, over against Millbank ; and Maryle- 
 bone or Marybone Gardens, on the site of part of 
 the present New Road. At all these places the enter- 
 tainments consisted of promenading under brilliant 
 lights, hearing concerts of music, sipping tea and 
 coffee or more expensive beverages, and seeing, at 
 the close, fine displays of fireworks. Any hope that 
 Chatterton could entertain of contributing to the bill 
 of fare that had thus to be provided at every one of 
 the places named could consist only in his ability to 
 furnish words for the musical or dramatic portion of 
 the entertainment. Now, it did so happen that he 
 had an opportunity of showing this ability more espe- 
 cially in connection with the Marylebone Gardens.
 
 206 CHATTERTON 
 
 There is no reason to doubt the literal accuracy of 
 his account to his mother, on the I4th of May, of 
 the accidental manner in which the connection was 
 brought about. ' Last week/ he says, ' being in the 
 ' pit of Drury Lane Theatre, I contracted an imme- 
 ' diate acquaintance (which you know is no hard 
 ' task to me) with a young gentleman in Cheapside, 
 ' partner in a music-shop, the greatest in the City. 
 ' Hearing I could write, he desired me to write a 
 ' few songs for him : this I did the same night, and 
 ' conveyed them to him the next morning. These 
 ' he showed to a doctor in music, and I am invited 
 ' to treat with the doctor on the footing of a com- 
 ' poser for Ranelagh and the [Marylebone] Gardens. 
 ' Bravo, hey boys, up we go ! ' For a while we hear 
 no more of this bargain or its results ; but, in the 
 end of June, writing to Gary, who had apparently 
 been already informed of all the particulars, he 
 reports progress. ' A song of mine,' he then says, ' is 
 ' a great favourite with the town, on account of the 
 ' fulness of the music. You will see that and twenty 
 ' more in print after the season is over. I yesterday 
 ' heard several airs of my Burletta sung to the harpsi- 
 ' chord, horns, bassoons, hautboys, violins, etc., and 
 ' will venture to pronounce, from the excellence of the 
 ' music, that it will take with the town.' If we inter-
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 207 
 
 pret this into the language of direct statement, the 
 facts seem to be as follows; Chatterton having, 
 early in May, written some songs for some music- 
 publisher who had an interest in Marylebone Gardens, 
 one or two of these had already been set to music, 
 and perhaps sung at the Gardens, in the course of 
 one of the concerts, by Mr. Reinhold, Mr. Bannister, 
 or Mrs. Barthelemon, who were then the Marylebone 
 stars ; and, these having pleased, he had made some 
 kind of arrangement for a more extensive attempt, 
 in the shape of a continuous Burletta, to be brought 
 out at the Gardens as soon as might be convenient, 
 and had already before the end of June finished this 
 Burletta, handed it to the composer, and even had 
 the pleasure of hearing some of the songs in it sung 
 to the airs to which they had been fitted. 
 
 All this is corroborated by the evidence of Chat- 
 terton's remaining writings. For some five-and- 
 twenty years, indeed, after his death, all traces of 
 either his Burletta or the Songs seem to have been 
 lost ; but in 1795, the manuscripts having been 
 recovered in the possession of Mr. Atterbury, who 
 had been proprietor of Marylebone Gardens, they 
 were edited in the form of a neat little pamphlet, 
 having this title-page ' The Revenge : A Burletta, 
 acted at Marybone Gardens 1770; with additional
 
 208 CHATTERTON 
 
 Songs ; by Thomas Chatterton.' Prefixed to The 
 Revenge, there is this list of dramatis persona 
 
 Jupiter MR. REINHOLD. 
 
 Bacchus MR. BANNISTER. 
 
 Cupid MASTER CHENEY. 
 
 Juno MRS. THOMPSON. 
 
 The natural inference is that the Burletta was 
 actually performed at the Gardens. After looking 
 over the newspapers for 1770, however, in which 
 there is a pretty complete series of advertisements 
 of the entertainments at the Gardens from the 
 beginning to the end of the season, we have found no 
 trace of any such Burletta as having been produced 
 that year ; hence we rather incline to think that, if 
 the production took place at all, it was not till a 
 subsequent season. Of five short Songs, however, 
 printed along with the Burletta, it seems likely 
 enough that one, entitled A Bacchanalian, and 
 purporting to have been 'sung by Mr. Reinhold/ 
 was actually sung by that gentleman at one of 
 the mixed concerts ; and it may be the very 
 song respecting which Chatterton wrote to Gary. 
 Another of the five, entitled The Invitation, has 
 attached to it the words 'To be sung by Mrs. 
 Barthelemon and Master Cheney,' as if it had not 
 yet gone so far as the other. The remaining three
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 209 
 
 have no singer's name attached to them. Probably, 
 however, to have had one Song actually sung at the 
 Gardens, another about to be sung, and a Burletta in 
 progress, seemed to Chatterton sufficient success. At 
 all events, no sooner was one Burletta off his hands 
 than he began another of a more modern dramatic 
 character, entitled The Woman of Spirit, the several 
 parts of which are distributed by anticipation thus 
 
 Distort MR. BANNISTER. 
 
 Councillor Latitat . . MR. REINHOLD. 
 
 Endorse MASTER CHENEY. 
 
 Lady Tempest . . . MRS. THOMPSON. 
 
 Of this intended Burletta only two scenes appear 
 to have been written. 
 
 No one can read those dramatic attempts of the 
 industrious boy without a new impression of his 
 extraordinary cleverness and versatility. The Re- 
 venge, which is in two acts, and is written in rhyme 
 throughout, partly in passages of recitative, but with 
 numerous solo airs, one or two duets, and a chorus 
 at the close, might really, if set to tolerable music, 
 have been a pleasant piece to hear. The words are 
 decidedly better than those of many of the musical 
 burlesques that succeed now-a-days. The story is 
 that of a quarrel between Jupiter and Juno on 
 account of an assignation which Jupiter had made 
 
 O
 
 210 CHATTERTON 
 
 with Maia ; the plot is thickened by the introduction 
 of Cupid and Bacchus ; and, after the usual amount 
 of confusion and cross-purpose, all ends happily. 
 Here is a specimen a dispute between Bacchus and 
 Cupid respecting the relative worths of their diverse 
 functions 
 
 BACCHUS (with a bowl) 
 
 Recitative. Od'sniggers, t'other draught ; 'tis dev'lish heady ; 
 Olympus turns about (staggers) ; steady, boys, 
 steady ! 
 
 Air. If Jove should pretend that he governs the skies, 
 I swear by this liquor his Thundership lies ; 
 A slave to his bottle, he governs by wine ; 
 And all must confess he 's a servant of mine. 
 
 Air changes. Rosy, sparkling, powerful wine, 
 All the joys of life are thine ; 
 Search the drinking world around, 
 Bacchus everywhere sits crown'd ; 
 Whilst we lift the flowing bowl 
 Unregarded thunders roll. 
 
 Air changes. Since man, as says each bearded sage, 
 Is but a piece of clay, 
 Whose mystic moisture lost by age, 
 To dust it falls away, 
 'Tis orthodox, beyond a doubt, 
 That drought will only fret it ; 
 To make the brittle stuff hold out 
 Is thus to drink and wet it. 
 Recitative. Ah ! Master Cupid, 'slife, I did not s' ye ; 
 
 'Tis excellent champagne, and so here's t'ye : 
 
 I brought it to these Gardens as imported ; 
 
 'Tis bloody strong; you need not twice be 
 
 courted ; 
 Come, drink, my boy
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 211 
 
 CUPID 
 
 Hence, monster, hence ! I scorn thy flowing bowl : 
 It prostitutes the sense, degenerates the soul. 
 
 BACCHUS 
 
 Gadso, methinks the youngster 's woundy moral ; 
 He plays with ethics like a bell and coral. 
 Air. 'Tis madness to think, 
 
 To judge ere you drink : 
 The bottom all wisdom contains. 
 Then let you and I 
 Now drink the bowl dry ; 
 We both shall grow wise for our pains. 
 
 CUPID 
 Recitative. Pray, keep your distance, beast, and cease you 
 
 bawling, 
 
 Or with this dart I '11 send you caterwauling. 
 Air. The charms of wine cannot compare 
 With the soft raptures of the fair ; 
 Can drunken pleasures ever find 
 A place with love and womankind ? 
 Can the full bowl pretend to vie 
 With the soft languish of the eye ? 
 Can the mad roar our passions move 
 Like gentle-breathing sighs of Love? 
 
 BACCHUS 
 
 Go, whine and complain 
 To the girls of the plain, 
 
 And sigh out your soul ere she comes to the mind ; 
 My mistress is here, 
 And, faith, I don't fear : 
 7 always am happy, she always is kind. 
 Air changes. A pox o' your lasses ! 
 A shot of my glasses 
 Your arrows surpasses ; 
 For nothing but asses 
 
 Will draw in your team.
 
 212 CHATTERTON 
 
 Whilst thus I am drinking, 
 My misery sinking, 
 The cannikin clinking, 
 I 'm lost to all thinking, 
 And care is a dream. 
 
 CUPID 
 Provoking insolence ! 
 
 One would like to know, if possible, the exact 
 pecuniary result for Chatterton of all those various 
 exertions of his during his first two busy months 
 in London : his political articles and essays, his 
 miscellaneous poems and other literary trifles con- 
 tributed to magazines, and his Songs and Burletta 
 for Marylebone Gardens. The data for this calcula- 
 tion are contained in three small documents ; 
 (i) On a scrap of paper found in his pocket-book 
 
 there are these jottings 
 
 s. d. 
 ' Received to May 23, of Mr. Hamilton, for Middlesex i 1 1 6 
 
 ofB 123 
 
 , , , , of Fell f or The Consuliad \i. e. , for 
 
 the long satirical poem with that title which 
 Chatterton had sent from Bristol, and which 
 had been published in ft&Freeholder' 's Maga- 
 zine for January 1770 ; see ante, p. 119] . o 10 6 
 ,, ,, of Mr. Hamilton for " Candidus " 
 
 and " Foreign Journal " [paragraphs for 
 the Town and Country ?] . . .020 
 
 ,, ,, of Mr. Fell [for the portion of 
 
 " Resignation" printed in the Freeholder's 
 Magazine for May f See ante, p. 20 1] . o 10 6 
 ,, ,, Middlesex Journal . . .086 
 
 ,, Mr. Hamilton, for 16 songs . o 10 6 
 
 4 15 9
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 213 
 
 (2) Another money document is that already quoted, 
 giving an ironical account of the balance in his 
 favour by Beckford's death, which is estimated at 
 3 133. 6d. This may have been but one item in 
 his receipts for June, though probably, from the 
 nature of the topic, it was the most important item. 
 
 (3) From a receipt in Chatterton's hand, accidentally 
 recovered in 1824, it is inferred that he received, 
 on the 6th of July 1770, the sum of five guineas 
 from Mr. Atterbury of Marylebone Gardens, in 
 
 payment for his Burletta. On the whole, allowing 
 
 for uncertainties in the construction of those docu- 
 ments, and for the probability that some of the 
 calculated earnings, including even part of the 
 elegiac 3 135. 6d., remained unpaid, we shall 
 probably be correct if we say that Chatterton's 
 total receipts during his first two months in London 
 cannot have exceeded 10 or 12, and that, if he 
 had Mr. Atterbury's five guineas in hand early in 
 July, he had nothing else then left with which to 
 face the rest of that month. 
 
 Chatterton was singularly abstemious in his 
 personal habits. He drank only water, and would 
 rarely eat animal food, assigning as his reason 
 that 'he had work on hand and must not make 
 himself more stupid than God had made him.'
 
 214 CHATTERTON 
 
 His receipts, therefore, small as they were, would 
 probably have satisfied all his ordinary wants for a 
 considerable time. But there were other respects 
 in which he did not deny himself. ' I employ my 
 money now,' he wrote to his sister on the 3Oth of 
 May, ' in fitting myself fashionably, and getting into 
 good company, 5 i.e. going to coffee-houses, the 
 gardens, the theatres, etc. Add to this the little 
 presents sent home to his mother and sister, and 
 it will not be difficult to see how, even without 
 supposing any extravagance, the end of his second 
 and the beginning of his third month in London 
 should have found him in some such state as we have 
 imagined. Still, there was as yet no appearance of 
 despondency in Chatterton as to his future. What 
 he had spent in dress and ' getting into good com- 
 pany ' was sure to bring him in interest ; and each 
 succeeding month would bring its own earnings! 
 If money flowed as fast as honours upon him, he 
 would give his sister a portion of 5,000 ! That 
 day might be still distant ; but, at least, he could 
 look forward to the time when his mother and sister 
 should leave Bristol and join him in London, where 
 he .could take apartments for them and himself. 
 Then how happy they should be, all three together, 
 walking out on Sundays to Hampstead or Kensing-
 
 SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE 215 
 
 ton, when the heaven over London should begin to 
 glow and blush with the burning beneath it of that 
 hard-to-kindle but still surely combustible river, and 
 the whole town, his mother and sister included, 
 should gaze at the crimson air and see his portrait 
 and the letters T.C. freaked in keener fire in the 
 heart of the crimson ! Dream on, poor boy, for 
 the end is not yet. 
 
 It will have been observed that, all this while, 
 in his ceaseless efforts to become known in London, 
 Chatterton had made no use of his Antiques. Of 
 at least one of those modern satirical pieces of his 
 which he had brought with him to town from Bristol 
 that called The Consulted he had contrived to 
 make something; but, though he must have had 
 his tragedy of ALlla with him, his fragment of the 
 tragedy of Goddwyn, his Tournament, his Battle of 
 Hastings, and others of his Rowley Poems, he seems 
 to have made no attempt to get them published 
 Indeed, his only allusion, after his arrival in 
 London, to the Rowley Poems at all is in his 
 remark, in his letter to his mother of May 14, that, 
 if Rowley had been a Londoner, instead of a 
 ' Bristowyan,' he could have lived by copying 
 Rowley's works. Couple this remark with his
 
 216 CHATTERTON 
 
 injunction in the same letter, repeated in his letter 
 to his sister of May 30, to be careful to send him 
 his MS. Glossary of obsolete English words ; and it 
 seems impossible to avoid the conjecture that he 
 was then meditating some more distinct trial of his 
 Antiques, or some of them, in the London literary 
 market. One small piece of evidence in confirma- 
 tion of this conjecture will be produced in time ; 
 meanwhile one wonders what would have been the 
 effect if he had been able to try the London public 
 with his Rowleian masterpiece, dSlla, fresh from his 
 lodging in Brooke Street. Fancy Johnson, Gold- 
 smith, Warton, and the rest of them, reading that\ 
 The London antiquarians of that day may be sup- 
 posed to have been to the Bristol ones, in respect of 
 perspicacity, as hawks to doves ; but what a flutter- 
 ing there would have been even among the hawks ! 
 Would it have been better for Chatterton had he 
 made that attempt? Who can tell? On the one 
 hand, by refraining from it, he moved to a fate sad 
 enough ; on the other, he might have lived on a 
 hardened literary liar.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 
 
 CHATTERTON had been in his new lodging in 
 Brooke Street now for about three weeks. During 
 that time he had become pretty well acquainted 
 with his landlady, Mrs. Angell, and with her hus- 
 band, Frederick Angell, who seems to have been 
 engaged in some kind of business which took him 
 from home during the day, leaving his wife to her 
 dressmaking. Always of social habits and willing 
 to converse with those about him, Chatterton 
 seems now and then to have sat with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Angell of an evening, talking with them. The 
 impression he made on them appears to have been 
 much the same as that made on the Walmsleys of 
 Shoreditch. Sir Herbert Croft, indeed, who made 
 repeated attempts, some years afterwards, to see 
 Mrs. Angell, in order to learn from her all he could 
 about her strange lodger of 1770, never succeeded 
 in finding her. She was then, he tells us, in dis- 
 tressed circumstances, very suspicious of all visitors, 
 
 217
 
 218 CHATTERTON 
 
 and unable to imagine what motive there could be 
 for the calls with which she was assailed, unless 
 it might be something of a police nature, or some 
 molestation for debt. In default of Mrs. Angell, 
 however, Sir Herbert found a neighbour and ac- 
 quaintance of hers, ' Mrs. Wolfe, a barber's wife,' 
 living two doors off on the same side of the street. 
 She remembered Chatterton, and spoke of 'his 
 proud and haughty spirit,' adding that ' he appeared 
 both to her and to Mrs. Angell as if born for some- 
 thing great.' Thomas Warton, whose interest in 
 the controversy as to the authenticity of the Rowley 
 Poems led him to similar inquiries about Chatter- 
 ton personally, discovered, in 1781 or 1782, yet 
 another person who had been a resident in Brooke 
 Street in 1770 and had known Chatterton there. 
 This was a Mr. Cross, an apothecary. His informa- 
 tion was to the effect that Chatterton, dropping in 
 at his shop, and familiarly talking with him over the 
 counter, had, almost from the first day of His 
 residence in Brooke Street, struck up an acquaint- 
 with him. Cross, who, from his profession, was 
 probably a man of some intelligence, had begun 
 to contract a real liking for his odd visitor, and 
 'found his conversation,' as he afterwards told 
 Warton, 'a little infidelity excepted, most captivating.'
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 219 
 
 So the month of July opened, Chatterton going 
 out and in as usual, and sitting up late at night in 
 his room among the tiles, still in high spirits, if 
 not so fresh as at first, and still with some money 
 in his pocket, if only part of the five guineas for his 
 Burletta which he received on the 6th of the 
 month. What use he had made of part of that 
 money appears touchingly from his next letter 
 home, dated July 8th, and sent, with a box, by the 
 Bristol coach or carrier : 
 
 ' DEAR MOTHER, I send you in the box 
 
 'Six cups and saucers, with two basins, for my sister. 
 If a china tea-pot and cream-pot is, in your opinion, 
 necessary, I will send them ; but I am informed they are 
 unfashionable, and that the red china, which you are 
 provided with, is more in use. 
 
 ' A cargo of patterns for yourself, with a snuff-box, right 
 French, and very curious in my opinion. 
 
 ' Two fans : The silver one is more grave than the 
 other, which would suit my sister best. But that I leave 
 to you both. 
 
 'Some British herb-snuff in the box be careful how 
 you open it. (This I omit, lest it should injure the other 
 matters.) Some British herb-tobacco for my grand- 
 mother, with a pipe. Some trifles for Thome. Be 
 assured, whenever I have the power, my will won't be 
 wanting to testify that I remember you. Yours, 
 
 'T. CHATTERTON. 
 
 'July 8, 1770. 
 
 ' N.B. I shall forestall your intended journey and pop 
 down upon you at Christmas.
 
 220 CHATTERTON 
 
 ' I could have wished you had sent my red pocket-book, 
 as 'tis very material. 
 
 4 1 bought two very curious twisted pipes for my grand- 
 mother; but, both breaking, I was afraid to buy others, 
 lest they should break in the box, and, being loose, injure 
 the china. Have you heard anything further of the 
 clearance? Direct for me at Mrs. Angell's, sack-maker, 
 Brooke Street, Holborn.' 
 
 From his giving his address at the end of this letter 
 it is perhaps to be inferred that he had not till 
 now acquainted his mother with his change of 
 lodging. Probably, as has been hinted, he still called 
 at Walmsley's for his letters. This would account 
 for Mrs. Ballance's knowing his state of mind on 
 the occasion of Beckford's death. 
 
