The Rowley Poems by Thomas Chatterton (inspirational books to read .txt) 📖

the glossary of which Chatterton

used in the compilation of his Rowley Dictionary.

 

Kersey's _Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum_, and

 

Bailey's _Universal Etymological Dictionary_. (8th Enlarged

Edition.) Bailey is largely copied from Kersey, but Chatterton

certainly used both dictionaries in making his antique language.

 

Tyrwhitt's edition of the Rowley poems. Tyrwhitt was

Chatterton's first editor and in his edition many of the poems

were printed for the first time. 'The only really good edition is

Tyrwhitt's.' 'This exhibits a careful and, I believe, extremely

accurate text ... an excellent account of the MSS. and transcripts

from which it was derived. It is a fortunate circumstance that the

first editor was so thoroughly competent.' (Professor Skeat, Introd.

to Vol. II of his 1871 edition.)

 

Tyrwhitt's third edition, from which the present edition is

printed. With this was printed for the first time 'An appendix ...

tending to prove that the Rowley poems were written not by any ancient

author but entirely by Thomas Chatterton.' This edition follows the

first nearly page for page; but was reset.

 

_Love and Madness_ by Sir Herbert Croft. This strange book

deserves a brief description as it is the source of almost all our

knowledge of Chatterton.

 

A certain Captain Hackman, violently in love with a Miss Reay,

mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, and stung to madness by his jealousy

and the hopelessness of his position, had in 1779 shot her in the

Covent Garden Opera House and afterwards unsuccessfully attempted

to shoot himself. Enormous public interest was excited, and

Croft--baronet, parson, and literary adventurer--got hold of copies

which Hackman had kept of some letters he had sent to the charming

Miss Reay. These he published as a sensational topical novel in

epistolary form, calling it _Love and Madness_. This is quite worth

reading for its own sake, but much more so for its 49th letter,

which purports to have been written by Hackman to satisfy Miss Reay's

curiosity about Chatterton. As a matter of fact Croft, who had been

very interested in the boy-poet and had collected from his relations

and those with whom he had lodged in London all they could

possibly tell him, wrote the letter himself and included it rather

inartistically among the genuine Hackman-Reay correspondence. Amongst

other valuable matter, this letter 49 contains a long account of her

brother by Mary Chatterton.--(See _Love letters of Mr. Hackman and

Miss Reay_, 1775-79, introduction by Gilbert Burgess: Heinemann,

1895.) 1774-81. Warton's _History of English Poetry_, in Volume II of

which there is an account of Chatterton.

 

Jacob Bryant's _Observations upon the Poems of T. Rowley in

which the authenticity of those poems is ascertained_. Bryant was a

strong Pro-Rowleian and argues cleverly against the possibility of

Chatterton's having written the poems. He shows that Chatterton in his

notes often misses Rowley's meaning and insists that he neglected to

explain obvious difficulties because he could not understand them.

Bryant is the least absurd of the Pro-Rowleians.

 

Dean Milles' edition of the Rowley poems--a splendid quarto with

a running commentary attempting to vindicate Rowley's authenticity.

Milles was President of the Society of Antiquaries and his commentary

is characterized by Professor Skeat as 'perhaps the most surprising

trash in the way of notes that was ever penned.

 

Mathias' _Essay on the Evidence ... relating to the poems called

Rowley's_--he is pro-Rowleian and criticizes Tyrwhitt's appendix.

 

Thomas Warton's _Enquiry ... into the Poems attributed to Thomas

Rowley_--Anti-Rowleian.

 

Tyrwhitt's _Vindication_ of his Appendix. Tyrwhitt had

discovered Chatterton's use of Bailey's Dictionary and completely

refutes Bryant, Milles, and Mathias. It may be observed in passing

that though Goldsmith upheld Rowley, Dr. Johnson, the two

Wartons, Steevens, Percy, Dr. Farmer, and Sir H. Croft pronounced

unhesitatingly in favour of the poems having been written by

Chatterton: while Malone in a mocking anti-Rowleian pamphlet shows

that the similes from Homer in the _Battle of Hastings_ and elsewhere

have often borrowed their rhymes from Pope!

 

_Miscellanies in Prose and Verse_ by Edward Gardner (two

volumes). At the end of Volume II there is a short account of the

Rowley controversy and, what is more important, the statement that

Gardner had seen Chatterton antiquate a parchment and had heard him

say that a person who had studied antiquities could with the aid of

certain books (among them Bailey) 'copy the style of our elder poets

so exactly that the most skilful observer should not be able to detect

him. "No," said he, "not Mr. Walpole himself."' But perhaps this

should be taken _cum grano_.

 

Southey and Cottle's edition in three volumes with an account

of Chatterton by Dr. Gregory which had previously been published as an

independent book. Southey and Cottle's edition is very compendious so

far as matter goes, and contains much that is printed for the first

time. Gregory's life is inaccurate but very pleasantly written.

 

Dix's life of Chatterton, with a frontispiece portrait of

Chatterton aged 12 which was for a long time believed to be authentic.

No genuine portrait of Chatterton is known to be in existence;

probably none was ever made. Dix's life, not a remarkable work in

itself, has some interesting appendices; one of which contains a

story--extraordinary enough but well supported--that Chatterton's

body, which had received a pauper's burial in London, was secretly

reburied in St. Mary's churchyard by his uncle the Sexton.

 

Willcox's edition printed at Cambridge; on the whole a slovenly

piece of work with a villainously written introduction.

 

George Pryce's _Memorials of Canynges Family_; which contains

some notes of the coroner's inquest on Chatterton's body, which would

have been most interesting if authentic, but were in fact forged by

one Gutch.