 The next letter, written to his sister three days 
 after the last, is partly a continuation of it ; but it 
 contains some references to his literary occupations 
 of the past month, and his expectations for the 
 month just begun : 
 
 ' DEAR SISTER, I have' sent you some china and a fan. 
 You have your choice of two. I am surprised that you 
 chose purple and gold. [Was this for the fan or for some 
 one of the other presents ?] I went into the shop to buy 
 it; but it is the most disagreeable colour I ever saw 
 dead, lifeless, and inelegant. Purple and pink, or lemon 
 and pink, are more genteel and lively. Your answer in 
 this affair will oblige me. Be assured that I shall ever
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 221 
 
 make your wants my wants, and stretch to the utmost 
 to serve you. Remember me to Miss Sandford, Miss 
 Rumsey, Miss Singer, etc. As to the Songs, I have 
 waited this week for them, and have not had time to 
 copy one perfectly. When the season 's over, you will 
 have them all in print. I had pieces last month in 
 the following magazines : Gospel Magazine; Town and 
 Country (viz. ' Maria Friendless,' ' False Step,' ' Hunter 
 of Oddities,' 'To Miss Bush,' etc.); Court and City, 
 London ; Political Register, etc. The Christian Magazine, 
 as they are not to be had perfect, are not worth 
 buying. [This Magazine, begun in 1760, and carried 
 on till 1767, had some celebrity as having been edited 
 by Dr. Dodd ; and probably his sister or some one else 
 had been inquiring about it.] I remain yours, 
 
 ' T. CHATTERTON. 
 ' July n, 1770.' 
 
 The next, also to his sister, is nine days later, 
 and it was the last but one that she and her mother 
 were to receive from him : 
 
 'I am about an Oratorio, which, when finished, will 
 purchase you a gown. You may be certain of seeing 
 me before the ist of January, 1771. The clearance 
 [from Mr. Lambert] is immaterial. My mother may 
 expect more patterns. Almost all the next Town and 
 Country Magazine is mine. I have an universal acquaint- 
 ance : my company is courted everywhere ; and, could 
 I humble myself to go into a compter, could have had 
 twenty places before now. But I must be among the 
 great; state-matters suit me better than commercial. 
 The ladies are not out of my acquaintance. I have a 
 great deal of business now, and must therefore bid you
 
 222 CHATTERTON 
 
 adieu. You will have a longer letter from me soon, and 
 more to the purpose. Yours, T. C. 
 
 'zQthJuly, 1770.' 
 
 Those three letters, giving us glimpses as they do 
 of Chatterton at three successive points in the 
 month of July, carry us over nearly the whole of 
 that month. It is necessary, however, to examine 
 them a little in the light which subsequent facts 
 cast upon them. 
 
 It is evident, at least, that in the beginning of 
 that month Chatterton was not in want of money. 
 The presents sent to his mother, sister, and grand- 
 mother, seem to have been rather costly for a youth 
 in his circumstances. They probably left him with 
 so little that, had it been known at home how dis- 
 proportionate to his means had been those proofs of 
 his affection, the pleasure in receiving them would 
 have been mixed with anxiety and fear. Clearly, 
 however, from the first it was Chatterton's pride to 
 convey to his mother and sister the idea that he was 
 getting on splendidly ; and probably it was part of 
 his chief delight, in sending the presents, to fancy 
 how they would be exhibited on the widow's table 
 to her acquaintances, how Lambert, Barrett, Cat- 
 cott, and the rest would hear of them, and what
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 223 
 
 inferences, reflecting on their own inability to 
 appreciate a youth of genius, those Bristol petti- 
 foggers would draw from them ! Still, great as were 
 Chatterton's affection and pride, it is not to be 
 conceived that he would have actually impoverished 
 himself in gratifying them, unless at the time he-had 
 been convinced that he had such prospects of con- 
 tinued work as would at least supply him with what 
 was absolutely necessary for his own subsistence. 
 Unfortunately, when we look carefully at the second 
 and third of the letters, we begin to perceive a 
 kind of consciousness creeping through that he had, 
 at the time of writing the first, been too sanguine in 
 this respect. There are the same bragging gener- 
 alities as in the earlier letters of May and June 
 extremely ' busy,' ' an universal acquaintance,' his 
 company ' courted everywhere,' etc. ; but there 
 is no such profuse mention as in those earlier 
 letters of specific shifts and contrivances in reserve 
 against the coming weeks, and of actual engage- 
 ments on hand. He tells of his great doings in last 
 month's magazines ; but, when he condescends on 
 the business of the month then passing, all that he 
 says is that his Songs, which he had expected to see 
 in copper-plate by this time, were still not out, that 
 he had begun an Oratorio, and that Hamilton had so.
 
 224 CHATTERTON 
 
 much of his copy that nearly the whole of the 
 forthcoming Town and Country Magazine would be 
 his. We hear nothing of farther work for the 
 Middlesex Journal, for the Political Register, for the 
 London Museum, or for any of the other periodicals. 
 In short, it is too plain that by the end of July 
 Chatterton was in want of work and had begun 
 to know it. 
 
 One can see various reasons why Chatterton 
 should somewhat suddenly have found himself in 
 this predicament, without resorting to the supposi- 
 tion though there may be something in that too 
 that he and his bookselling patrons were not on 
 such good terms as at first, and that by his incessant 
 calling upon them he had begun to be regarded by 
 them as troublesome. 
 
 The months of July and August, one remembers, 
 were then, even more than now, about the slackest 
 portions of the London year; and in the year 1770 
 they seem to have been even slacker than usual. It 
 was the season of the Parliamentary recess, and of 
 hot summer weather, when all who were not ab- 
 solutely tied to town were away taking their holiday. 
 Wilkes and his family, we find, were off to a water- 
 ing-place on the southern coast, en route for the 
 Continent. And so with other families in the same
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 225 
 
 station, some north, some west, some south, 
 according to their tastes and opportunities. The 
 Margate hoys were in full activity, conveying their 
 annual freights of sea-sick London tradesmen, with 
 their wives and children, and packets of unnecessary 
 sandwiches, to that greedy coast-town of Kent, 
 where the lodging-house keepers had already raised 
 their prices, and the bathing-machines were out on 
 the beach, and all the shop-windows were exhibiting 
 their plates of boiled prawns and shrimps, and the 
 dancing saloons and petty theatres were in full play. 
 Even men who were never happy out of the London 
 streets yielded to custom and forsook them now. 
 The taverns and coffee-houses had little to do. The 
 clubs were all broken up, and their scattered atoms 
 were wandering melancholy among green fields, 
 smelling the fresh hay, amusing the farmers by 
 their ignorance of crops, and saying it was so 
 pleasant to get away from town, but really longing 
 for the time when they should again come together 
 in their familiar rooms in the courts round about 
 Temple Bar, and sit down, reconstituted for another 
 year, to their punch, their gossip, and their oysters. 
 
 So it was with the famous Club of the Turk's 
 Head, Gerard Street. Where Garrick, Burke, Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, and the rest of the club, were 
 
 P
 
 226 CHATTERTON 
 
 rusticating, we do not know ; but we can trace the 
 great Doctor Samuel, and his familiar Goldy. 
 
 Johnson, whom Bozzy had left with regret in the 
 previous November in order to go back to Scotland 
 and settle down as a married man, had produced 
 nothing this year except his Tory pamphlet on the 
 Wilkes question entitled The False Alarm ; the 
 effect of which had been to procure him no end of 
 abuse from the Opposition writers, and to fill the 
 Opposition papers with paragraphs about his pen- 
 sion. In the midst of this unpopularity he had been 
 living on as usual, and making preparations for a 
 new edition of his ' Shakespeare.' But in the end of 
 June, the poet Akenside had died on the 23rd of 
 that month, and his body was then lying in its coffin 
 in his house in Burlington Street, Johnson did as 
 others were doing and went out of town. His purpose 
 was to visit his native Lichfield, and other parts of 
 the midland counties. During a considerable portion 
 of the month of July he was at Lichfield, whence, as 
 we learn from Mr. Croker, he wrote two letters to 
 Mrs. Thrale at Streatham. In one of these, dated 
 the nth of July, the day on which Chatterton 
 wrote the second of the foregoing letters from 
 Brooke Street, we find him informing Mrs. Thrale 
 that he was going about in his native town ' not
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 227 
 
 wholly unaffected by the revolutions ' that had taken 
 place in it since he remembered it, and, in particular, 
 taking considerable interest in a book recently found 
 by Mr. Greene, an apothecary of the town, which 
 showed 'who paid levies in our parish, and how 
 much they paid, above an hundred years ago.' 
 ' Many families,' he says, ' that paid the parish rates 
 are now extinct, like the race of Hercules. Pulvis 
 et umbra sumus. What is nearest touches us most. 
 The passions rise higher at domestic than at im- 
 perial tragedies.' Thus moralising about Lichfield 
 and its vicinity, the ponderous and noble man 
 remained out of town apparently about three months 
 in all ; for it is not till the 2ist of September that 
 we are sure of his being again back in his well-known 
 quarters in Johnson's Court. 
 
 Through a portion, at least, of this same period, 
 Goldsmith was also absent from town. His Deserted 
 Village had appeared this year, on the 26th of May, 
 and may, therefore, have been read by Chatterton 
 in the first week of his residence in Brooke Street. 
 Three new editions were called for in the course of 
 June ; and it was with the pathos of that exquisite 
 poem fresh in his heart, and its pictures of rural 
 peace and beauty in contrast with the crowded 
 anguish of cities still vivid in his fancy, that Gold-
 
 228 CHATTERTON 
 
 smith, in the middle of July, permitted himself to be 
 taken off on a short continental tour, as one of a 
 party made up by his friends the Miss Hornecks. 
 Precisely at the time when Chatterton was writing 
 his last letters home, and beginning to see want 
 staring him in the face, was this kindest of Irish 
 hearts taking leave for a while of Brick Court and 
 all its pleasant cares. Ah me ! so very kind a heart 
 it was that one feels as if, when it left London, 
 Chatterton's truest hope was gone. Goldsmith 
 never saw Chatterton ; but one feels as if, had he 
 remained in London, Chatterton would have been 
 more safe. Surely even if by some express electric 
 communication shot at the moment of utmost need 
 under the very stones and pavements that intervened 
 between the two spots the agony pent up in that 
 garret in Brooke Street, where the despairing lad 
 was walking to and fro, would have made itself felt in 
 the chamber in Brick Court. Then the tenant of that 
 chamber would have been seized by a restlessness 
 and a creeping sense of some horror near ; he would 
 have hurried out, led by an invisible power ; and, by 
 the grace of God, Brick Court and Brooke Street 
 would have come together ! Oh the hasty excited 
 gait of Goldsmith as he turned into Brooke Street : 
 the knock ; the rush upstairs ; the garret door burst
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 229 
 
 open ; the arms of a friend thrown round the friend- 
 less youth ; the gush of tears over him and with 
 him ; the pride melted out of the youth at once and 
 for ever; the joy over a young soul saved! Phantasy 
 all, phantasy all! what might have been is one thing; 
 what has been is another. In those late days of July, 
 when Chatterton was beginning to foresee the worst, 
 Goldsmith, having escaped the little mishaps of his 
 journey, in the society of the ' Jessamy Bride' and 
 her sister, from London to Dover, from Dover to 
 Calais, from Calais to Lille, and from Lille to Paris, 
 was going about in Paris seeing the sights, but 
 longing, even in such sweet company, to be back in 
 London again, and getting very nervous on account 
 of his arrears of work. He was in Paris on the 2Qth 
 of July, and remained there some time. Latterly 
 the party was joined by a person who rather spoiled 
 the pleasure of it for Goldy, a certain attorney, 
 Mr. Hickey ; who would persist in quizzing Goldy 
 before the ladies, and who afterwards brought home 
 the story that, when the party went to Versailles, 
 Goldy, in order to prove himself right in saying that 
 a certain distance beyond one of the fountains was 
 within a leap, actually took the leap and fell into the 
 water. All August Goldy had to bear his absence 
 from London, the thought of his arrears of work, and
 
 230 CHATTERTON 
 
 the jokes of Mr. Hickey. Not till the first week in 
 September was he back in town. 
 
 But, though Goldsmith, Johnson, Wilkes, the 
 legislators of the country, and all the families of 
 the wealthier tradesmen were out of town on their 
 annual holiday, the town was not empty. A host 
 of citizens of all classes remained behind on duty, 
 tiding over the languid season as best they could, 
 keeping their windows open to abate the heat of the 
 afternoon sun as it beat on the brick houses, and 
 strolling out of an evening, if they could, to enjoy 
 the cooler air of the parks, and the green suburbs 
 round. And these, of course, still constituted ' the 
 town ' ; and ' the town,' even in the languid season, 
 will have its excitements and its topics of gossip. 
 Thus, in London, in the months of July and August 
 1770, though there was a comparative lull in politics, 
 consequent on the preternatural excitement of the 
 first half of the year, there was still matter of interest 
 for the newsmongers. On the 29th of June Alderman 
 Trecothick had been elected, after a somewhat brisk 
 contest in the City, to succeed Beckford in the Mayor- 
 alty ; and on the I2th of July the place of Beckford, 
 as representative of the City in Parliament, was filled 
 up, after similar opposition, by the election, in the old 
 City fashion, of Alderman Oliver. These elections,
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 231 
 
 affording room as they did for new trials of strength 
 between the Wilkesites and the Court party, were 
 not regarded with indifference ; and indeed it was 
 not till the second of the two was over that Wilkes 
 himself left town. Then there was a good deal of 
 interest among the City people about the proposed 
 statue to Beckford, and motion after motion on the 
 subject was discussed at the Common Council. The 
 trial of Mr. Miller of the London Evening Post for 
 re-publishing Junius's letter did not come on till the 
 1 3th of July, and gave rise to new arguments re- 
 specting the liberty of the press and the conduct of 
 Lord Mansfield. A trial of a different character, 
 and far more piquant for the town at large, was that 
 of his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland in 
 an action for damages brought against him by the 
 husband of a certain lady of high rank. The jury 
 awarded ^10,000 of damages, greatly to the delight 
 of the town. For many weeks the newspapers, other 
 matters not being abundant, lived on this trial, re- 
 porting the proceedings at great length, commenting 
 on them, and printing piece by piece the letters that 
 had passed between the aristocratic lovers. When 
 cloyed with this delicious literature, citizens and their 
 apprentices who were in search of amusement could 
 avail themselves of the Haymarket and Sadler's
 
 232 CHATTERTON 
 
 Wells Theatres, or of one or other of the public 
 Gardens. Foote at the Haymarket was drawing 
 crowds by his Lame Lover ; and at the Marybone 
 Gardens the favourite pieces were The Magic Girdle 
 and Serva Padrona. By way of morning relish after 
 such evening dissipations, the citizens could hear of 
 robberies committed over-night, and particularly of 
 robberies of the post-boys carrying the mail-bags 
 to and from London. Robberies of this class were 
 unusually common at the time, so that the post-boys 
 never set out without making up their minds to the 
 chance of meeting a highwayman. One post-boy 
 who was robbed, the papers informed their readers, 
 was fifty years of age. 
 
 Attending to all this news from his hot lodging 
 in narrow Brooke Street, with a view to extract 
 occupation for his pen out of it, Chatterton, as we 
 have said, had begun to find the task a very hard 
 one. No doubt he went about the streets with his 
 eyes and ears open, and entered the coffee-houses to 
 see what he could pick up there in the shape of 
 information or suggestion. No doubt he called 
 frequently at the office of the Middlesex Journal, 
 and made proposals to Bingley of the North Briton 
 for essays in lieu of the cancelled one on Beckford, 
 and similar proposals to the London Museum, the
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 233 
 
 Court and City Magazine, and the Political Register. 
 But, whether it was that some of the printers and 
 editors were out of town, or that they were over- 
 stocked already and disposed to retrench, or that 
 they had ceased to care for having Chatterton's 
 contributions in particular, certain it is that all those 
 efforts were fruitless. On the Town and Country 
 Magazine alone had he any hold. 'Almost all the 
 next Town and Country Magazine is mine' he had 
 said to his sister on the 2oth of July ; and this was, 
 in reality, the sum-total of his literary dependence 
 for that month. We have looked over the July 
 number of the magazine, in order to verify the state- 
 ment. The following is a list of its contents 
 
 ' i. State of Europe for July ; 2. "^Character of Eolus, 
 by a Hunter of Oddities; 3. Anecdote of Young Reynard; 
 
 4. An original letter from a Tutor to his r 1 pupil ; 5. 
 
 Letter from an Irish Fortune-hunter; 6. History of the 
 Tete-a-t6te, or Memoirs of Tom Tilbury, etc. ; 7. Amus- 
 ing and instructive Questions ; 8. Remonstrance from the 
 Secretary of the Female Coterie ; 9. Particular Details in 
 the Trials of the Printers for publishing Junius's Letter ; 
 10. Sergeant's Glynn's Argument (in the same case) at 
 large; n. Lord Mansfield's Charge (in the same case); 
 12. The Folly of Despair a moral Tale; 13. The Danger 
 of Deceit ; 14. Singular Resolution of a Married Lady ; 
 15. The Theatre, No. xvm. ; 16. A most comic Scene 
 from the Lame Lover ; 17. Trial of his R. H. The Duke 
 of C : 1 8. Letters of the D of C and
 
 234 CHATTERTON 
 
 Lady ; 19. Mr. Wedderburne's Argument and Mr. 
 
 Dunning's Reply; 20. Charge on a late remarkable 
 Trial; 21. The Gardener's Kalender for July; 22. 
 Character of Peter the Great ; 23. Reflections on the 
 Characters of Caesar and Addison ; 24. *Memoirs of 
 a Sad Dog, Part i. ; 25. *The Polite Advertiser, by Sir 
 
 Butterfly Feather; 26. A Defence of Lady , by 
 
 a Member of the Female Coterie; 27. Experiments 
 on certain Dissolvents for the Stone ; 28. Account of 
 New Books, etc. ; 29. Mathematical Questions and 
 Answers; 30. Poetical Pieces; 31. Foreign Affairs; 32. 
 Domestic Intelligence; 33. Births, Marriages, Deaths, 
 Bankrupts, etc.' 
 
 Of these articles, only the three that are marked 
 with asterisks are identified as Chatterton's by 
 the editors of his Remains. It is possible, how- 
 ever, that he wrote some of the others. Still, on 
 any supposition, his contributions to the number 
 form but a small proportion of the entire contents. 
 This fact may, to some extent, be reconciled with 
 his statement in anticipation to his sister by sup- 
 posing that, though he had supplied Hamilton with 
 copy enough to fill a much larger space in the 
 magazine, Hamilton had, contrary to expectations, 
 published only a small portion of it, and reserved the 
 rest for future numbers. It is certain, at least, that 
 papers by Chatterton did continue to appear at 
 intervals in the future numbers of that year. Thus
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 235 
 
 in the August number (published, it must be re- 
 membered, on the last day of August) there appeared 
 not only the second part of the Memoirs of a Sad 
 Dog, but also a paper on The Origin, Nature, and 
 Design of Sculpture (to accompany an engraving of 
 a design for Beckford's statue) and a tale called 
 Tony Selwood, both written by Chatterton. These, 
 we imagine, with other pieces published still later, 
 were all in Hamilton's hands in time for the July 
 number ; but he divided the Sad Dog into two, so 
 as not to give the public too much of him at a time, 
 and he found it convenient to postpone the rest. 
 
 The Memoirs of a Sad Dog, as being one of the largest 
 of Chatterton's prose pieces, and as having been written 
 at the period when he was beginning to despond, 
 deserves some notice. They are the imaginary auto- 
 biography in brief of one Harry Wildfire, who, 
 having been left five thousand pounds by his frugal 
 father, sets about spending it at a fast rate. First 
 he lost one of his thousands in gambling ; and the 
 remainder soon went in successive debaucheries. 
 Reduced to his last penny, he then throws himself 
 on his brother-in-law, Sir Stentor Ranger, a country 
 knight, whose ideas are limited to horses, but who, 
 having some rough natural kindliness, forthwith 
 instals his reprobate relative in the post of chief
 
 236 CHATTERTON 
 
 of his stables. Sir Stentor sometimes has visitors 
 at his old place, and among these is ' the redoubted 
 Baron Otranto ' of antiquarian celebrity ; who, 
 poking about the house, falls in with what he 
 considers a remarkable curiosity, in the shape of 
 a stone with an old inscription in Gothic letters. 
 This he deciphers with great pains as 'Hicjacet* the 
 'corpus' of somebody or other of the thirteenth 
 century, the fact, known to all the stable-boys, 
 being that the stone was taken from a neighbour- 
 ing churchyard, and was nothing more than the 
 memorial of an honest couple, James Hicks and 
 his wife. After living with Sir Stentor two years, 
 and making some money on the turf, Wildfire 
 recommences his old career, and carries it on till he 
 is again ruined, when, as a last shift, he comes to 
 town, and betakes himself to literature. At the 
 moment of his writing his sad narrative, he says, he 
 is ' throned in a broken chair within an inch of a 
 thunder-cloud.' Such is the story. The writing is 
 slipshod in the extreme, and the spirit deplorably 
 coarse ; nor is there any merit in the construction. 
 The sole interest it has consists in a certain evidence 
 it furnishes of rough satirical force, and in an 
 occasional passage, like that on Walpole, bearing on 
 the author's own life and circumstances. Thus, the
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 237 
 
 hero, after describing one of his periods of good 
 fortune, breaks out in mock heroics as follows 
 
 1 But, alas ! happiness is of short duration ; or, to speak 
 in the language of the high-sounding Ossian, "Behold thou 
 art happy ; but soon, ah ! soon, wilt thou be miserable. 
 Thou art as easy and tranquil as the face of the green- 
 mantled puddle; but soon, ah! soon, wilt thou be tumbled 
 and tossed by misfortunes, like the stream of the water- 
 mill. Thou art beautiful as the Cathedral of Canter- 
 bury ; but soon wilt thou be deformed like Chinese palace- 
 paling. So the sun, rising in the east, gilds the borders of 
 the black mountains, and laces with his golden rays the 
 dark-brown heath. The hind leaps over the flowery lawn, 
 and the reeky bull rolls in the bubbling brook. The wild 
 boar makes ready his armour of defence. The inhabitants 
 of the rocks dance, and all nature joins in the song. But 
 see ! riding on the wings of the wind, the black clouds 
 fly. The noisy thunders roar; the rapid lightnings gleam; 
 the rainy torrents pour ; and the dripping swain flies over 
 the mountain, swift as Bickerstaff, the son of song, when 
 the monster Bumbailiano, keeper of the dark and black 
 cave, pursued him over the hills of death and the green 
 meadows of dark men." Oh, Ossian ! immortal genius ! 
 what an invocation could I make now ! But I shall leave 
 it to the abler pen of Mr. Duff, and spin out the thread 
 of my own adventures.' 
 
 The conclusion of the piece is even more specific. 
 Mr. Wildfire, from his ' broken chair within an inch 
 of a thunder-cloud/ thus details his brief experi- 
 ence of authorship in London 
 
 ' The first fruits of my pen were a political essay and a
 
 238 CHATTERTON 
 
 piece of poetry. The first I carried to a patriotic book- 
 seller, who is, in his own opinion, of much consequence 
 to the cause of liberty ; and the poetry was left with 
 another of the same tribe, who made bold to make it a 
 means of puffing his magazine, but refused any gratuity. 
 Mr. Britannicus [Bingley of the North Briton ?], at first 
 imagining that the piece was not to be paid for, was lavish 
 of his praises, and, I might depend upon it, it should do 
 honour to his flaming patriotic paper; but, when he was 
 told that I expected some recompense, he assumed an air 
 of criticism, and begged my pardon ; he did not know the 
 circumstance, and really he did not think it good language 
 or sound reasoning ! I was not discouraged by the objec- 
 tions and criticisms of the bookselling tribe; and, as I knew 
 the art of Curllism pretty well, I made a tolerable hand of 
 of it. But, Mr. Printer, the late prosecution against the 
 booksellers having frightened them all out of their patriot- 
 ism, I am necessitated either to write for the entertainment 
 of the public or in defence of the Ministry. As I have 
 some little remains of conscience, the latter is not very 
 agreeable. Political writing on either side of the question 
 is of little service to the entertainment or instruction of the 
 reader. Abuse and scurrility are generally the chief figures 
 in the language of party. I am not of the opinion of those 
 authors who deem every man in place a rascal, and every 
 man out of place a patriot. Permit this, then, to appear 
 in your universally-admired magazine : it may give some 
 entertainment to your readers, and a dinner to your 
 humble servant, HARRY WILDFIRE.' 
 
 This, we fear, was but too true a description of 
 Chatterton's own circumstances while he was writing. 
 He too was 'throned in a broken chair within an
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 239 
 
 inch of a thunder-cloud,' and had come to the 
 extremity when too literally the purpose of giving 
 entertainment to his readers was bound up with that 
 of obtaining means for his own next dinner. But it 
 was not, as in the case of his imaginary hero, ' the 
 monster Bumbailiano' that was pursuing him over 
 the hills of death and the green meadows of dark 
 men. It was a more fearful monster still, the 
 monster Want, without any bailiff as harbinger. 
 No imaginary five thousand pounds had he wasted ; 
 no writs were out against him ; else, probably for 
 debt, though negative property, still is a kind of 
 property, and functions as such to the advantage 
 of its possessor it might have been better for him ! 
 He was but a poor widow's son of Bristol, who had 
 been working like a slave for three months in 
 London to obtain the barest livelihood, and now 
 found that even that was failing him. 
 
 Hamilton, at best, must have been a stingy pay- 
 master. If we may judge from the rate of his 
 previous payments two shillings for two para- 
 graphs, and half a guinea for sixteen songs 
 Chatterton's receipts from him for his July contribu- 
 tions can have gone but a very little way, even if 
 they had not been spent in anticipation before the 
 month was over. It seems also clear enough that,
 
 2 4 o CHATTERTON 
 
 if Hamilton did pay punctually according to his 
 miserable tariff, he was resolute against solicitations 
 for an advance on the faith of future work, or even 
 of manuscript on hand. Accordingly, through the 
 latter half of July we are to fancy Chatterton almost 
 at his last shilling. No visits any longer, are we to 
 fancy, to the theatres and the gardens ; visits to the 
 coffee-houses, if made at all, conducted on the most 
 parsimonious scale ; no purchases of articles of 
 dress as at first; his very shoes, if we could see the 
 soles, worn through, so that the dust gets in as he 
 walks, and if it rains his feet are wet ! As he walks 
 out, it is this consciousness of his shuffling and 
 poverty-stricken appearance that most distresses 
 him ; and it is a part of his meditations, as people 
 pass him, whether they remark it. Probably what 
 he cares far less about is that, in the privacy of his 
 lodging, he lives chiefly on bread and water. 
 
 And so out and in, out and in, through all the late 
 days of July, wanders the poor youth, growing daily 
 more wan and haggard : out in the morning, or 
 about mid-day, on his daily round among the 
 publishing and editorial offices near, the doors of 
 which begin to be shut against him, or, farther still, 
 on his aimless ramble into the suburbs and the 
 sequestered places of the parks, where methinks I
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 241 
 
 sometimes see him weeping under trees; and then, 
 fatigued and fevered, back again in the evening to 
 his lodging, where he sits up nearly all night, 
 scribbling hopelessly his ' Harry Wildfires ' and 
 similar things, or sometimes merely gazing hour 
 after hour at the empty grate. The biographers of 
 Schiller tell how people, going to a kind of bank or 
 high ground behind the poet's house at Weimar, 
 could see him stalking up and down in his lighted 
 room till long after midnight, engaged in poetical 
 composition, every now and then sitting down to 
 write what he had just completed in thought, and 
 helping himself freely to wine, or to coffee with 
 wine in it, to maintain his frenzy. Had the watchman 
 of Brooke Street stood opposite that window among 
 the tiles, the light of which he must have noticed 
 burning so long after all the others were dark, he, 
 too, might have seen the shadow of a poet pass and 
 repass. But there was a difference between the two 
 cases. In the one, it was a famous and noble man, 
 to whose nerves the world would willingly permit 
 wine or spices, or whatever else might be necessary 
 that they might thrill productively ; in the other, it 
 was a poor boy, not yet eighteen, living on a crust 
 and water, and writing that he may get more of that. 
 There he sits ! The short July night passes ; the 
 
 Q
 
 242 CHATTERTON 
 
 light of the morning breaks over the city, paling that 
 by which he is writing ; he looks up, to be aware that 
 another day has come, that people are moving about 
 the streets, and that the sparrows are chirping along 
 the eaves. 
 
 July is gone, and it is now the month of August, 
 There is no better hope. Indeed, the prospect is 
 worse. The last driblet of money from Hamilton 
 on account of July is exhausting itself as former 
 driblets have done ; and, Hamilton having already 
 enough of his copy on hand, there is no demand for 
 any new copy for the August number of the Town 
 and Country. All other magazines and periodicals 
 are closed as before. If he writes at all, it must be 
 on pure speculation. 
 
 So much probably had become known to him 
 before August was ten days old. Mercifully it is 
 not given to us to know the history of those ten 
 days. Out and in, out and in, every day twenty- 
 four hours long, and each of those hours to be 
 gone through somewhere and somehow, that is the 
 substance of the history, even if it could be told. 
 He has ceased to write home, and they can only 
 guess there what he is doing. Rather than that 
 the truth should be known in Bristol, and that, 
 after all his boasting, the jest of his total failure
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 243 
 
 should go round among his friends there, he will die 
 of starvation ! 
 
 One communication with Bristol, though not of 
 the frankest, he does seem to have been driven to 
 in his extremity. The thought, we have seen, of 
 obtaining a clerk's place or some similar situation in 
 a counting-house in London had more than once 
 occurred to him, and also the thought of getting 
 some kind of appointment that would take him 
 abroad. To this last notion in a somewhat modified 
 form he had returned. Fond, when in Bristol, of 
 reading medical books, which Barrett used to lend 
 him, he had picked up, as he himself thought, a 
 considerable smattering of medical knowledge ; and, 
 in consequence perhaps of something that had passed 
 in conversation between him and the apothecary 
 Cross, it had occurred to him as possible that he 
 might obtain an appointment as surgeon or surgeon's 
 mate on board of some ship. How he proposed to 
 manage it we cannot say ; but in those days ' the 
 experienced surgeons' that ships carried, especially 
 African ships, were in many cases without the 
 qualification of any regular diploma. Chatterton, 
 at all events, was prepared to doctor any crew that 
 would take him. As a first step towards trying for 
 such an appointment, he thought it worth while to
 
 244 CHATTERTON 
 
 apply to Barrett for some kind of certificate or testi- 
 monial which he might show to owners of vessels. 
 This he appears to have done directly in a letter 
 sent to Barrett ; but he also did it indirectly in the 
 course of a letter to Catcott, written on the I2th of 
 August. The second letter is extant. It is evidently 
 an answer to one which Catcott had sent to him. 
 
 ' LONDON, August 12, 1770. 
 
 'SiR, A correspondent from Bristol had raised my 
 admiration to the highest pitch by informing me that an 
 appearance of spirit and generosity had crept into the 
 niches of avarice and meanness : that the murderer of 
 Newton, Ferguson [James Ferguson, the mechanician, 
 who had written an exposition of Newton's Philosophy] had 
 met with every encouragement that ignorance could bestow; 
 that an episcopal palace was to be erected for the enemy of 
 the Whore of Babylon [Bishop Newton of Bristol], and the 
 present turned into a stable for the ten-headed beast ; that 
 a spire was to be patched to St. Mary Redcliffe, and the 
 streets kept cleaner; with many other impossibilities. But, 
 when Mr. Catcott (the Champion of Bristol) doubts it, it 
 may be doubted. Your description of the intended steeple 
 struck me. I have seen it, but not as the invention of 
 
 Mr. . All that he can boast is Gothicizing it. Give 
 
 yourself the trouble to send to Mr. Weobley's, Holborn, 
 for a view of the Church of St. Mary de la Annunciation at 
 Madrid, and you will see a spire almost the parallel of what 
 
 you describe. The conduct of is no more than what 
 
 I expected. I had received information that he was absol- 
 utely engaged in the defence of the Ministry, and had a 
 pamphlet on the stocks which was to have been paid with 
 a translation [i.e., to a new see; for it is clearly Dr. Newton,
 
 Bishop of Bristol, that is meant]. In consequence of this 
 information, I inserted the following paragraph in one of 
 my "Exhibitions" [newspaper squibs so named]: "Revel- 
 ation unravelled by : The Ministry are indefatigable 
 
 in establishing themselves ; they spare no expense so long 
 as the expense does not lie upon them. This piece 
 represents the tools of the Administration offering the 
 Doctor a pension, or translation, to new-model his treatise 
 on the Revelation, and to prove Wilkes to be an Atheist." 
 
 ' The Editor of Baddeley's Bath Journal has done me the 
 honour to murder most of my hieroglyphics, that they 
 may be abbreviated for his paper. Whatever may be 
 the political sentiments of your inferior clergy, their 
 superiors are all flamingly ministerial. Should your scheme 
 for a single row of houses in Bridge Street take place, con- 
 science must tell you that Bristol will owe even that 
 beauty to avarice; since the absolute impossibility of 
 finding tenants for a double row is the only occasion of 
 your having but one. The Gothic dome I mentioned was 
 not designed by Hogarth. I have no great opinion of him 
 out of his ludicrous walk ; here he was undoubtedly 
 inimitable. It was designed by the great Cipriani. The 
 following description may give you a faint idea of it. 
 From an hexagonal spiral tower (such as I believe Redcliffe 
 is) rose a similar palisado of Gothic pillars, three at a 
 cluster in every angle, but single and at equal distance in 
 angular spaces. The pillars were trifoliated (as Rowlie 
 terms it), and supported by a majestic oval dome, not 
 absolutely circular (that would not be Gothic), but 
 terminating in a point, surmounted with a cross, and on 
 the top of the cross a globe. The last two ornaments may 
 perhaps throw you into a fit of religious meditation, and 
 give rise to many pious reflections. Heaven send you the 
 comforts of Christianity ! / request them not ; for I am 
 no Christian. .
 
 246 CHATTERTON 
 
 ' I intend going abroad as a surgeon. Mr. Barrett has 
 it in his power to assist me greatly by his giving me a 
 physical character. I hope he will. I trouble you with a 
 copy of an Essay I intend publishing. I remain your 
 much obliged humble Servant, THOMAS CHATTERTON. 
 
 'Direct to me at Mrs. Angell's, sack-maker, Brooke 
 Street, Holborn.' 
 
 Aha ! What words were those that one heard ? 
 ' Heaven send you the comforts of Christianity ! / 
 request them not ; for I am no Christian ! ' The 
 whole letter, with its hollow, mocking bitterness, and 
 its cool architectural details penned by one who 
 knew himself to be on the brink of starvation, has 
 for us an air of horrible irony ; but these words, 
 flung into it so carelessly, complete the impression, 
 and convert the horrible into the ghastly. 
 
 ' I am no Christian.' The words are simple, 
 strong, and straightforward. What do they mean ? 
 They mean that he, a youth of seventeen years and 
 nine months, born in a town in the west of England, 
 bred up there as an attorney's clerk, and now lodged 
 in a London garret, without food to eat, has, by 
 dint of reading and reflection, come to the conclusion 
 that the Divine One who died in Judaea nineteen 
 hundred years ago, and whom all the generations of 
 men in the fairest lands of the world since have been
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 247 
 
 worshipping as the Son of God, and building temples 
 to, and believing in as their Lord and Saviour, was 
 in reality no such thing or being, but, at the utmost, 
 a wise and holy Jew. They mean that he, this 
 same English stripling, has, in virtue of this con- 
 clusion, come to regard all that part of the past 
 history of nineteen centuries which had proceeded 
 on the belief in Christianity as so much human 
 action, grand perhaps in itself, but done in pursuit 
 of an illusion. They mean that, looking about him 
 upon all the apparatus of bishops, churches, and 
 schools, established in the service of this belief, he 
 could view it with a smile, as a fabric with no found- 
 ation, piled up by ancient zeal, and cemented by 
 time, custom, and the necessities of social arrange- 
 ment. They mean that, remembering the names of 
 great men, recently or anciently dead, who had 
 nourished their souls in this belief, and clung to it 
 through grown manhood to grey old age, and died 
 serene in it, and left their testimonies to it as their 
 most solemn words to the world, he could yet 
 account for all this to himself by supposing that 
 those men were and would have been noble anyhow, 
 and that only the special form of their nobility 
 was due to this intense grasp they had taken of 
 Humanity's largest hallucination. They mean more.
 
 248 CHATTERTON 
 
 They mean that he, the boy of Bristol, was decidedly 
 of opinion, with Voltaire and others, that, though 
 the earth had rolled on for ages, a brown ball spin- 
 ning in the azure, and freighted with beings capable 
 of weal and woe, all longing, as by the one sole law 
 of their constitution, to hear some voice from behind 
 the azure, no such voice had really spoken, nor any 
 tongue of light from the outer realms of mystery 
 ever struck the surface of the planet, either in 
 Judaea or elsewhere. They mean that the world did 
 not seem to him at all to rest certainly on any rule 
 of love, but to be possibly only an aggregate of 
 beings, more or less clever, more or less miserable, 
 and more or less rich, jostling together and working 
 on to some end, though no one could say what. 
 They mean that in the matter even of Immortality, 
 or a future world in continuation of this, he had no 
 absolute certainty ; that sometimes he might have a 
 glimpse of such immortality as possible, but that 
 again the glimpse would vanish quite, and it would 
 seem to him that when a man died there might very 
 well be an end of him, and that, should the earth 
 itself ever meet a sufficient catastrophe to destroy 
 all the life upon it at once, there would be some 
 risk of an end to the race too, and to all the ac- 
 cumulated memories and maxims of its sages and
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 249 
 
 Shakespeares, and all the vast lore of its libraries. 
 Sometimes, indeed, he might have his new doubts 
 on this, and might think both of individual life as 
 continued, and of the collective wisdom of the world 
 as safe against any catastrophe, and sure, should the 
 earth itself be cracked in pieces or shrivelled to a 
 scroll, to take wing elsewhither at the moment of 
 the last shriek, and prolong itself somewhere and 
 somehow to the further issues of the Universe. 
 But, at all events, for the Heaven and Hell of the 
 Christian he could have no belief left ; and, if a 
 poor wretch, weary of the world, did think fit to 
 kill himself, his soul, if he had one, could fare none 
 the worse in the future life for the one act of rushing 
 suddenly into it ! 
 
 There is abundant proof, in scores of passages in 
 Chatterton's writings, and in his recorded conver- 
 sations with his friends among the young men of 
 Bristol, that, after the peculiarities of that coarse 
 and scoffing fashion of infidelity which had crept 
 over so much of English society in his day, and 
 which was represented in such men as Wilkes, he 
 had substantially accustomed himself to the above 
 method of regarding the Christian religion. It is 
 unnecessary to multiply quotations to illustrate his 
 way of speaking of Methodists, preachers like
 
 250 CHATTERTON 
 
 Whitefield, and priests in general. Here is one, 
 selected as being comprehensive 
 
 "Tis mystery all : In every sect 
 You find this palpable defect ; 
 The axis of the dark machine 
 Is enigmatic and unseen ; 
 Opinion is the only guide 
 By which our senses are supplied.' 
 