 

_Chatterton: a biography_ by Professor Masson--published

originally in a volume of collected essays; re-published and in

part re-written as an independent volume in 1899. The Professor

reconstructs scenes in which Chatterton played a part; but it is

suggested (with diffidence) that his treatment is too sentimental, and

the boy-poet is Georgy-porgied in a way that would have driven him

out of his senses, if he could have foreseen it. The picture is

fundamentally false.

 

_An Essay on Chatterton_ by S.R. Maitland, D.D., F.R.S., and

F.S.A. A very monument of ignorant perversity. The writer shamelessly

distorts facts to show that Chatterton was an utterly profligate

blackguard and declares finally that neither Rowley nor Chatterton

wrote the poems.

 

Professor D. Wilson's _Chatterton: a Biographical Study_, and

 

Professor W.W. Skeat's _Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton_ (in

modernized English) of which mention has been made above.

 

A beautifully printed edition of the Rowley poems with decorated

borders, edited by Robert Steele. (Ballantyne Press.)

 

1905 and 1909. The works of Chatterton, with the Rowley poems in

modernized English, edited with a brief introduction by Sidney Lee.

 

_The True Chatterton--a new study from original documents_ by

John H. Ingram. (Fisher Unwin.)

 

Besides all these serious presentations of Chatterton there are a

number of burlesques--such as _Rowley and Chatterton in the Shades_

(1782) and _An Archæological Epistle to Jeremiah Milles_ (1782),

which are clever and amusing, and three plays, two in English, and

one in French by Alfred de Vigny, which represents the love affair of

Chatterton and an apocryphal Mme. Kitty Bell.

 

The whole of Chatterton's writings--Rowley, acknowledged poems, and

private letters, have been translated into French prose. _Oeuvres

complètes de Thomas Chatterton traduites par Javelin Pagnon, précédées

d'une Vie de Chatterton par A. Callet_ (1839). Callet's treatment of

Chatterton is very sympathetic and interesting.

 

Finally for further works on Chatterton the reader is referred to

Bohn's Edition of Lowndes' _Bibliographer's Manual_--but the most

important have been enumerated above.

 

 

 

IV. (NOTE ON THE TEXT.)

 

This edition is a reprint of Tyrwhitt's third (1778) edition, which it

follows page for page (except the glossary; see note on p. 291). The

reference numbers in text and glossary, which are often wrong in 1778,

have been corrected; line-numbers have been corrected when wrong, and

added to one or two poems which are without them in 1778, and the text

has been collated throughout with that of 1777 and corrected from it

in many places where the 1778 printer was at fault. These corrections

have been made silently; all other corrections and additions are

indicated by footnotes enclosed in square brackets.

V. (NOTES.)

 

_The Tournament_, lines 7-10.

 

  Wythe straunge depyctures, Nature maie nott yeelde, &c.

 

'This is neither sense nor grammar as it stands' says Professor Skeat.

But Chatterton is frequently ungrammatical, and the sense of the

passage is quite clear if either of the two following possible

meanings is attributed to _unryghte_.

 

(1)=to present an intelligible significance otherwise than by

writing--as 'rebus'd shields' do (un-write);

 

or (2) = to misrepresent (un-right).

 

With pictures of strange beasts that have no counterpart in Nature and

appear to be purely fantastic ('unseemly to all order') yet none the

less make known to men good at guessing riddles ('who thyncke and

have a spryte') what the strange heraldic forms

express-without-use-of-written-words ('unryghte')--or (taking

the second meaning of unryghte--misrepresent)

present-with-a-disregard-of-truth-to-nature.

 

_Letter to the Dygne Mastre Canynge_, line 15.

 

  Seldomm, or never, are armes vyrtues mede, (that is to say, coats of arms)

  Shee nillynge to take myckle aie dothe hede

 

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

says Prof. Skeat. But the sentence is an example of ellipse, a figure

which Chatterton affected a good deal, and fully expressed would run

'She--not willing to take much, ever doth heed not to take

much', which would of course be intolerably clumsy but perfectly

intelligible.

 

_Ælla_, line 467.

 

  Certis thie wordes maie, thou motest have sayne &c.

 

Prof. Skeat 'can make nothing of this' and reads 'Certes thy wordes

mightest thou have sayn'.

 

A simple emendation of _maie_ to _meynte_ would give very good sense.

 

_Ælla_, line 489.

 

Tyrwhitt has _sphere_--evidently a mistake in the MS. for _spere_

which he overlooked. It is not included in his errata. In the 1842

edition the meaning 'spear' is given in a footnote.

 

_Englysh Metamorphosis_.

 

Prof. Skeat was the first to point out that this piece is an imitation

of _The Faerie Queene_, Bk. ii, Canto X, stanzas 5-19.

 

_Battle of Hastings_, II, line 578.

 

  To the ourt arraie of the thight Saxonnes came

 

Prof. Skeat explains _ourt_ as 'overt' and observes that it

contradicts _thight_, which he renders 'tight'. But really there is

not even an antithesis. _Ourt arraie_ is what a military handbook

calls 'open order' and _thight_ is 'well-built', well put together

(Bailey's Dictionary). The Saxons were well-built men marching in open

order.

VI. (APPENDIX.)

 

BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE ARGUMENTS USED IN THE ROWLEY CONTROVERSY.

 

(Taken mainly from Gregory's _Life of Chatterton_.)

 

 

_Against Rowley_.

 

So few originals produced--not more than 124 verses.

 

Chatterton had shown (by his article on Christmas games, &c.) that

he had a strong turn for antiquities. He had also written poetry. Why

then should he not have written Rowley's poems?

 

His declaration that the _Battle of Hastings_ I