 Now, it was of supremely little consequence to 
 Christianity that one precocious lad the more had 
 taken this attitude of hostility to it. But it was of 
 some consequence to the lad himself. There are 
 and have been many and these men in our Parlia- 
 ments and in other high places who might in a 
 certain sense use Chatterton's phrase, ' I am no 
 Christian,' and probably, in using it, speak the exact 
 truth, and yet who never do use it, but leave it to 
 their loud-mouthed critics to make the inference for 
 them. One has to distinguish, therefore, between 
 the sceptic who finds no occasion for asserting this 
 negative side of his views at all and the sceptic who 
 is vehement in proclaiming the negative. The 
 second is in a different stage intellectually, and 
 morally in a more restless predicament. He is 
 always proclaiming his independence of a certain 
 class of considerations, and yet he is always meddling 
 with them. So it was with Chatterton. In his
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 251 
 
 statement ' I am no Christian,' and his spasmodic 
 variations of it through his writings, one sees him 
 fascinated by the very creed toward which he is 
 malignant, so that he cannot avoid making it the 
 topic of his thoughts. It is as if he saw that he had 
 parted with certain beliefs the very pretence of 
 which, the very habit of even nominally professing 
 them, was a safeguard to those who were capable of 
 it. It is as if he were conscious of one check less 
 upon his own course to ruin than even ordinary 
 youths around him had. Nay more, said at the 
 moment at which they were said, his words to 
 Catcott are a proof that the writer has again been, 
 for some reason or other, catechising himself on the 
 subject to which they refer. He has been turning 
 one sarcastic look more, as it were, in his depression 
 and despair, to those ' comforts of Christianity ' the 
 efficacy of which, in such circumstances, he has all 
 his life heard mentioned ; and the result is that he 
 finds they will not suit him, and remits them to 
 Mr. Catcott. 
 
 Well, but was there no equivalent? If the 
 Christian has a source of faith and hope that the 
 world knows not of, and that bears him up, as 
 nothing else could, in times of worldly distress and 
 trial, still it is known by universal experience that,
 
 252 CHATTERTON 
 
 in such times of worldly distress and trial, men who 
 are not Christians do not uniformly break down. 
 That fervid and impassioned man of majestic 
 thought and gait, people do not call him a 
 Christian : they call him a Pantheist, or a Philo- 
 sopher, or something of that sort ; and yet, were he 
 at his last shilling or his last crust, were the rack 
 prepared for him and the multitude howling for his 
 destruction, every one knows that he would endure 
 and come through. Si fractus illabatur orbis, im- 
 pavidum ferient ruina. He believes in Justice, and 
 God, and the Everlasting! Nay more, that tough 
 little fellow, all grey iron and scepticism, whose very 
 principle it is that there is no Everlasting, and that 
 men ought ' to apprehend no farther than this world 
 and square their lives according': he too, unless his 
 antecedents belie him, might be beaten a long time 
 between any size of hammer and any shape of anvil ; 
 he, too, could come through. Why, since the be- 
 ginning of the world people have been coming 
 through ! Quiet, plain scholars have lived, before 
 now, in German or in Scottish University towns, on 
 boiled peas-cods for months, or a single guinea a 
 quarter earned by teaching, without saying much 
 about it. Had youths of this type been in Chatter- 
 ton's place in London in August 1770, they would
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 253 
 
 have most probably survived the crisis. They would 
 have availed themselves gratefully, and yet honestly, 
 of such small immediate aid as those aunts and other 
 relatives that we hear of so slightly in Chatterton's 
 letters (one of them a carpenter, who had married 
 one of his aunts) might perhaps, though poor, have 
 willingly offered at the sharpest moment of the 
 emergency ; and, even that failing, they would have 
 conquered by sheer patience. How was it, then, in 
 Chatterton's case the ' comforts of Christianity ' 
 being placed out of the question ? 
 
 Chatterton never would call himself an Atheist. 
 In a time when Wilkes and other contemporaries, 
 whose language he sometimes borrowed, carried on 
 their outrages on Christianity very much in that 
 character, Chatterton, by the very structure of his 
 genius as a boy of ardour and imagination, retained 
 something in him of a poet's reverence for the sublime 
 and the awful. In express anticipation, in one of his 
 satirical poems, of the stigma of Atheism, he says 
 
 ' Fallacious is the charge ; 'tis all a lie, 
 As to my reason I can testify. 
 I own a God, immortal, boundless, wise, 
 Who bid our glories of Creation rise ; 
 Who form'd his varied likeness in mankind, 
 Centering his many wonders in the mind.' 
 
 And, again, in one more solemn soliloquy, on which
 
 254 CHATTERTON 
 
 one may dwell with peculiar interest as perhaps in its 
 kind the highest utterance by the poor boy of what 
 was best in him, and which reminds one of similar 
 outbreaks of religious feeling in the writings of Burns 
 and Byron 
 
 ' 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 the 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.
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 255 
 
 ' But yet, with fortitude resign'd, 
 
 I '11 thank the Inflicter 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.' 
 
 Well for the poor fatherless boy had this mood 
 been permanent ! But, at the time of his extreme 
 need, these comforts, even of such natural religion 
 as he had, seem to have taken their flight too, and 
 left him, mocking and bitter, face to face with 
 despair. 
 
 Nor had Chatterton the resources to be found in 
 rectitude and gentleness of mere worldly character. 
 Impetuous, stormy, industrious, and energetic as he 
 was, there was still in him an element of weakness in 
 what he called his ' pride,' as well as in his open con- 
 tempt for all the commoner forms of moral principle. 
 Above all, he had in him the conscious sense of a 
 past imposture, and of innumerable minor deceits 
 practised in prosecuting it. Rowley, once the 
 darling phantasm of his poetical imagination, now 
 dogged him as a hateful demon, evoked by himself 
 from the world of spirits, and not to be laid to rest. 
 Wherever he moved, and in whatever form of new
 
 256 CHATTERTON 
 
 labour or distraction he engaged, he could not look 
 back over his shoulder but there was to be seen the 
 form of this demon, in the garb of a Bristol monk of 
 the fifteenth century, with his hideous old face under 
 a cowl, grinning and gliding after him. In short, 
 whether we view Chatterton's character as it natur- 
 ally was, or those recollections of past lies and 
 deceits with which he had burdened his conscience, 
 so as to deprive his character of half its natural 
 force, he was very likely to endure much, and yet 
 to break down at a point where others in the same 
 circumstances might have found longer endurance 
 quite possible. 
 
 After all, however, the most material fact in the 
 case remains to be told. Physical causes were at 
 work. Bereft of the amount of actual food and of 
 other comforts necessary, even with his abstemious 
 habits, to keep body and soul healthily together ; 
 wandering about London in a perpetual state of 
 fever and excitement ; returning home to write 
 night after night without rest or sleep : little wonder 
 if he had overstrained his physical capabilities, and 
 if brain and nerve began to fail in their office. 
 Whatever taint of hereditary insanity was in him 
 derived from the old line of sextons who had 
 jangled in past generations the keys of St. Mary's
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 257 
 
 Church in Bristol, and walked at midnight through 
 its aisles, and dug the graves of its parishioners, 
 or derived, more immediately, from that drunken, 
 wild-eyed father whom he had never seen, but who 
 used to tell his tavern-companions that he believed 
 in Cornelius Agrippa the necromancer it had at 
 last come out in a way not to be mistaken. From 
 his childhood there had been symptoms of it his 
 fits of weeping, his sudden paroxysms of passion, 
 his long reveries when he gazed at people without 
 seeming to see them, his frequent mutterings aloud. 
 Not till now, however, had these traits passed the 
 limits of what could be considered compatible with 
 sanity. But now, almost certainly, those limits 
 were passed. Noticing the strange, haggard lad 
 walking about the streets, muttering perhaps to 
 himself, or making sudden gestures, or staring at 
 what was passing, sometimes vacantly, and some- 
 times with glances unusually keen and bright, even 
 strangers could not but follow him with their eyes, 
 and wonder who he was and where he came from. 
 Had the observer been one accustomed to the ways 
 of the insane, he would probably at once have 
 pronounced that the lad's brain was affected. And, 
 had the observer been able, with this idea in his 
 mind, to pursue his inquiries farther, so as to 
 
 R
 
 258 CHATTERTON 
 
 ascertain what peculiar form or species of insanity 
 had taken possession of the lad, he would have 
 found that it was that form which physicians recog- 
 nise as the ' suicidal tendency.' Physicians, as all 
 know, do recognise this as a form of madness ; and, 
 though they allow that a perfectly sane man may 
 commit suicide after deliberate reasoning on the 
 point, they attribute a large proportion of suicides 
 to the action of a certain specific impulse which 
 reason cannot overcome. In Chatterton's case, as 
 we have seen, there had been premonitory appear- 
 ances of the existence of this tendency. The idea 
 of suicide had from the first been familiar to 
 him. 
 
 Something like positive proof exists that before 
 the month of August, 1770, was very far advanced 
 Chatterton was actually in the specific maniacal 
 condition which physicians recognise as capable 
 of being induced by circumstances where there is a 
 predisposition. Even in the letter to Catcott which 
 we have quoted we see traces of over-excitement of 
 brain, and of that morbid spirit of hatred to persons 
 which results from it There is a story also of 
 a letter sent by him to his mother, on or about 
 the 1 5th of August, which was written in such a
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 259 
 
 strain as to cause her very great anxiety. This 
 letter the last she ever received from him is not 
 extant ; but Mrs. Edkins, the wife of a painter and 
 glazier in Bristol, who lived long afterwards and 
 communicated many particulars about the Chatter- 
 ton family, distinctly remembered having been sent 
 for by Mrs. Chatterton when the letter was received. 
 She found Mrs. Chatterton 'in tears and very un- 
 easy ' on account of the contents of the letter, and 
 particularly on account of one part of it, in which 
 he told her a strange story of his walking among 
 the tombs in a churchyard, and suddenly, in a fit 
 of absent meditation, stumbling into an open grave. 
 ' But,' added he, in his humorous way, ' it was not 
 the quick and the dead together,' for he found the 
 sexton under him, who was digging the grave ! 
 Mrs. Edkins tried to console Mrs. Chatterton by 
 saying it was only ' one of his reveries ' ; but ' she 
 could not be persuaded to consider it otherwise than 
 as ominous.' 
 
 And so it proved. Barrett very properly refused 
 to give Chatterton the certificate he wanted of com- 
 petence for the situation of surgeon's mate on board 
 an African ship ; and the refusal was one dis- 
 appointment the more added to those which were 
 already preying upon him. His misery was almost
 
 2<5o CHATTERTON 
 
 at its climax. Cross, whose repeated invitations 
 to come and take a meal in his house in Brooke 
 Street he had always hitherto declined, was rather 
 surprised to find him one day, on being again 
 pressed, consent. That evening he partook of a 
 supper of oysters at Cross's house, and was ob- 
 served, as Cross afterwards told Warton, 'to eat 
 most voraciously.' For aught we know, it was the 
 last meal he had. On the 22nd or the 23rd of August, 
 at all events, he had reached that extreme beyond 
 which our fancies of human destitution cannot go. 
 Hope, patience, and all force of reason had finally 
 forsaken him ; and he was secretly bidding farewell 
 to the world. Strange that at this very moment 
 something was happening in his favour which, had 
 he but known of it, might even then have roused him 
 and determined him to live. The Rev. Dr. Fry, Head 
 of St. John's College, Oxford, had by some means or 
 other seen some of the antique Rowley Poems which 
 had been circulating in Bristol, and, having conceived 
 an unusual desire to know something more about 
 them and their authorship, was on the eve of setting 
 out for Bristol, to make inquiries about Chatterton, 
 whom he supposed still to be there. Oh Dr. Fry, 
 make haste ; set out at once ; life or death depends 
 upon it ! Dr. Fry, not knowing what we now know,
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 261 
 
 took his own time, and lived to regret it. He did 
 make the journey, but it was too late. 
 
 The 23rd of August 1770 was a Thursday, the 
 morning of which, according to the old London 
 weather-registers, was 'hazy,' but the day itself 'fine.' 
 That day is a dead blank in the tragic story. Whether 
 Chatterton remained indoors all day, or took a 
 ramble about the streets and returned in the evening 
 as usual, no one can tell. Of the next day, Friday, 
 the 24th of August, ' clouds, sunshine, and showers 
 at intervals,' is the description of the day in the 
 registers one incident is recorded, on the faith of 
 the information afterwards given to Sir Herbert 
 Croft by Mrs. Wolfe, the barber's wife of Brooke 
 Street. Her neighbour, Mrs. Angell, Chatterton's 
 landlady, had told her 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 expres- 
 sions, which seemed to hint that he was in want, and 
 assured her (though his looks showed him to be 
 three parts starved) that he was not hungry.' 
 Possibly true ; possibly only an invention of Mrs. 
 Angell afterwards, or of Mrs. Wolfe for her, to save 
 her character for motherly vigilance and humanity 
 against too sore impeachments ! Enough that on
 
 262 CHATTERTON 
 
 that evening too, if Chatterton had again gone out 
 for a ramble, Mrs. Angell heard him return, ascend 
 the stairs, and reach his room. He entered, and 
 
 locked the door behind him. The Devil was 
 
 abroad that night in the sleeping city. Down 
 narrow and squalid courts his presence was felt, 
 where savage men clutched miserable women by the 
 throat, and the neighbourhood was roused by yells 
 of murder, and the barking of dogs, and the cries 
 of children. Up in wretched garrets his presence was 
 felt, where solitary mothers gazed on their infants 
 and longed to kill them. He was in the niches of 
 dark bridges, where outcasts lay huddled together, 
 and some of them stood up from time to time and 
 looked over at the dim stream below. He was in 
 the uneasy hearts of undiscovered forgers, and of 
 ruined men plotting mischief. He was in prison- 
 cells, where condemned criminals condoled with each 
 other in obscene songs and blasphemy. What he 
 achieved that night, in and about the vast city, 
 came duly out into light and history. But of all the 
 spots over which the Black Shadow hung, the chief, 
 for that night at least, was a certain undistinguished 
 house in the narrow street which thousands who 
 now dwell in London pass and repass, scarce observ- 
 ing it, every day of their lives, as they go and come
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 263 
 
 along the thoroughfare of Holborn. At the door of 
 one house in that quiet street the horrid Shape 
 watched ; through that door he passed in towards 
 midnight ; and from that door, having done his 
 work, he emerged before it was morning. 
 
 On the morrow Saturday the 25th of August 
 alarm having been caused by the protracted non- 
 appearance of Mrs. Angell's lodger, his room was 
 broken open, and he was discovered lying dead, 
 having swallowed arsenic in water. ' His room, 
 when they broke it open, after his death,' says Sir 
 Herbert Croft, ' was found, like the room he quitted 
 at Mr. Walmsley's, covered with scraps of paper.' 
 There was a coroner's inquest ; and Sir Herbert 
 afterwards took the trouble, when he was pursuing 
 his inquiries about Chatterton, to look out the 
 Coroner, and question him as to the circumstances. 
 The Coroner, however, had kept no minutes of ' the 
 melancholy business,' beyond a memorandum that 
 the witnesses had been Frederick Angell, a Mary 
 Foster, and a William Halmsley ( Walmsley ?) ; nor, 
 at the distance of time, could his memory recall any 
 of the particulars. The verdict seems to have been 
 Felo de se ; and, in accordance with this verdict, the 
 body, having been enclosed in a parish shell, was 
 privately interred, the following day, in the burying-
 
 264 CHATTERTON 
 
 ground attached to Shoe Lane Workhouse. This 
 appears from the entry of the burial, under the 
 date August 28th, in the parish registers of St. 
 Andrew's, Holborn the parish in which Brooke 
 Street is situated, and the church and consecrated 
 churchyard of which are close to Shoe Lane. Mr. 
 Peter Cunningham noticed, as a coincidence, that 
 the same parish-registers contain the entry of the 
 baptism of Richard Savage on the i8th of January 
 1696-7 ; and he enhanced the coincidence by re- 
 marking that Savage was born in Fox Court, Brooke 
 Street, close to the house where Chatterton died, 
 and that he died in 1743 in the jail of the very City 
 of Bristol where, nine years later, Chatterton was 
 born. 1 
 
 1 In Notes and Queries for Feb. 5, 1853 (vol. vii., First Series, 
 pp. 138-139) appeared what purported to be ' Account of the Inquest 
 held on the body of THOMAS CHATTERTON, deceased, at the Three 
 Crowns, Brooke Street, Holborn, on Friday, the 27th August, 1770, 
 before Swinson Carter, Esq., and the following jury : Charles Skinner, 
 Meres, John Hollier, John Park, S. G. Doran, Henry Dugdale, 
 G. J. Hillsley, C. Sheen, E. Manley, C. Moore Nevett.' In this 
 document the witnesses examined were said to have been ' Mary 
 Angell, of No. 17 Brooke Street,' 'Frederick Angell,' ' Edwin Cross, 
 apothecary,' and ' Anne Wolfe ' ; and an abstract of the evidence of 
 each was given. The document was communicated to Notes and Queries 
 by John Matthew Gutch, Esq., of Worcester, formerly of Bristol, 
 possessor of a large collection of papers relating to Chatterton and his 
 writings ; and Mr. Gutch stated it to be from ' a MS. copy ' in his 
 possession, never before published. In the first edition of the present 
 Narrative in 1856, I pointed out certain suspicious circumstances about
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 265 
 
 Whether Chatterton's body remained in the Shoe 
 Lane burying-ground, to be torn up, with the bodies 
 of other paupers, fifty years afterwards, when Far- 
 ringdon Market usurped the site, has been made a 
 matter of controversy. 
 
 In or about the year 1808, George Cumberland, 
 Esq., 'descendant of Bishop Cumberland, and a 
 literary and highly respectable man,' was informed 
 by Sir Robert Wilmot that at a basket-maker's in 
 Bristol, whose name Sir Robert had forgotten, he 
 
 Mr. Gutch's document : e.g. the unauthenticated numbering of Mrs. 
 Angell's house in Brooke Street as 17 ; the incongruity of parts of the 
 report with Sir Herbert Croft's account of what he had been told by 
 the Coroner ; and, above all, the blunder of making the 27th of 
 August, 177) a ' Friday,' when it was really a Monday. Neverthe- 
 less, as Mr. Gutch's personal good faith was unimpeachable, I was not 
 sufficiently on my guard against the document as a whole, but allowed 
 the reported evidence of the four witnesses cited in it to affect my 
 narrative somewhat in the particular chapter to which this note is 
 appended, and especially to tinge my details of the closing days of 
 Chatterton's life. Not long after the publication of my narrative, 
 however, it came out distinctly that the professed report of the inquest 
 was a sheer fabrication by an ingenious but unscrupulous person, who 
 had worked upon hints derived from the authentic accounts of 
 Sir Herbert Croft, Warton, and others, and bestowed the result 
 on the unsuspecting Mr. Gutch. See exposure of the affair by Mr. W. 
 Moy Thomas in Athentzum of Dec. 5, 1857, and a subsequent article 
 in the same journal for Jan. 23, 1858. Accordingly, before reprint- 
 ing the story in 1874, it became my duty to revise this particular 
 chapter carefully, so as to remove from it every statement or 
 suggestion derived from the tainted document. The changes so 
 required were almost wholly omissions, and did not extend to more 
 than a few pages of the chapter as originally printed ; and I believe 
 that the chapter, in its present form, is brought back, as I should 
 like it to be, to the strict basis of authentic records.
 
 266 CHATTERTON 
 
 heard it positively stated that Chatterton was buried 
 in the churchyard of St. Mary Redcliffe. Sir Robert 
 farther said that the statement was made to him in 
 such a manner that he believed it. Mr. Cumberland 
 thereupon instituted inquiries in Bristol, with a view 
 to ascertain the truth of the story. For some time he 
 could find no one who knew anything of the matter ; 
 but at last he traced the information to a Mrs. 
 Stockwell, the wife of a basket-maker in Peter 
 Street. Questioned on the subject, she stated that 
 when a girl (apparently after Chatterton's death) 
 she had been a pupil of Mrs. Chatterton's, and that 
 she used to be frequently with her till she was 
 twenty years old ; that often she stayed with Mrs. 
 Chatterton and slept with her ; that she was ' very 
 kind and motherly,' and told her many things she 
 would not tell to most people among others, ' how 
 happy she was that her unfortunate boy was 
 brought home and buried in Redcliffe.' This had 
 been done, she said, 'through the attention of a 
 relative in London, who, after the body had been 
 cased in a parish shell, had it secured and sent to 
 her by the waggon.' When the case arrived and 
 was opened, the body was found ' black and half- 
 putrid'; it was, therefore, interred immediately 
 this being done secretly by Phillips, the sexton,
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 267 
 
 who was a friend of the family, and extremely fond 
 of Chatterton. Mrs. Stockwell farther stated that 
 the grave was ' on the right hand side of the lime- 
 tree, in the middle paved-walk in Redcliffe church- 
 yard, about twenty feet from the father's grave, 
 which was in the paved walk, and where Mrs. 
 Chatterton and Mrs. Newton also lay.' She also 
 recollected that Mrs. Chatterton had given leave to 
 a person named Hutchinson or Taylor (she could 
 not be sure which) to bury his child over her son's 
 coffin, and was very sorry afterwards that she had 
 done so, as this person had not only put a stone 
 over the grave which had formerly belonged to it, 
 though it had been removed and placed against the 
 church-wall but had also subsequently buried his 
 wife in the same grave, and on that occasion erased 
 the old inscription on the stone to make room for 
 a new one. This was all that Mrs. Stockwell could 
 tell ; but she mentioned to Mr. Cumberland that 
 there was a Mrs. Kirkland, the wife of a Scotch 
 naval man, who had formerly resided in Bristol, and 
 been on such very intimate terms with Mrs. Chat- 
 terton in her old age that she was likely to know 
 all about the burial. Cumberland, on inquiry, found 
 that this Mrs. Kirkland had died about three months 
 before, leaving a daughter somewhere in London,
 
 268 CHATTERTON 
 
 whom he could not trace. But Mrs. Stockwell re- 
 ferred him to ' a hatter's wife ' (name not given) who 
 remembered Mrs. Kirkland, and had often heard her 
 say that Chatterton was privately buried in Redcliffe 
 churchyard. To make the matter more sure, Mr. 
 Cumberland sought out the family of the sexton 
 Phillips, who had himself died in 1772. He found 
 his sister, a Mrs. Jane Phillips, still alive ; and she 
 told him that she had known Chatterton well, and 
 that her brother, the sexton, whom Chatterton used 
 to call 'uncle,' was much attached to the family. 
 It was her brother that first told her the news of 
 Chatterton's having killed himself in London ; and, 
 on hearing it, she had gone, against her brother's 
 wish, to Mrs. Chatterton, in order to know more 
 about it. She asked Mrs. Chatterton where her son 
 was buried ; and she replied ' Ask me nothing ; he is 
 dead and buried.' A daughter of the sexton, now 
 Mrs. Stephens, the wife of a cabinet-maker, was also 
 found by Cumberland and interrogated. She said 
 her father had never told her anything of the burial 
 in Redcliffe churchyard, and, ' if he had done it 
 privately, it was not likely that he would tell her, 
 being very reserved on all occasions ' ; but she 
 thought 'he would not have refused, if asked, being 
 attached to Chatterton and his mother.' She re-
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 269 
 
 membered the removal of a stone from the church- 
 wall, and the erasure of the old inscription to make 
 room for a new one, by a person named Hutchinson, 
 whose wife had died. A brother of this Mrs. 
 Stephens, a son of the sexton, and named Stephen 
 Chatterton Phillips, was also seen by Cumberland. 
 He was then a retired sailor with a wooden leg, and 
 was said to have some resemblance to Chatterton in 
 the face. He but corroborated what his sister had 
 said : i.e., he knew nothing of the burial, and ' his 
 father was not likely to tell him, and yet might have 
 done it.' Finally, Cumberland saw Mrs. Edkins, 
 already mentioned as having been so intimate with 
 Mrs. Chatterton. As a Miss James, she had been at 
 the school kept by Chatterton's father, whom she 
 remembered well ; she had known Mrs. Chatterton 
 then, and had been present afterwards at the birth of 
 her son ; and from the time of his birth, all through 
 his schoolboy period and his apprenticeship with 
 Mr. Lambert till he went to London, she had been 
 continually seeing him and his mother. Some inter- 
 esting particulars of Chatterton's early life were 
 procured from her. As to the private burial, how- 
 ever, she was unable to say anything. She had gone 
 to see Mrs. Chatterton immediately after the news 
 came of her son's death. On entering, she found
 
 270 CHATTERTON 
 
 Mrs. Chatterton in a fit of hysterics. She said she 
 had come to ask about her health. ' Ay,' said Mrs. 
 Chatterton, ' and about something else ' ; on which 
 she burst into tears, and they cried together, and 
 ' no more was said till they parted.' 
 
 All these facts or rumours, collected by Cumber- 
 land about 1808, were given by him to Cromek, the 
 editor of ' Burns's Reliques,' who undertook to make 
 farther researches and publish them. This was not 
 done ; and Cumberland's memoranda did not see 
 the light till they were printed as an appendix to 
 Dix's Life of Chatterton in 1837. Since that date 
 they have received one slight corroboration. In the 
 Memorials of Canynge, etc., published in 1854 by 
 Mr. George Pryce, a Bristol antiquary, there is a 
 short account of Chatterton ; and in that account 
 is included a letter written, in 1853, by the well- 
 known Mr. Joseph Cottle of Bristol, in which he 
 stated his belief that Chatterton was buried in Red- 
 cliffe churchyard. His reasons for the belief are 
 thus stated : ' About forty years ago, Mr. George 
 Cumberland called upon me and said, " I have as- 
 certained one important fact about Chatterton." 
 "What is it?" I said. "It is," said he, "that that 
 marvellous boy was buried in Redcliffe churchyard." 
 He continued " I am just come from conversing
 
 BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN 271 
 
 with old Mrs. Edkins, a friend of Chatterton's 
 mother. She affirmed to me this fact, with the 
 following explanation : Mrs. Chatterton was 
 passionately fond of her darling and only son, 
 Thomas ; and, when she heard that he had destroyed 
 himself, she immediately wrote to a relation of hers 
 (the poet's uncle, then residing in London), a 
 carpenter, urging him to send home his body in a 
 coffin or box. The box was accordingly sent down 
 to Bristol ; and, when I called on my friend Mrs. 
 Chatterton to condole with her, she, as a very great 
 secret, took me upstairs and showed me the box ; 
 and, removing the lid, I saw the poor boy, whilst his 
 mother sobbed in silence. She told me that she 
 should have him taken out in the middle of the 
 night, and bury him in Redcliffe churchyard. After- 
 wards, when I saw her, she said she had managed 
 it very well, so that none but the sexton and his 
 assistant knew anything about it. This secrecy was 
 necessary, as he could not be buried in consecrated 
 ground." ' Mr. Cottle adds that he knew the 
 husband of Mrs. Edkins, who was a respectable 
 painter and glazier. 
 
 There are discrepancies, it will be observed, 
 between the account given in Mr. Cumberland's 
 memoranda and that given by Mr. Cottle as his
 
 272 CHATTERTON 
 
 recollection of what Mr. Cumberland had told him. 
 But, in fact, there is such an air of incredibility about 
 the whole story, despite its circumstantiality, that 
 the conclusion that it has to be rejected is now all 
 but unanimous. One might have wished to believe 
 it, and to imagine the poor boy's bones as resting 
 quietly within the hallowed precincts he loved so 
 well, and where, since 1840, the piety of Bristol 
 has raised a modest monument to his memory.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 
 
 CHATTERTON'S death made little or no sensation in 
 London beyond the immediate neighbourhood in 
 which the inquest was held. We have looked over 
 the newspapers of the time with some diligence ; but, 
 though paragraphs giving accounts of such casu- 
 alties were as common then as now, we have not 
 found any contemporary reference to the suicide in 
 Brooke Street. The incident which figures in the 
 newspapers as the chief metropolitan fact of the day 
 on which the suicide occurred i.e. the 24th of August 
 is the robbery at the foot of Highgate Hill of the 
 boy carrying the Chester mail by ' a tall thin man in 
 a light-coloured coat, mounted on a black horse.' 
 Under the same date is recorded, as a somewhat 
 minor incident, a visit paid by their Majesties to 
 Woolwich to see the artillery. Even the Town and 
 Country Magazine, which came out on the 3ist of 
 August with three contributions in it from the pen 
 
 S
 
 274 CHATTERTON 
 
 of the unfortunate youth who was then no more (one 
 of these the article On Sculpture which he had 
 written to accompany the engraved design for Beck- 
 ford's monument), takes no notice of the death of 
 its correspondent. Doubtless, Hamilton knew the 
 fact in time to notice it if he chose; but he may have 
 had his own reasons for not doing so. Nor in the 
 September number, which likewise contains some of 
 Chatterton's writings, is the omission supplied. It 
 was not till the October number that any notice of 
 Chatterton occurred ; and then it was in the form of 
 an Elegy in twenty-three stanzas ' To the Memory of 
 Mr. Thomas Chatterton, late of Bristol.' The Elegy 
 is dated 'Bristol, October 1770,' and is signed 
 ' T. C.' evidently the initials of Chatterton's friend, 
 Thomas Cary. The piece is written with more of 
 genuine affection than of poetic skill ; but two stanzas 
 of it may be quoted 
 
 ' Think of his tender opening unfledged years, 
 
 Brought to a final crisis ere mature, 
 As Fate had grudged the wonders Nature rears, 
 Bright genius in oblivion to immure. 
 
 ' Weep, Nature, weep : the mighty loss bewail ; 
 
 The wonder of our drooping isle is dead ! 
 Oh ! could but tears or plaintive sighs avail, 
 By night and day would I bedew my bed.' 
 
 In consequence, however, of such communications
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 275 
 
 as this from Bristol, and of the naturally increased 
 interest that there could not but be there among the 
 Catcotts and the Barretts in the Rowley manuscripts 
 and other papers that Chatterton had left behind 
 him perhaps, too, of the researches of Dr. Fry and 
 others, who obtained copies of those papers and 
 began to send them about, and doubtless to some 
 extent also of the casual references to Chatterton's 
 fate made here and there by persons who had seen 
 him in town it is certain that before the winter 
 of 1770-1 was far advanced the tragic death in the 
 previous August of a certain youth of genius named 
 Chatterton, a writer for the magazines and the 
 alleged editor and transcriber of various pieces 
 of ancient poetry, had become a topic of conversa- 
 tion in the literary clubs of London. 
 
 This was especially the case at the Gerard Street 
 Club. Goldsmith had returned from his Parisian 
 trip before the 8th of September : on which day his 
 biographer, Mr. Forster, finds him receiving a new 
 suit of mourning from his tailor, to be worn on 
 account of the death of his old mother, of which 
 he had received the news when in Paris. Johnson 
 was also back in town before September was over. 
 One of these two, most probably Goldsmith, having 
 seen the Elegy in the Town and Country for October,
 
 276 CHATTERTON 
 
 or having otherwise come across the story of Chat- 
 terton, made himself acquainted with the par- 
 ticulars ; and thus Chatterton and the Rowley 
 Poems came to be discussed at the Club. By this 
 means it probably was that the Honourable Horace 
 Walpole unexpectedly found himself, one day 
 early in 1771, reminded of his Bristol correspon- 
 dent of the year 1769. The occasion was in itself 
 a somewhat memorable one. The first Annual 
 Dinner of the Royal Academy was held on St. 
 George's Day (April 23rd) 1771. At this dinner 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds presided ; and among the 
 guests who sat under the pictures that were hung 
 along the walls were almost all the distinguished 
 men .of London. Walpole, who was not in the 
 habit of seeing much of Johnson, Goldsmith, and 
 that set, elsewhere, found himself seated near to 
 them. We will let himself relate the rest. ' Dining,' 
 he says, ' at the Royal Academy, Dr. Goldsmith 
 ' drew the attention of the company with an account 
 ' of a marvellous treasure of ancient poems lately 
 ' discovered at Bristol, and expressed enthusiastic 
 ' belief in them, for which he was laughed at by 
 ' Dr. Johnson, who was present. I soon found 
 ' this was the trouvaille of my friend Chatterton ; 
 ' and I told Dr. Goldsmith that this novelty was
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 277 
 
 ' known to me, who might, if I had pleased, have 
 ' had the honour of ushering the great discovery to 
 ' the learned world. You may imagine, sir, we did 
 ' not all agree in the measure of our faith ; but, 
 ' though his credulity diverted me, my mirth was 
 ' soon dashed ; for, on asking about Chatterton, he 
 ' told me he had been in London and had destroyed 
 ' himself. The persons of honour and veracity who 
 1 were present will attest with what surprise and 
 ' concern I thus first heard of his death.' Said we 
 not that, of all the men of letters then alive, the one 
 that it might have been best for Chatterton to have 
 near him was Oliver Goldsmith ? After Chatterton 
 was dead, Goldsmith, it now appears, was somehow 
 the first to hear of him and to talk about him. 
 
 From that time through the next six or seven 
 years, the interest in the Rowley Poems, and in 
 Chatterton as connected with them, gradually 
 increased. Catcott, as possessor of the greater 
 portion of Chatterton's transcripts of the supposed 
 antiques, had become a person of some conse- 
 quence in the eyes of local antiquarians, and he 
 took care to make the most of it. He had already 
 increased his stock of MSS. by buying from Chatter- 
 ton's mother, for five guineas, such of his papers 
 as had been left with her a proceeding by no
 
 278 CHATTERTON 
 
 means to his credit, if it be true that about the 
 same time he offered to sell his own collection for 
 70. Barrett, too, as the possessor of some copies 
 of the supposed antiques, found himself inquired 
 after. Both he and Catcott lent about copies of 
 their manuscripts, some fragments of which got into 
 print. The Bristol poems of the fifteenth century 
 were frequently spoken of in literary circles in 
 London. Warton, for example, was shown a 
 collection of them in 1773 by the Earl of Lichfield, 
 who asked his opinion of their genuineness. All 
 sensible persons who had seen specimens of them 
 had already made up their minds that they were 
 forgeries ; but many antiquarian zealots stoutly main- 
 tained the contrary. Whenever a literary man from 
 the metropolis was in the neighbourhood of Bristol, 
 he endeavoured, as a matter of course, to see Catcott 
 and Barrett, and to get all possible information 
 from them about Chatterton and his circumstances. 
 They were very communicative on the subject, and 
 spoke of Chatterton's talents, now that they had 
 a kind of property in them, far more enthusiastically 
 than they had done when he was alive ; but they, 
 and indeed nearly all Bristol, persisted in believing 
 in the genuineness of the antiques. Chatterton, they 
 said, was a youth of extraordinary genius ; but he
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 279 
 
 could not have produced the poems in question ! 
 They were, they had no doubt of it, the works 
 of the much older Bristol poet, Thomas Rowley, 
 mysteriously preserved for three hundred years in 
 the old chest in the muniment-room of St. Mary 
 Redcliffe, and only brought to light by Chatterton ! 
 Thus, when in April 1776 Johnson and Boswell 
 paid a visit to Bristol, and saw Catcott and Barrett, 
 and were shown the original MSS., and Johnson read 
 some of them aloud, Catcott, as Boswell tells us, 
 stood by with open mouth, amazed at his scepticism; 
 after which, to settle the matter, he led them in 
 triumph to the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, and, 
 by way of unanswerable argument, showed them 
 'the chest itself.' It was on this occasion that 
 Johnson said to Boswell, speaking of Chatterton, 
 'This is the most extraordinary young man that 
 has encountered my knowledge : it is wonderful 
 how the whelp has written such things.' In con- 
 nection with this same visit, it may be interesting 
 to state that Hannah More, who was still residing 
 in Bristol with her sisters, a young woman of 
 twenty-five, at the time of Chatterton's death, 
 had between that time and the date of Dr. Johnson's 
 visit, added to the literary reputation of Bristol 
 by the publication of her first dramas. In visiting
 
 280 CHATTERTON 
 
 Bristol Johnson was therefore paying a compliment 
 to this rising poetess, as well as to the memory 
 of Chatterton. One is glad to know also that, if 
 Hannah More, as one of the conductors of the 
 best boarding-school for young ladies in Bristol, 
 was almost necessarily out of the circle of Chat- 
 terton's acquaintances while he was going about 
 in the city as an attorney's apprentice, she was 
 one of the first in Bristol to show an interest in 
 his fate after she did hear of him, and to prove 
 that interest by being kind to his mother and sister. 
 Mrs. Chatterton, after her son's death, was seized 
 with a nervous illness, which, though she lived a 
 good many years longer, never left her ; and among 
 those who used to go to see her and sometimes take 
 tea with her, for her dead son's sake, there was none, 
 Mrs. Stockwell said, whom she respected so much as 
 Miss More. 
 
 It was in 1777 that the Rowley Poems were first 
 published collectively, chiefly from the manuscripts 
 in possession of Catcott and Barrett. A second and 
 more splendid edition was published in 1782 by Dean 
 Milles, President of the Society of Antiquaries, with 
 the following title : ' Poems supposed to have been 
 written at Bristol in the Fifteenth Century by Thomas 
 Rowley, priest, etc. ; with a Commentary, in which the
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 281 
 
 antiquity of them is considered and defended by 
 Jeremiah Milles, D.D., Dean of Exeter? Dean 
 Milles, in his preliminary dissertation on the 
 poems, gave a rather slighting account of Chat- 
 terton, with a view to show that he could not have 
 been their author. Immediately on the publication 
 of the volume, however, there blazed out a Rowley 
 Controversy, as fierce as that which had attended 
 the appearance of the Ossian Poems. Bryant and 
 one or two others sided with Milles, and the question 
 was argued and re-argued in every shape ; but all 
 the sound critical and antiquarian authorities, such 
 as Malone, Tyrwhitt, and Warton, were on the other 
 side, and their arguments, from evidence external 
 and internal, set the question conclusively at rest 
 in the minds of all who could be set at rest about 
 anything. The collection and publication about the 
 same time of Chatterton's acknowledged Miscel- 
 lanies helped somewhat in the demonstration, by 
 showing the possibility that their author might 
 also have been the author even of things so extra- 
 ordinary as the Rowley Poems. It was not till 1803, 
 however, that the two sets of pieces were printed, 
 together with additions, as the undoubted works of 
 Chatterton. This first complete edition of Chat- 
 terton's works was undertaken in 1799 by sub-
 
 282 CHATTERTON 
 
 scription, with a view to raise a sum for the benefit 
 of his sister, then Mrs. Newton, his mother being 
 by that time dead. Southey and Mr. Cottle of 
 Bristol acted as the editors. The subscription not 
 reaching the expenses of publication, an arrange- 
 ment was made with Messrs. Longman in the 
 interest of Mrs. Newton. According to what Mr. 
 Cumberland heard in Bristol in 1808, the result of 
 this speculation, and of other similar acts of kindness 
 shown to the Chatterton family since the fatal year 
 which had made them immortal, was that a sum of 
 600 came after Mrs. Newton's death to her only 
 daughter, who had for some time been in the service 
 of Miss Hannah More. This girl, the last of the Chat- 
 tertons, died in 1807, leaving 100 to a young man, 
 an attorney, to whom she was about to be married. 
 The rest went to her father's relatives, the Newtons, 
 living in London, somewhere about the Minories. 
 
 Enough has been already quoted from Chatterton's 
 Acknowledged Writings in prose and in verse to give 
 some idea of his ability and versatility as there shown. 
 They are certainly astonishing productions for a boy 
 not past his eighteenth year : astonishing for their 
 very variety, and their precocious tone and manner, 
 even where in substance they are most worthless.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 283 
 
 He writes political letters for the newspapers, shallow 
 enough, but as good as were going; he writes 
 scurrilous satires in the Churchill vein, with here 
 and there lines as good as any in Churchill and some- 
 times with turns of epigram reminding one of Pope ; 
 he writes very tolerable imitations of Macpherson's 
 Ossian, and elegies and serious poems showing some 
 power of thought and imagination ; he catches the 
 knack of magazine-articles, and scribbles them off 
 currente calamo, of a kind to suit ; he goes an evening 
 or two to Marylebone Gardens, and straightway he 
 writes a capital Burletta. On the evidence, then, 
 of the Acknowledged Writings alone, Chatterton 
 must be pronounced to have been a youth of singular 
 endowments, who, had he lived longer, would cer- 
 tainly have made himself a name in the literature of 
 England at the close of the last century and the 
 beginning of the present. As the passages hitherto 
 quoted from the Acknowledged Writings have, 
 however, been selected mainly for their biographical 
 significance, it may be well to glance at them again 
 collectively with a view to a more distinct estimate 
 of their purely literary merits. 
 
 About one half of the total aggregate of those 
 miscellaneous scribblings of Chatterton in the 
 ordinary English of his own day consists of
 
 284 CHATTERTON 
 
 metrical satires. There are in all about sixteen pieces 
 of this sort, longer or shorter. Six of the shorter 
 pieces are in Hudibrastic or octosyllabic couplets ; 
 one, a longish anti-Puritanic ode, in the guise of 
 a profane description of Whitefield's pulpit oratory 
 and its effects on his groaning congregation, is in 
 burlesque Pindarics or complex rhyming stanzas ; 
 but the rest are all in the regular heroic or deca- 
 syllabic rhyming couplets used so largely for all 
 purposes by the English poets of the eighteenth 
 century, and the all but established form of verse 
 for English satire before and ever since. The most 
 important of Chatterton's satirical pieces in this 
 kind of verse are the four entitled respectively 
 Kew Gardens, Epistle to the Rev. Mr. Catcott, The 
 Consuliad, and Resignation. These may now be 
 described a little more particularly : 
 
 Kew Gardens. This is the largest of all Chatterton's 
 acknowledged poems, and consists of about eleven hundred 
 lines. The title indicates, at least in part, the purport of 
 the satire. Kew Gardens (in Surrey, six miles west from 
 London) had been the country residence of Frederick, Prince 
 of Wales, eldest son of George n. ; and, after his death in 
 1751, his widow, Augusta, had continued to reside there as 
 Princess-Dowager of Wales, exerting thence that extra- 
 ordinary influence on British party-politics with which, in 
 conjunction with her favourite and chief adviser, John 
 Stuart, third Earl of Bute, she was credited, or discredited,
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 285 
 
 through the rest of her life. The influence already con- 
 siderable through the last years of the reign of George n., 
 when her son was growing up as heir-apparent to the 
 throne under her guardianship and that of Bute as chief 
 officer of her household had been more apparent since 
 October 1760, when her son, then two-and-twenty years 
 of age, ascended the throne as George in. Bute, under 
 whose supervision the young king had hitherto been 
 wholly trained and educated, became at once a member 
 of the Privy Council; in March 1761 he was appointed 
 to one of the principal Secretaryships of State ; in the 
 following October the great Whig Administration of Pitt, 
 which had been in office since 1757 with such splendid 
 consequences for the British Empire, and which Bute had 
 been gradually undermining, was virtually shattered by 
 the resignation of Pitt himself; and in May 1762, the last 
 fragments of that Administration having disappeared, 
 Toryism came into the ascendant and a Tory Ministry 
 was formed with Bute for its Premier. This actual 
 Premiership of Bute lasted, indeed, only till April 1763, 
 when he resigned, and went professedly into retirement. 
 In the public opinion of the day, however, the retirement 
 was nominal only ; and through all the varying phases of 
 British party-politics in the course of the next seven years, 
 the ministry of Mr. George Grenville from 1763 to 1765, 
 the short Premiership of the Marquis of Rockingham from 
 
 1765 to 1766, the second Administration of Pitt from 
 
 1766 to 1768 under his new peerage title of Earl of 
 Chatham, and the ministry of the Duke of Grafton from 
 1768 to 1770, Bute was reputed to be still secretly the 
 minister-paramount, and he and the King's mother were 
 thought of as the malignant twin-spirits who were always 
 consulting with each other in the background, infusing 
 Tory obstinacy into the King's mind, and thwarting every 
 proposed popular measure, and every reappearance of
 
 286 CHATTERTON 
 
 Whig policy. Hence the peculiar significance of the 
 phrase ' Kew Gardens ' in the newspaper slang of the 
 time. Was it not there that the two malignant spirits 
 held their consultations and concocted their intrigues? 
 This notion, wafted from London to Bristol, had suggested 
 to the attorney's apprentice of Bristol the title for his 
 intended satire. In so far as the satire is an effusion of his 
 crude Wilkesite politics, it answers to the title well enough. 
 The current scurrilities against Bute and the Princess- 
 Dowager are duly reproduced, with random slashes at their 
 Tory associates, and at Dr. Johnson and other writers on 
 the Tory side, and with occasional laudations of Lord 
 Chatham, qualified by regret that the great Commoner 
 should have disgraced himself at last by becoming a peer. 
 But, though there is a straggling of matter of this kind 
 through the satire, there is much besides. Once Chatterton 
 had begun the poem, he seems to have stuffed into it 
 whatever came into his head ; and, as Bristol and his own 
 circumstances in Bristol were much in his head, a large 
 proportion of the poem is occupied with that subject. It 
 is in this poem, in fact, that he breaks out into those 
 irreverent descriptions of Bristol society generally, and 
 those lampoons upon the Mayor and Aldermen of Bristol, 
 and upon Burgum, the Catcotts, Bishop Newton, Dr. Cutts 
 Barton, the organist Broderip, and other particular persons 
 in Bristol, of which we have already had to take account 
 (ante, pp. 30-40). Worth quoting here as an additional 
 sample is the following passage respecting himself and 
 the very equivocal reputation he knew he had earned for 
 himself in Bristol : 
 
 ' " I must confess," exclaims a prudent sage, 
 "You're really something clever for your age ; 
 Your lines have sentiment, and now and then 
 A dash of satire stumbles from your pen ; 
 But, ah ! that satire is a dangerous thing,
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 287 
 
 And often wounds the writer with its sting ; 
 
 Your infant muse must sport with other toys ; 
 
 Men will not bear the ridicule of boys. . . . 
 
 Besides, the town (a sober, honest town 
 
 Which smiles on virtue and gives vice a frown) 
 
 Bids censure brand with infamy your name : 
 
 I, even I, must think you are to blame. . . . 
 
 Then your religion ! Ah, beware, beware ! 
 
 Although a Deist is no monster here, 
 
 Yet hide your tenets : priests are powerful foes, 
 
 And priesthood fetters justice by the nose. 
 
 Think not the merit of a jingling song 
 
 Can countenance the writer's acting wrong ; 
 
 Reform your manners, and with solemn air 
 
 Hear Catcott pray, and Robins squeak in prayer." ' 
 
 The Satire, thus describable on the whole as an incoherent 
 jumble of Wilkesite politics with local Bristol personalities, 
 had been probably begun in 1769, and was certainly com- 
 pleted, and probably known in Bristol, if only by excerpts 
 from it already in circulation, before April 1770, when it 
 was mentioned ironically by Chatterton in his mock will 
 announcing his intention of suicide (ante, p. 84). He 
 seems to have taken it with him to London, and to have 
 thought of the possibility of throwing portions of it into a 
 form suitable for metropolitan publication ; for among his 
 still extant manuscript remains is one which, though look- 
 ing like an independent satire, turns out, on examination, 
 to be but a slightly modified transcript of the latter half of 
 his Kew Gardens, provided with a more atrociously offensive 
 title pointing the invective more directly at the King's 
 Mother, Bute, and their Tory dependents. We may add 
 that Kew Gardens, of which only fragments were accessible 
 to Southey and Cottle in 1803, was first printed entire in 
 
 1837- 
 
 Epistle to the Rev. Mr. Catcott. This piece, dated 6th 
 December 1769, consists of about three hundred lines. It
 
 288 CHATTERTON 
 
 is nominally an address to the Rev. Alexander Catcott Oi 
 Bristol on the subject of his book entitled Treatise on the 
 Deluge and Structure of the Earth^ the first edition of 
 which had appeared in 1761, and a second and enlarged 
 edition in 1768. Remonstrating with that gentleman very 
 sharply, but not altogether disrespectfully, on the ortho- 
 doxy of his religious views, it is in the main an out-and-out 
 proclamation of Chatterton's own free-thinking opinions, 
 with an assault upon the church, the clergy, and priestcraft 
 universally. It was first published complete from the 
 manuscript in 1784. 
 
 The Consuliad. This is the amended form of a political 
 satire, the first draught of which, written in October 
 1769, and now in the British Museum, had been entitled 
 The Constabiliad. It consists of about two hundred and 
 fifty lines, and is a description in mock-heroics of a free fight 
 among the guests at a political dinner held 
 
 ' Where Campbell's chimneys overlook the square, 
 And Newton's future prospects hang in air.' 
 
 This seems to localise the affair at Bristol ; but, as none of 
 the editors of Chatterton give any information on the point, 
 we are left to gather what we can from the poem itself. It 
 tells us how, as the dinner was proceeding and the com- 
 pany round the table were busily eating and drinking, two 
 of the chiefs, called Madoc and Twitcher, quarrelled over a 
 toast: how Madoc threw a pigeon at Twitcher's head, 
 and Twitcher retaliated by heaving a loin of veal right 
 against Madoc's chest ; how the fight then became general, 
 viands and bottles flying, and speaker after speaker trying 
 in vain to be heard, till at last the uproar was stilled and 
 order restored by the sage advice of Tyro, a venerable 
 lawyer. All this would be mere meaningless confusion 
 for us now, were it not that Twitcher, who is the central 
 figure of the satire throughout, can be identified. He was
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 289 
 
 John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, who had once 
 been an intimate friend of Wilkes, and an associate of his in 
 the notorious Medmenham Club of Free-thinkers, but had 
 turned against that popular favourite, and was now a pro- 
 minent member of the Grafton ministry. At a performance 
 of the Beggars' Opera in one of the London theatres, 
 no sooner had the actor spoken the hero's words in the 
 last scene, 'That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me, I 
 own surprises me,' than the audience had caught them up 
 and cleverly applied them to the detested minister who had 
 betrayed Wilkes ; and from that day Lord Sandwich had 
 been 'Jemmy Twitcher' for all England. Hence his 
 appearance in Chatterton's piece as 
 
 ' Twitcher, a rotten branch of mighty stock, 
 Whose interest winds his conscience as his clock ; 
 Whose attributes detestable have long 
 Been evident, and infamous in song.' 
 
 But, as the satire was meant for an onslaught on the 
 Grafton ministry generally, Grafton himself comes in, 
 thus : 
 
 ' Grafton, to whose immortal sense we owe 
 The blood which will from civil discord flow ; 
 Who swells each grievance, lengthens every tax, 
 Blind to the ripening vengeance of the axe.' 
 
 In short, the poem, however hazy in its details to our ap- 
 prehension now, was a truculent enough bit of party satire 
 at the time, and must have been then generally or locally 
 intelligible. At all events, Chatterton having sent it from 
 Bristol to London some time late in 1769, it was thought 
 worthy of publication, as we have seen (ante p. 119), in the 
 Freeholders Magazine for January 1770; and it was the 
 piece for which Chatterton, when he came to London 
 
 T
 
 290 CHATTERTON 
 
 himself, received half-a-guinea from Mr. Fell. It was 
 republished in its present form in 1778. 
 
 Resignation: This, consisting of about eight hundred 
 lines, is the longest of all Chatterton's satires, except his 
 Kew Gardens. The incident which suggested its title, 
 and which gives the keynote to the piece throughout, was 
 the resignation of the Duke of Grafton on the 28th of 
 January 1770, with the consequent accession of Lord 
 North to the Premiership. Chatterton's first effort to 
 connect himself with the London newspaper press, it may 
 be remembered, had been by that stinging anonymous 
 letter to the Duke of Grafton, commenting on his resig- 
 nation, which had been sent from Bristol on the i6th of 
 February 1770, and which appeared in the columns of 
 the Middlesex Journal on the 24th of the same month 
 (ante pp. 79-80). Evidently, however, the incident had 
 suggested to Chatterton the idea of something more exten- 
 sive and elaborate than a mere newspaper letter in imita- 
 tion of Junius, and the present piece was the result. It is 
 a metrical satire in review of the state of recent British 
 politics, with invectives about equally distributed between 
 Grafton as the outgoing Minister and North as his suc- 
 cessor, but with straggling invectives besides against other 
 politicians, praises of Wilkes, a denunciation of the rupture 
 with the American Colonies, etc., all permeated and made 
 coherent by continual references to Lord Bute and the 
 King's Mother as the central powers of all the mischief. 
 It closes with a call to Lord North to emulate his prede- 
 cessor by resigning as soon as possible : 
 
 ' Yet, yet reflect, thou despicable thing, 
 How wavering is the favour of a king ; 
 Think, since that feeble fence and Bute is all, 
 How soon thy humbug farce of State may fall ; 
 Then catch the present moment while 'tis thine, 
 Implore a noble pension, and resign.'
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 291 
 
 Lord North did not take the advice, but was to remain 
 in office till 1782, twelve years after this unknown juvenile 
 assailant of his was vituperating him in Bristol. The 
 piece, which is the most carefully written of all Chatterton's 
 political satires, seems to have been brought by him to 
 London as part of his stock, and may even have been 
 finished there; for a considerable portion of it, as has 
 been mentioned (ante p. 201), appeared in the Freeholder's 
 Magazine for May 1770 with the intimation 'To be con- 
 tinued ' annexed by the editor. This interesting fact, which 
 had escaped previous editors of Chatterton, was first made 
 public in 1875 in a note by Mr. Edward Bell in the new 
 Aldine Edition of Chatterton's Poems, where Mr. Bell also 
 certifies that the promised continuation is not found in 
 any succeeding number of the magazine as far at least as 
 to that for August 1770, with which the periodical seems 
 to have come to a stop altogether. That it had been in a 
 shaky condition even before the appearance of the May 
 number we have already seen (ante p. 162). Mr. Fell, the 
 editor, was then in King's Bench Prison ; but Chatterton 
 anticipated that this would be to his advantage rather 
 than the reverse, as Mr. Fell's successors in the editor- 
 ship knew nothing of Mr. Fell's arrangements and would 
 be glad to engage him on his own terms. This might 
 leave it doubtful whether it was Mr. Fell or his suc- 
 cessors that had accepted the satire for publication in 
 the Freeholder; but the probability is that it was Fell 
 before his imprisonment. It was he that had accepted 
 The Consuliad for the preceding January number and 
 paid Chatterton half-a-guinea for it ; and we have no other 
 means of accounting for the second half-guinea noted by 
 Chatterton (ante p. 212) as having been received by him 
 from Mr. Fell than by supposing that it was in payment 
 for the first portion of Resignation as accepted for the May 
 number. Mr. Fell's successors do not seem to have cared
 
 292 CHATTERTON 
 
 to complete the thing ; and it was not till 1803 that 
 Resignation was printed entire. 
 
 While this account of the most important of 
 Chatterton's remains in the form of metrical satire 
 on the public men and the current events of his 
 time may give a more distinct conception of the 
 ardour with which the young provincial had flung 
 himself into that turbulent species of literature, 
 it may also verify the estimate already offered of 
 the amount of his success in the too tempting 
 element. Following Churchill as his master in the 
 scurrilous vein, and adopting the heroic couplet 
 as the established vehicle for scurrilities of any 
 sort, he had certainly learnt, as we have already 
 said, to manage that vehicle very deftly, and 
 sometimes with lines of epigrammatic effect re- 
 minding one of Churchill or even of Pope. When 
 this is repeated, however, it is about all that can 
 be said ; for it cannot be added that the literary 
 quality of the satires generally is such as to place 
 them among, or even beside, those English satires 
 of the greater masters that have been saved by 
 the antiseptic power of this quality from the 
 ephemeral fate of their subjects, and kept on the 
 shelf of what is permanently readable in the lan- 
 guage. Not one of Chatterton's satires, except
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 293 
 
 for the fact that it is Chatterton's, would now be 
 readable as a whole ; nor, though telling lines 
 and couplets might be quoted from them here and 
 there, would it be easy to produce from any one of 
 them a really readable passage of any considerable 
 length. Perhaps the nearest approach to such a 
 passage is an imaginary sketch of the antecedents 
 of Lord Bute introduced into the satire called 
 Resignation. It is, it will be perceived, a purely 
 imaginary sketch, betraying ludicrous ignorance of 
 the real facts of that much abused nobleman's life ; 
 but, such as it is, it may be taken as a specimen 
 of Chatterton at his best in political satire: 
 
 ' Far in the North, amidst whose dreary hills 
 None hear the pleasant murmuring of rills, 
 Where no soft gale in dying raptures blows, 
 Or aught which bears the look of verdure grows, 
 Save where the north wind cuts the solemn yew, 
 And russet rushes drink the noxious dew, 
 Dank exhalations drawn from stagnant moors, 
 The morning dress of Caledonia's shores, 
 Upon a bleak and solitary plain, 
 Exposed to every storm of wind and rain, 
 A humble cottage reared its lonely head, 
 Its roof with matted reeds and rushes spread : 
 The walls were osiers daubed with slimy clay, 
 One narrow entrance opened to the day. 
 Here lived a Laird, the ruler of his clan, 
 Whose fame through every northern mountain ran : 
 Great was his learning, for he long had been 
 A student at the town of Aberdeen. 
 Professor of all languages at once,
 
 294 CHATTERTON 
 
 To him some reckoned Chapelow a dunce. 
 
 With happy fluency he learnt to speak 
 
 Syriac or Latin, Arabic or Greek ; 
 
 Not any tongue in which Oxonians sing 
 
 When they rejoice or blubber with the King 
 
 To him appeared unknown. With sapient look 
 
 He taught the Highland meaning of each book 
 
 But often, when to pastimes he inclined, 
 
 To give some relaxation to his mind 
 
 He laid his books aside, forgot to read 
 
 To hunt wild goslings down the river Tweed, 
 
 To chase a starving weasel from her bed, 
 
 And wear the spoil triumphant on his head. 
 
 'Tis true his rent-roll just maintained his state 
 
 But some in spite of poverty are great ; 
 
 Though Famine sunk her impress on his face, 
 
 Still you might there his haughty temper trace. 
 
 Descended from a catalogue of kings, 
 
 Whose warlike arts Macpherson sweetly sings, 
 
 He bore the majesty of monarchs past 
 
 Like a tall pine rent with the winter's blast . . . 
 
 Fired by ambition, he resolved to roam 
 
 Far from the famine of his native home 
 
 To seek the warmer climate of the South, 
 
 And at one banquet feast his eyes and mouth. 
 
 In vain the amorous Highland lass complained ; 
 
 The son of monarchs would not be restrained ; 
 
 Clad in his native many-coloured suit, 
 
 Forth struts the walking majesty of Bute. 
 
 His spacious sword, to a large wallet strung, 
 
 Across his broad capacious shoulders hung. 
 
 As from the hills the land of promise rose, 
 
 A secret transport in his bosom glows ; 
 
 A joy prophetic, until then unknown, 
 
 Assured him all he viewed would be his own. 
 
 New scenes of pleasure recreate his sight ; 
 
 He views the fertile meadows with delight ; 
 
 Still in soliloquy he praised the view, 
 
 Nor was more pleased with future scenes at Kew.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 295 
 
 His wonder broke in murmurs from his tongue ; 
 
 No more the praise of Highland hills he sung, 
 
 Till now a stranger to the cheerful green 
 
 Where springing flowers diversify the scene. 
 
 The lofty elm, the oak of lordly look, 
 
 The willow shadowing the bubbling brook, 
 
 The hedges blooming with the sweets of May, 
 
 With double pleasure marked his gladsome way. 
 
 Having through varying rural prospects passed, 
 
 He reached the great metropolis at last. . . . 
 
 A lengthening train of boys displayed him great ; 
 
 He seemed already Minister of State : 
 
 The Carlton Sibyl saw his graceful mien, 
 
 And straight forgot her hopes of being Queen. 
 
 She sighed, she wished ; the virtuous Chudleigh flew 
 
 To bring the Caledonian swain to Kew . . . 
 
 Resolved to make him greatest of the great, 
 
 She led him to her hidden cave of state ; 
 
 There spurs and coronets were placed around, 
 
 And privy seals were scattered on the ground ; 
 
 Here piles of honorary truncheons lay, 
 
 And gleaming stars made artificial day ; 
 
 With mystic rods whose magic power is such 
 
 They metamorphose parties with a touch . . . 
 
 " These," said the Sibyl, " from this present hour 
 
 Are thine, with every dignity of power. 
 
 No statesman shall be titularly great, 
 
 None shall obtain an office in the State, 
 
 But such whose principles and manners suit 
 
 The virtuous temper of the Earl of Bute ; 
 
 All shall preserve thy interest ; none shall guide 
 
 But such as you repute are qualified. 
 
 No more on Scotland's melancholy plain 
 
 Your starving countrymen shall drink the rain, 
 
 But, hither hasting on their naked feet, 
 
 Procure a place, forget themselves, and eat." ' 
 
 The satires deducted, and also the lyrical Burletta
 
 296 CHATTERTON 
 
 (which has been already sufficiently described, ante 
 pp. 209-212), the residue of the Acknowledged 
 Poems consists of a small miscellany of short pieces 
 called variously Elegies, African Eclogues, Songs, 
 Fragments, etc. In some of these the poetic quality 
 is decidedly higher and finer than in the satires or 
 the Burletta. Take, for example, the following 
 'Elegy,' dated 'Bristol, Nov. 17, 1769,' and first 
 printed in the Town and Country Magazine of that 
 month : 
 
 ' Joyless I seek the solitary shade, 
 
 Where dusky Contemplation veils the scene 
 The dark retreat, of leafless branches made, 
 Where sickening sorrow wets the yellowed green. 
 
 ' The darksome ruins of some sacred cell, 
 
 Where erst the sons of Superstition trod, 
 Tottering upon the mossy meadow, tell 
 We better know, but less adore, our God. 
 
 ' Now, as I mournful tread the gloomy nave, 
 
 Through the wide window, once with mysteries dight, 
 The distant forest and the darkened wave 
 Of the swoln Avon ravishes my sight. 
 
 ' But see ! the thickening veil of Evening 's drawn ; 
 
 The azure changes to a sable blue ; 
 The rapturing prospects fly the lessening lawn, 
 
 And Nature seems to mourn the dying view. 
 
 ' Self-sprighted Fear creeps silent through the gloom, 
 
 Starts at the rustling leaf and rolls his eyes ; 
 Aghast with horror, when he views the tomb, 
 With every torment of a hell he flies.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 297 
 
 'The bubbling brooks in plaintive murmurs roll ; 
 
 The bird of omen, with incessant scream, 
 To melancholy thoughts awakes the soul, 
 And lulls the mind to Contemplation's dream. 
 
 ' A dreary stillness broods o'er all the vale ; 
 The clouded moon emits a feeble glare ; 
 Joyless I seek the darkling hill and dale : 
 Where'er I wander, sorrow still is there.' 
 
 This is not perfect, but it is in a vein of true 
 poetry ; and both the melancholy of the mood, 
 and the tendency to personification, as in 'Self- 
 sprighted Fear,' are very characteristic of Chatter- 
 ton. The following, also a fine instance of personi- 
 fication, is from another ' Elegy,' of about the same 
 date, which contains many good stanzas 
 
 ' Pale, rugged Winter, bending o'er his tread, 
 
 His grizzled hair bedropt with icy dew ; 
 
 His eyes a dusky light congealed and dead ; 
 
 His robe a tinge of bright ethereal blue ! 
 
 ' His train a motleyed, sanguine, sable cloud, 
 
 He limps along the russet dreary moor, 
 While rising whirlwinds, blasting keen and loud, 
 Roll the white surges to the sounding shore.' 
 
 For an adequate idea, however, of the poetical 
 genius of ' the marvellous boy,' we must pass from 
 his Acknowledged Poems in the ordinary English of 
 his time to those strange Antiques in a factitious 
 kind of Early English which he put forth as 
 recovered relics of Rowley and other poets of the
 
 298 CHATTERTON 
 
 fifteenth century. Whether, in the composition of 
 those poems, it was Chatterton's habit first to write 
 in ordinary phraseology, and then, by the help of 
 glossaries, to translate what he had written into 
 archaic language, or whether he had by practice 
 become so far master of ancient words and expres- 
 sions as to be able to write directly in the facti- 
 tious dialect he had prescribed for himself, certain 
 it is that, whenever his thoughts and fancies attained 
 their highest level, he either was whirled into the 
 archaic form by an irresistible instinct, or deliber- 
 ately adopted it. Up to a certain point, as it 
 were, Chatterton could remain himself; but the 
 moment he was hurried past that point, the moment 
 he attained to a certain degree of sublimity, or 
 fervour, or solemnity in his conceptions, and was 
 constrained to continue at the same pitch, at that 
 moment he reverted to the fifteenth century, and 
 passed into the soul of Rowley, or of one of Rowley's 
 imagined contemporaries. No one who has not 
 read the Antique Poems of Chatterton can imagine 
 what extraordinary things they are. Feeling this, 
 and feeling also that all that we have said about 
 Chatterton hitherto would be out of proportion 
 unless we could communicate some idea of the 
 force of his genius as shown in those Antiques, we
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 299 
 
 shall close this biography with a further account of 
 them and a few specimen extracts. 1 
 
 The Antique Poems, as printed in Southey's edition 
 of Chatterton's Works in 1803, occupy one octavo 
 volume out of three. The following is a descriptive 
 list of the most important of them 
 
 i. Four Eclogues, or supposed poetical dialogues of 
 shepherds and shepherdesses at different periods in the 
 history of England, from the Crusades to the Wars of the 
 Roses. The first three of the Eclogues were printed from 
 MSS. in Chatterton's writing in the possession of Mr. Catcott, 
 to whom they had been given as transcripts of old poems by 
 Rowley ; the fourth was published in the Town and Country 
 Magazine for May, 1769, with this title, ' Elinoure and Juga: 
 written three hundred years ago by T. Rowley, secular priest.' 
 It describes two maidens lamenting the absence of their 
 knights in the wars, and dying when they hear that their 
 knights are slain. 
 
 1 Nowhere now, I suppose, is there any lingering shred of belief in 
 a possible authentic original in any shape whatever for the so-called 
 Rowley Poems. Should any one, however, be still so far interested in 
 that once fierce literary controversy as to desire to see a marshalling 
 of the linguistic arguments by which the old delusion is finally 
 quashed, he may be referred to Professor Skeat's Essay on the subject 
 contained in the new Aldine Edition of Chatterton's Works, published 
 in 1875. It is there shown that only by the most deplorable ignorance 
 of the history of the English Language could the Rowley Poems have 
 ever been accepted as genuine specimens of Fifteenth Century English, 
 or of the English of any other century, or as anything else than a 
 pseudo-archaic English invented by Chatterton himself out of some 
 acquaintance with Speght's Chaucer, aided by a glossary of old words 
 which he had drawn up from one or two easily accessible vocabularies, 
 sometimes mistaking the meanings of particular words there cited, and 
 at other times forcing words, for the purposes of metre and rhyme, 
 into fantastic forms unknown to Old English grammar.
 
 300 CHATTERTON 
 
 2. The Parliament of Sprytes : ' A most merrie Entyr- 
 lude, plaied by the Carmelyte Freeres, at Mastre Canynges 
 hys greete howse, before Mastre Canynges and Byshoppe 
 Carpenterre, on dedicatynge the Chyrche of Oure Ladie 
 of Redclefte; wroten bie T. Rowleie and J. Iscamme.' 
 First printed in Barrett's History of Bristol : the original, 
 in Chatterton's handwriting, in the British Museum. 
 
 3. The Tournament : A dramatic account by Rowley of 
 a Tournament held at Bristol before Edward i. in 1285, in 
 which Sir Simon Burton, one of the old worthies of Bristol, 
 and the original founder of the Church of St. Mary Red- 
 cliffe which ,Canynge rebuilt, showed his prowess over all 
 other knights. Printed from a copy made by Catcott from 
 one in Chatterton's handwriting. 
 
 4. The Bristowe Tragedie ; or the Dethe of Syr Charles 
 Bawdin: A ballad, in nearly a hundred stanzas, cele- 
 brating the death of Sir Charles Baldwin, otherwise Sir 
 Baldwin Fulford, a zealous Lancastrian, who was executed 
 at Bristol, in 1461, by order of Edward iv. The poem 
 was printed in London, in 1772, from a copy made by 
 Catcott from one in Chatterton's handwriting. Chatterton, 
 it appears, acknowledged to his mother and sister that he 
 was the author of this poem ; and it is in a less archaic 
 style than the others. 
 
 5. The Storie of William Canynge : A poem in twenty- 
 five stanzas, purporting to be extracted from a prose work 
 by Rowley giving an account of eminent natives of Bristol 
 from the earliest times to his own. The first thirty-four 
 lines of this poem are extant on the ' original vellum ' given 
 by Chatterton to Mr. Barrett; the rest is from various 
 transcripts. 
 
 6. Songe to ^Ella, Lorde of the Castel of Brystowe ynne 
 dates of yore: A short Pindaric lyric by Rowley to the 
 memory of ^Ella, the great Saxon chieftain of West England,
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 301 
 
 and enemy of the Danes, in the tenth century. Printed 
 from the Catcott MSS. 
 
 7. sElla : ' A Tragycal Enterlude, or Discoorseynge 
 Tragedie, wrotenn by Thomas Rowleie; plaiedd before 
 Mastre Canynge, atte hys howse nempte the Rodde Lodge, 
 alsoe before the Duke of Norfolck, Johan Howard.' This 
 is Chatterton's masterpiece. It is a long dramatic poem in 
 various rhyme, with songs interspersed, originally printed 
 from a manuscript in Chatterton's hand in the possession of 
 Mr. Catcott. The hero of the drama is the aforesaid ^Ella, 
 the Saxon lord of Bristol in the tenth century, and the 
 hammer of the then invading Danes. The plot is as follows : 
 ^Ella has just married the beauteous Birtha, and is feasting 
 at Bristol in all the joy of his spousals, when the news is 
 brought that two hosts of the Danes, under Magnus and 
 Hurra, are ravaging the country round. ^Ella tears him- 
 self away from Birtha ; meets the Danes ; totally defeats 
 Magnus and ^w host ; and drives Hurra and ^/V host 
 skulking into the woods. He is in the pride of his victory 
 when his friend Celmonde, who has been secretly in love 
 with Birtha, steals from the camp, and, going to Bristol 
 alone, tells Birtha that her husband is sorely wounded, 
 and wishes her to come to him. Birtha mounts a horse 
 immediately, and, not waiting to inform her maidens of her 
 purpose, rides off with Celmonde. They go through a 
 wood ; where, as Celmonde is revealing his purpose and 
 offering violence, Hurra and his Danes come to the rescue, 
 slay him, and magnanimously protect Birtha. They escort 
 her to Bristol; where meanwhile, however, ^Ella has 
 arrived, and, thinking his Birtha false, has stabbed him- 
 self. He survives to see her, and then dies ; and she 
 swoons on his body. In the supposed performance of 
 the Tragedy in the house of Master Canynge in Bristol 
 the part of ^Ella is represented as having been taken by
 
 302 CHATTERTON 
 
 Rowley himself, that of Celmonde by John Iscam, that of 
 Hurra by Sir Tibbot Gorges, and that of Birtha by Master 
 Edward Canynge, the subordinate parts by others. 
 
 8. Goddwynn: 'A Tragedie, by Thomas Rowleie.' 
 This poem, also from the Catcott MSS., is a fragment of 
 a supposed tragedy, the scene of which is laid in England 
 immediately before the Norman Conquest, and the chief 
 persons in which are Earl Godwin, Harold, and King 
 Edward the Confessor. The topic of the drama, so far 
 as it proceeds, is the patriotic rage of the Saxons at the 
 growing power of the Normans in the land. Though only 
 a portion of the drama is given, the figment is that it was 
 performed entire, the part of Harold taken by Rowley, that 
 of Godwin by John Iscam, that of Edward by Sir Tibbot 
 Gorges, that of Alstan by Sir Alan de Vere, and that of 
 King Edward by Master William Canynge. 
 
 9. The Balade of Charitie : ' As wroten bie the gode 
 prieste Thomas Rowleie, 1464.' This poem, it has been 
 ascertained, was sent by Chatterton to the Town and 
 Country Magazine, with a note to the editor, signed ' D. B.' 
 and dated 'July 4, 1770,' as follows 'Sir, if the glossary 
 annexed to the following piece will make the language 
 intelligible, the sentiment, description, and versification 
 are highly deserving the attention of the literati.' This 
 commendation notwithstanding, the poem seems to have 
 been rejected. That may have been a disappointment to 
 Chatterton ; for one infers that the piece may have been 
 written, or finally touched up, in London, when his other 
 magazine contributions were failing, and he thought of 
 making a new and more definite experiment there with 
 his Antiques (see ante pp. 215-216). It may have been 
 for the purpose of this very piece, indeed, that he had 
 sent to Bristol for his glossary of antique terms. At 
 all events, the piece is one of the latest written of the 
 Antiques. 
 
 10. The Battle of Hastings : A long rhymed description,
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 303 
 
 in two distinct versions, of supposed incidents in the great 
 battle by which Duke William became master of England. 
 The poem purported to be a translation by Rowley of a 
 metrical narrative by Turgot, a Saxon monk, contemporary 
 with the Conquest. 
 
 These Antique Poems of Chatterton (and there 
 are about twenty shorter pieces in the series, some 
 of them mere morsels) are perhaps as worthy of being 
 still read as many portions of the poetry of Byron, 
 Shelley, or Keats. There are, at least, passages in 
 them quite equal to any to be found in those poets ; 
 and it is only the uncouth and spurious appear- 
 ance of antiquity they wear when the absurd spell- 
 ing in which they were first printed is retained 
 that prevents them from being known and quoted. 
 In the specimens now to be given we shall remove 
 that concealment so far as may be possible with 
 due retention of every jot and tittle of the assumed 
 archaism of the language. Chatterton's archaisms, 
 whether of vocabulary or of grammar, pseudo- 
 archaisms though they were, belonged to his very 
 mood when he wrote the poems, and swayed 
 his imagination in the production of them ; they 
 are essential, therefore, to the proper effect of the 
 poems now ; and no editor has a right to tamper 
 with them any more than with the substance of 
 the text, or with that artificial archaism of Spenser's
 
 304 CHATTERTON 
 
 language which was part of his device for distancing 
 himself from the world of the present, and carrying 
 his readers back with him into an imaginary world 
 of the Arthurian past. Let it be understood, there- 
 fore, that in the following extracts nothing of the 
 archaic is removed except what is archaic for the 
 eye only i.e., so much of the troublesome old 
 spelling as is wholly meaningless for the ear and 
 that, if the extracts are read aloud as they are here 
 presented, they will be read just as Chatterton 
 himself must have read them. The archaic words 
 as they are encountered may be pronounced in mere 
 faith or guess at first ; and there may be reference 
 afterwards to the footnotes for their certain or 
 probable meanings. 
 
 Here is the Balade of Charitie entire : 
 
 ' In Virgine the sweltry sun gan sheene 
 And hot upon the mees 1 did cast his ray ; 
 The apple rudded from its paly green, 
 And the moll 2 pear did bend his leafy spray ; 
 The peed chelandrie 3 sung the livelong day ; 
 Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year, 
 And eke the ground was dight in its most deft aumere. 4 
 
 ' The sun was gleaming in the mid of day, 
 Dead still the air, and eke the welkin blue, 
 When from the sea arist in drear array 
 A heap of clouds of sable sullen hue ; 
 
 1 Meads. 2 Soft. 3 Pied goldfinch. 4 Becoming mantle.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 305 
 
 The which full fast into the woodland drew, 
 Hiltring atenes l the sunne's fetive face ; 
 And the black tempest swoln and gathered up apace. 
 
 ' Beneath an holm, fast by a pathway side, 
 Which did unto Saint Godwin's convent lead, 
 A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide, 
 Poor in the view, ungentle in his weed, 
 Long bretful 2 of the miseries of need. 
 Where from the hailstones could the aimer fly? 
 He had no housen there, ne any convent nigh ! 
 
 ' Look in his gloomed 3 face, his spright there scan : 
 How woe-begone, how withered, forwend, 4 dead ! 
 Haste to thy church-glebe-house, 5 ashrewed man ! 6 
 Haste to thy kist, 7 thy only dortour-bed : 8 
 Cale 9 as the clay which will gre 10 on thy head 
 Is charity and love among high elves : 
 Knightes and barons live for pleasure and themselves. 
 
 ' The gathered storm is ripe : the big drops fall ; 
 The forswat meadows smeethe 11 and drench with rain ; 
 The coming ghastness does the cattle pall ; 
 And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain ; 
 Dashed from the clouds the waters float again ; 
 The welkin opes ; the yellow levin flies ; 
 And the hot fiery smoth in the wide lowings dies. 12 
 
 ' List ! how the thunder's rattling dimming 13 sound 
 Cheeves slowly on, and then embollen clangs, 14 
 Shakes the high spire, and, lost, dispended, drowned, 
 Still on the galliard ear of terror hangs. 15 
 The winds are up ; the lofty elmen swangs ; 
 Again the levin and the thunder pours, 
 And the full clouds are burst attenes in stonen showers. 
 
 1 Shrouding at once. 2 Brimful. 3 Clouded. 
 
 4 Sapless. B To thy grave. 6 Accursed man. 
 
 7 Coffin. 8 Dormitory. 9 Cold. 10 Grow. 
 
 11 Sweated meadows smoke. 12 Fiery steam : wide flamings. 
 
 18 Noisy. 14 Moves slowly : swollen clangs. 15 Frighted ear. 
 
 U
 
 306 CHATTERTON 
 
 ' Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain, 
 The Abbot of Saint Godwin's convent came ; 
 His chapournet 1 was drented 2 with the rain, 
 And his penct 3 girdle met with mickle shame ; 
 He ainward 4 told his bead-roll at the same. 
 The storm increasen, and he drew aside, 
 With the mist 5 alms-craver near to the holm to bide. 
 
 ' His cope 6 was all of Lincoln cloth so fine, 
 With a gold button fastened near his chin ; 
 His autremete 7 was edged with golden twine, 
 And his shoon-pike 8 a loverd's 9 might have bin, 
 Full well it shewn he thoughten cost no sin ; 
 The trammels of his palfrey pleased his sight, 
 For the horse-milliner his head with roses dight. 
 
 ' "An alms, Sir Priest !" the dropping pilgrim said, 
 " O let me wait within your convent-door, 
 Till the sun shineth high above our head, 
 And the loud tempest of the air is o'er. 
 Helpless and old am I, alas ! and poor ; 
 No home, ne friend, ne money in my pouch ; 
 All that I call my own is this my silver crouch." 10 
 
 ' " Varlet," replied the Abbot, " cease your din ; 
 This is no season alms and prayers to give ; 
 My porter never lets a faitour n in ; 
 None touch my ring who not in honour live." 
 And, now the sun with the black clouds did strive, 
 And shetting 12 on the ground his glary ray, 
 The Abbot spurred his steed and eftsoons rode away. 
 
 ' Once more the sky was black, the thunder rolled ; 
 Fast rinning o'er the plain a priest was seen, 
 Ne dight 13 full proud, ne buttoned up in gold ; 
 
 1 Round hat. 2 Drenched. 3 Painted. 
 
 4 Backwards, the wrong way, in token of anger. 5 Wretched. 
 6 Cloak. 7 Under-vestment. 8 Shoe-peaks. 9 A lord's. 
 
 10 Used for cross or crucifix by stress of rhyme. u A vagabond 
 12 Shooting. 13 Dressed.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 307 
 
 His cope 1 and jape 2 were gray, and eke were clean ; 
 A limitour 3 he was of order mean ; 
 And from the pathway-side then turned he, 
 Where the poor aimer lay beneath the holmen tree. 
 
 ' " An alms, Sir Priest," the dropping pilgrim said, 
 " For sweet Saint Mary and your order's sake." 
 The limitour then loosened his pouch-thread, 
 And did thereout a groat of silver take. 
 The mister * pilgrim did for hallin 5 shake : 
 " Here, take this silver, it may eathe 6 thy care ; 
 We are God's stewards all, neete 7 of our own we bear. 
 
 ' " But ah ! unhaily 8 pilgrim, learn of me, 
 Scathe any give a rent-roll to their Lord. 
 Here take my semicope 9 ; thou art bare, I see ; 
 'Tis thine ; the saints will give me my reward." 
 He left the pilgrim, and his way abord. 10 
 Virgin and holy Saints who sit in gloure, 11 
 Or give the mighty will, or give the good man power ! ' 
 
 In the last two lines there is an example of a 
 power of sententious and compact expression which 
 is not infrequent in the Rowley Poems. Here are 
 a few more samples of the same 
 
 ' Plays made from halie tales I hold unmeet ; 
 Let some great story of a man be sung.' 
 
 ' Verse may be good, but poetry wants more.' 
 
 ' Strange doom it is that in these days of ours 
 Nought but a bare recital can have place : 
 
 Now shapely Poesy hath lost its powers, 
 And pinant 12 History is only grace.' 
 
 1 Cloak. 2 Surplice. 3 Begging Friar. 4 Wretched. 
 
 5 Joy. ' Ease. 7 Naught. 8 Unhappy. 
 
 9 Short under-cloak. 10 Went on. u Glory. 12 Languid History.
 
 3 o8 CHATTERTON 
 
 ' But then renown eterne ! It is but air 
 Bred in the phantasie, and allene living there.' 
 
 ' Still murmuring at their schap, 1 still to the king 
 They roll their troubles like a surgy sea. 
 
 Han England, then, a tongue, but not a sting ? 
 Doth all complain, yet none will righted be ? ' 
 
 ' And both together sought the unknown shore, 
 Where we shall go, where many 's gone before.' 
 
 ' So have I seen a mountain-oak, that long 
 Has cast his shadow to the mountain side, 
 
 Brave all the winds, though ever they so strong, 
 And view the briars below with self-taught pride ; 
 
 But, when thrown down by mighty thunder-stroke, 
 
 He 'd rather be a briar than an oak.' 
 
 The following is a personification almost worthy 
 of Spenser 
 
 ' Hope, holy sister, sweeping through the sky, 
 In crown of gold and robe of lily white, 
 Which far abroad in gentle air doth fly, 
 Meeting from distance the enjoyous sight ; 
 Albeit oft thou takest thy high flight 
 Hecked in mist, 2 and with thine eyne yblent. 3 ' 
 
 Here are the opening stanzas of the second 
 draft of The Battle of Hastings. They describe the 
 imagined first incidents of the battle, and are quoted 
 as exemplifying Chatterton's use of a peculiar ten- 
 lined stanza of which he was very fond, and which 
 seems to have been of his own invention : 
 
 1 Fate. 2 Shrouded in mist. * Eyes blinded.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 309 
 
 ' Oh Truth ! immortal daughter of the skies, 
 Too little known to writers of these days, 
 Teach me, fair Sanct, thy passing worth to prize, 
 To blame a friend, and give a foeman praise. 
 The fickle moon, bedecked with silver rays, 
 Leading a train of stars of feeble light, 
 With look adigne 1 the world below surveys, 
 The world that wotted not it could be night. 
 With armour dight, with human gore y-dyed, 
 She sees King Harold stand, fair England's curse and pride. 
 
 4 With ale and vernage 2 drunk, his soldiers lay ; 
 Here was an hind anigh an earl y-spread, 
 And keeping of their leader's natal day, 
 This even in drink, to-morrow with the dead ! 
 Through every troop disorder reared her head ; 
 Dancing and heydeigns 3 was the only theme : 
 Sad doom was theirs, who left this easy bed, 
 And waked to torments from so sweet a dream. 
 Duke William's men, of coming death afraid, 
 All night to the great God for succour asked and prayed. 
 
 ' Thus Harold to his wights that stood around : 
 " Go, Gurth and Edward, take bills half-a-score, 
 And search how far our foeman's camp doth bound. 
 Yourself have rede ; I need to say no more. 
 My brother, best beloved of any ore, 4 
 My Leofwinus, go to every wight ; 
 Tell them to range the battle to the grore, 5 
 And waiten till I send the hest 6 for fight." 
 He said : the loyal brothers left the place, 
 Success and cheerfulness depicted on each face. 
 
 ' Slowly brave Gurth and Edward did advance, 
 And marked with care the army's distant side, 
 When the dire clattering of the shield and lance 
 Made them to be by Hugh Fitzhugh espied. 
 He lifted up his voice and loudly cried ; 
 
 1 Noble. 2 Sweet wine. 3 Some rustic sport. 
 
 4 Other. 5 Intended meaning unknown. G Order.
 
 310 CHATTERTON 
 
 Like wolves in winter did the Normans yell ; 
 Gurth drew his sword, and cut his burled 1 hide ; 
 The proto-slain 2 man of the field he fell ; 
 Out-streamed the blood, and ran in smoking curls ; 
 Reflected by the moon seemed rubies mixed with pearls. 
 
 ' A troop of Normans from the mass-song came, 
 Roused from their prayers by the flotting 3 cry. 
 Though Gurth and Ailwardus perceived the same, 
 Not once they stood abashed or thought to fly : 
 He seized a bill, to conquer or to die. 
 Fierce as a clevis 4 from a rock y-torn, 
 That makes a valley wheresoe'er it lies, 
 Fierce as a river bursting from the bourne, 5 
 So fiercely Gurth hit Fitz du Gore a blow, 
 And on the verdant plain he laid the champion low. 
 
 ' Tankerville thus : "All peace in William's name ! 
 Let none y-draw his arcublaster bow ! " 
 Gurth cased his weapon as he heard the same, 
 And venging Normans stayed the flying floe. 6 
 The sire went on : " Ye men, what mean ye so 
 Thus unprovoked to court a bloody fight ? " 
 Quoth Gurth, " Our meaning we ne care to show, 
 Nor dread thy Duke with all his men of might ; 
 Here, single only, these to all thy crew 
 Shall show what English hands and hearts can do." 
 
 ' " Seek not for blood," Tankerville calm replied, 
 " Nor joy in death like madmen most distraught. 
 In peace and mercy is a Christian's pride ; 
 He that doth contests prize is in a fault." 7 
 And now the news was to Duke William brought 
 That men of Harold's army taken were. 
 For their good cheer all caties 8 were enthought, 9 
 
 1 Armed. 2 First slain. 3 Whistling. 
 
 4 Cliff. 5 Bank or boundary. 6 Arrow. 
 
 7 Generally pronounced/aw* in last century. 8 Gates, dainties. 
 9 Thought of.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 311 
 
 And Gurth and Edwardus enjoyed good cheer. 
 
 Quoth William, " Thus shall William be found 
 
 A friend to every man that treads on English ground." ' 
 
 In a different metre is a scrap of two stanzas 
 entitled Account of W. Canynge's Feast, and pur- 
 porting to have been composed by the great Bristol 
 merchant himself. The piece of discoloured parch- 
 ment on which it is inscribed in characters of red 
 ink, and which Chatterton gave to Mr. Barrett as 
 the original in Canynge's handwriting, is now 
 among the Chatterton MSS. in the British Museum. 
 Within the small space of two stanzas the 
 coagulation of archaic words and of mistaken 
 forms of old grammar is so dense as almost to 
 defy easy interpretation of the piece at first sight ; 
 and the difficulty has been needlessly increased 
 by the wretched punctuation of the piece hitherto 
 in the printed copies. That fault amended, and the 
 old spellings dropped where they imply nothing 
 either in sense or in sound, but retained where they 
 do imply anything, the piece stands thus : 
 
 ' Thorough the hall the bell han 1 sound ; 
 Byelecoyle 2 do 3 the grave beseem ; 
 The aldermen do sit around, 
 And snoffle up the cheorte 4 steam, 
 Like asses wild in desert waste 
 Swotely 5 the morning air do taste. 
 
 1 Mistaken archaism for hath. 2 Hospitable reception. 
 
 3 Mistaken for doth. 4 Savoury. 5 Sweetly.
 
 312 CHATTERTON 
 
 * Sic 1 keen they ate : the minstrels play ; 
 The din of angels do they keep, 
 High style : the guests ha 2 ne" 3 to say, 
 But nod their thanks and fall asleep. 
 Thus eachone day be I to deene, 4 
 Gif Rowley, Iscam, or Tib Georges be ne 5 seen.' 
 
 This is still somewhat opaque ; but it may be 
 cleared by taking in the explanations from the 
 footnotes, or better still by reading Professor 
 Skeat's explanations in his luminous and inter- 
 esting note on the piece. They are as follows : 
 ' It contains the word han for hath, a peculiarly 
 ' Rowleian blunder, found in Rowley passim^ but 
 ' in no other writer ; han is plural, and can only 
 ' do duty for have. The same remark applies to 
 ' ne, which is common for not or nought in Rowley, 
 ' but never means naught in Old English. Neither 
 ' does it in Old English follow its verb. The 
 ' words byelecoyle and cheorte are from Bailey 
 ' [Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary}. The 
 ' former word is due to a singular mistake. It 
 ' so happens that a personage named Bialacoil 
 ' appears in the Romaunte of the Rose. This is 
 ( bad spelling for the old French bel-accuel, i.e., fair 
 ' reception. Hence Bialacoil has been rightly 
 ' Englished in the glossaries by Fair-welcome or 
 
 1 So. 2 Have. a Naught. * Dine. 5 Not.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 313 
 
 ' Fair-welcoming. Chatterton, not understanding 
 ' this, has turned a proper substantive into a com- 
 ' mon adjective, as though he should say the 
 ' grave people appear hospitable. Otherwise, we 
 ' must take it to mean fair welcome doth befit 
 ' grave men ; only do never means doth! So en- 
 lightened, let the reader try the two stanzas again. 
 Then all becomes plain and delightful. What do we 
 see ? We see Canynge in his dining-hall, entertaining 
 his guests hospitably, as befits a grave and wealthy 
 Bristol merchant. But the guests are only a few 
 aldermen ; and, as he looks at them seated round 
 the table and snuffing up the savoury steam from 
 the dishes before them, he compares them in his 
 own mind to so many wild asses in the desert snuff- 
 ing the sweet morning air. He is giving them the 
 best of music, for the minstrels are playing in the 
 hall during dinner, playing angelically and in their 
 highest style ; but it is all in vain. Not a word 
 have his guests to say on that or on any other 
 subject ; they only nod their thanks and fall asleep. 
 He thinks with himself what a dreary succession of 
 dinners he has to look forward to if they are to 
 be all like this, and if he cannot see one or other 
 of his poetical friends, Rowley, Iscam, or Tibbot 
 Gorges, again at his table ; and he pens the
 
 314 CHATTERTON 
 
 reflection for their benefit. Could anything be 
 cleverer ? 
 
 Perhaps, however, it is in the lyrical pieces 
 scattered through the Antique Poems that Chatter- 
 ton's genius is seen at its best. Here is Rowley's 
 Song to 
 
 ' Oh thou, or what remains of thee, 
 
 ALlla, the darling of futurity, 
 Let this my song bold as thy courage be, 
 
 As everlasting to posterity ! 
 When Dacia's sons, with hairs of blood-red hue, 
 Like king-cups bursting with the morning dew, 
 
 Arranged in drear array, 
 
 Upon the lethal day, 
 Spread far and wide on Watchet's shore, 
 
 Then didst thou furious stand, 
 
 And by thy valiant hand 
 Besprenged all the mees l with gore. 
 
 Drawn by thine anlace 2 fell 
 
 Down to the depths of hell 
 Thousands of Dacians went ; 
 Bristowans, men of might, 
 Ydared the bloody fight, 
 And acted deeds full quaint. 
 
 ' Oh thou, where'er (thy bones at rest) 
 
 Thy spirit to haunt delighteth best, 
 Whether upon the blood-imbrued plain, 
 
 Or where thou kenst from far 
 
 The dismal cry of war, 
 Or seest some mountain made of corse of slain ; 
 
 Or seest the hatched 3 steed 
 
 Yprancing on the mead, 
 
 1 Meads. 2 Sword. 3 Accoutred.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 315 
 
 And neigh to be among the pointed spears ; 
 Or in black armour stalk around 
 Embattled Bristowe, once thy ground, 
 
 And glow ardurous 1 on the castle stairs, 
 Or fiery round the minster glare : 
 Let Bristowe still be made thy care. 
 
 Guard it from foemen and consuming fire ; 
 Like Avon's stream encirc it round ; 
 Ne let a flame enharm the ground, 
 
 Till in one flame all the whole world expire.' 
 
 From this piece of powerful imagination turn to 
 the following exquisitely dainty little song supposed 
 to be sung for the entertainment of Birtha by one of 
 ^Ella's minstrels. The song, though introduced into 
 ALlla, purports to be by Sir Tibbot Gorges, and not 
 by Rowley 
 
 ' As Elinour by the green lessel 2 was sitting, 
 
 As from the sun's heate she harried, 
 She said, as her white hands white hosen was knitting, 
 " What pleasure it is to be married ! 
 
 " My husband, lord Thomas, a forester bold 
 
 As ever clove pin or the basket, 3 
 Does no cherisaunces 4 from Elinour hold ; 
 I have it as soon as I ask it. 
 
 ' " When I lived with my father in merry Cloud-dell, 
 
 Though 'twas at my lief to mind spinning, 
 I still wanted something, but what ne could tell, 
 My lord-father's barbed 6 hall ban ne winning. 6 
 
 ' " Each morning I rise do I set my maidens, 
 
 Some to spin, some to cardie, some bleaching ; 
 Gif any new entered do ask for mine aidens, 
 Then swithen 7 you find me a-teaching. 
 
 1 All blazing. 2 Arbour. 3 Marks in archery. * Comforts. 
 
 5 Decorated. 6 Had no charms. 7 Straightway.
 
 316 CHATTERTON 
 
 ' " Lord Walter, my father, he loved me well, 
 
 And nothing unto me was needing ; 
 But, should I again go to merry Cloud-dell, 
 In soothen 'twould be without reding." 1 
 
 ' She said ; and lord Thomas came over the lea, 
 
 As he the fat deerkins was chasing ; 
 She put by her knitting, and to him went she : 
 So we leave them both kindly embracing.' 
 
 The following, in another strain, is also one of the 
 lyrics sung by the minstrels in ALlla. It is the song 
 of a bereaved maiden 
 
 ' O, sing unto my roundelay ; 
 O, drop the briny tear with me ; 
 Daunce ne moe at halie-day ; 
 Like a running river be. 
 
 My love is dead, 
 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 ' Black his crine 2 as the winter-night, 
 White his rood 3 as the summer snow, 
 Rud his face as the morning light ; 
 Cold he lies in the grave below. 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 * Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note ; 
 Quick in dance as thought can be ; 
 Deft his tabour, cudgel stout ; 
 O, he lies by the willow-tree. 
 
 My love is dead, 
 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 1 Good advice. 2 Hair. 3 Neck.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 317 
 
 ' Hark ! the raven flaps his wing 
 In the briared dell below ; 
 Hark ! the death-owl loud doth sing 
 To the nightmares as they go. 
 
 My love is dead, 
 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 ' See ! the white moon shines on high ; 
 Whiter is my true love's shroud, 
 Whiter than the morning-sky, 
 Whiter than the evening-cloud. 
 
 My love is dead, 
 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 ' Here upon my true love's grave 
 Shall the barren flowers be laid ! 
 Ne one halie saint to save 
 All the celness 1 of a maid. 
 
 My love is dead, 
 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 ' With my hands I '11 dent 2 the briars 
 Round his halie corse to gree ; 
 Ouphant, 3 fairy, light your fires ; 
 Here my body still shall be. 
 
 My love is dead, 
 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 ' Come with acorn-cup and thorn ; 
 Drain my hearte's blood away ; 
 Life and all its good I scorn, 
 Dance by night, or feast by day. 
 
 My love is dead, 
 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 1 Coldness. 2 Fasten. * Elfin.
 
 3i8 CHATTERTON 
 
 ' Water witches, crowned with raits, 1 
 Bear me to your lethal tide : 
 I die ! I come ! my true love waits. 
 Thus the damsel spake, and died.' 
 
 But perhaps the grandest thing in all Chatterton 
 is his fragmentary Ode to Liberty in his Tragedy of 
 Godwin. There is nothing nobler of its kind in the 
 whole range of English poetry. A chorus is 
 supposed to sing the song : which is throughout, it 
 will be seen, a burst of glorious and sustained 
 personification 
 
 ' When Freedom, drest in blood-stained vest, 
 
 To every knight her war-song sung, 
 Upon her head wild weeds were spread, 
 A gory anlace 2 by her hung. 
 
 She danced on the heath ; 
 She heard the voice of Death ; 
 Pale-eyed Affright, his heart of silver hue, 
 In vain assailed her bosom to acale. 3 
 She heard onflemed 4 the shrieking voice of woe, 
 And sadness in the owlet shake the dale. 
 She shook the burled 6 spear ; 
 On high she jeest 6 her shield ; 
 Her foemen all appear, 
 And flizz along the field. 
 
 Power, with his heafod straught 7 into the skies, 
 His spear a sunbeam and his shield a star, 
 Alike tway brenning gronfires 8 rolls his eyes, 
 Chafts with his iron feet and sounds to war. 
 She sits upon a rock ; 
 She bends before his spear ; 
 
 i Rushes. 2 Sword. 8 Freeze. 4 Unterrified. 5 Pointed. 
 6 Tossed. 7 Head stretched. 8 Two burning meteors.
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF POSTERITY 319 
 
 She rises from the shock, 
 
 Wielding her own in air. 
 Hard as the thunder doth she drive it on ; 
 Wit skilly wimpled 1 guides it to his crown ; 
 His long sharp spear, his spreading shield, is gone ; 
 He falls, and falling rolleth thousands down. 
 War, gore-faced War, by envy burl'd, 2 arist, 
 His fiery helm nodding to the air, 
 Ten bloody arrows in his straining fist.' 
 
 What a picture in the last line ! With no other 
 evidence before us than is afforded by this and by 
 the other pieces that have been quoted, one may 
 assert, unhesitatingly, not only that Chatterton was 
 a true English poet of the eighteenth century, but 
 also that, compared with the other British poets 
 of the part of that century immediately prior 
 to the new era begun by Burns and Wordsworth, 
 he was, with all his immaturity, almost solitary 
 in the possession of the highest poetic gift. Pope, 
 Thomson, and Goldsmith, were poets of that 
 period ; and no sensible man will now think of 
 comparing the boy of Bristol, in respect of his 
 whole activity, with those established classics in 
 our literature, or even with some of their minor 
 contemporaries. But he had a more specific fire 
 and force of imagination in him, a dash more of 
 the mystic 'vision and faculty divine,' than is dis- 
 
 1 Closely covered. 2 Armed.
 
 320 CHATTERTON 
 
 cernible in any of them ; and, when one remembers 
 that he was but seventeen years and nine months 
 old when he died, and that some of the best of his 
 antiques were written fully a year before his death, 
 little wonder that, with Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 and Keats, and with Rossetti still later, one looks 
 back again and again on his brief existence with 
 a kind of awe, as on the track of a heaven-shot 
 meteor earthwards through a night of gloom. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
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