subject; but with his heart beating proudly reader who sympathizes in such virtuous in his breast, presented the boy with five indignation," says Dr. Wilson, who entershillings for his timely and wonderful dis- tains other notions, “ to know that the pedicovery. Never was there a more successful gree did not after all prove a bad investpractical joke; and Chatterton must have ment. The copy books, containing along left the shop swelling with fun and triumph, with it and its Romaunte of the Cnyghte," with his crown-piece in his pocket and de- some of the earliest transcripts of the Rowley light in his heart. poems, were ultimately disposed of by the family to Mr. Joseph Cottle for the sum of five guineas." So thorough, however, was the belief of the descendant of the De Berghams in his new-found pedigree, that he actually submitted the document to the College of Heralds for confirmation step which, however, it is supposed was not taken till after Chatterton's death. 66 66 a By this time the boy had begun to make friends out of his own sphere. The antiquarian Barrett, who was labouring busily at a history of Bristol, which has been covered with confusion, yet almost introduced to fame, by the fact that half its assertions are made on the authority of the Rowley MSS., began to traffic with him for his wonderful stock of papers, and "used often to send for him from the charity-school, which was close to his house, and differ with him in opinion, on purpose to make him in earnest, and to see how wonderfully his eye would strike fire, kindle, and light up." At one time a hope of studying medicine He had not, however, done with the pewterer. The pedigree thus miraculously found brought down the family of De Bergham only to the thirteenth century, between which and the time of Henry Burgum there might be many slips. And accordingly, the discoverer, too lavish in his fertile powers of invention to cut any thread short which he could spin out, caught up the uncompleted tale, and gave its continuation with a still more lavish hand. What so easy as to sow distinguished personages into the roll which could be subjected to no test but that of imagination? Accordingly he pauses in the commonplace record of knights and ladies to interpolate a certain Master John De Bergham, a Cistercian monk, who was one of the greatest ornaments of the age in which he lived," a poet, and translator of the "Iliad," whose talents had been fully recognized in his own century, though grown somewhat dim in the eighteenth. To give you an idea of the poetry of the age," said this strangest of heralds, "take the follow-under the care of this gentleman, who was ing piece, written by John de Bergham in a doctor, seems to have crossed his mind; the year 1320." And here follows the and it is evident that he was permitted to Romaunte of the Cnyghte," one of the read many medical works, and to pick up most archaic of all the poems, which, as well some superficial knowledge of the science. as a Latin letter from the University of Ox- Barrett is much blamed by Dr. Wilson for ford, commending the high qualities of his want of insight into the poet's character, Friar John, is introduced into the very and for having repulsed his confidence and heart of the pedigree. We do not need to lost the opportunity of leading him safely add that the Latinity of this letter, as well into the paths of greatness. But notwithas sundry other scraps which shall follow, standing all the sympathy we feel for Chatwas of the most doubtful kind. The second terton, it cannot be denied that he hoaxed part of the De Bergham pedigree produced his friends all round with charming imparanother crown for Chatterton's empty pock-tiality, and afterwards satirized them with a ets, and no doubt he felt himself thoroughly plainness of speech at which it is natural well paid for the moment. A great deal of enough to suppose they must have winced. quaint indignation has been wasted on this Had anybody been able to foresee the piece of most elaborate nonsense. Such a blackness of darkness so soon to overtake trick, if performed by any public-school boy him, the wild despair and miserable fate of of the present day, would meet with more a boy so full of exuberant life and power laughter than reprobation; but Chatterton's and prodigal energy, who can doubt that critics have made it out to be " indescrib- Barrett and Catcott and the rest, would ably ignorant and impudent," and no better have used their possibilities of help in a difthan a piece of swindling. Poor fourteen-ferent way? But nobody foresees such year-old boy! It was indescribably clever wonderful and tragic breaks upon the ordiand mischievous, and, no doubt, would have nary routine of existence; and the boy in been punished by a hard imposition had his rash precocity, and the men in their such a trick been discovered by a strongminded master at Eton or Harrow; but poor Chatterton was not permitted the privileges of his boyhood. "It may console the commonplace indifference, went their way, roused by no presentiment. A certain wonder, one would think, must have grown about the lad who could produce such 66 treasures at a moment's notice; but it does | been on one of the summer days intervening not seem to have affected the minds of his that the two first met. Mr. Catcott was school-fellows, who dabbled in small verses walking with a friend in Redcliffe Church themselves, and were, each boy to his own when he was informed of the fact that sevconsciousness, as good men as he. It is eral ancient pieces of poetry had been curious to find that none of the admiring found there, and were in the possession of devotion with which every gifted schoolboy a young person" known to his informant. in a higher class is regarded by some at This news prompted him to seek Chatterton, least of his comrades, seems to have attended perhaps to call him in as he went past, into Chatterton. Probably this is explained by the shop already so well known to him, the lower range of breeding and training, which contained such a monument of his and that strange insensibility to personal skill. The boy showed not the least relucinfluence, and high esteem for self, which tance to speak of his discoveries; and, make the tradesman-class everywhere the according to Catcott's statement, gave him one least subject to any generous weakness at once The Bristowe Tragedie; or the of enthusiasm. The Bristol men who were Deth of Sir Charles Bawdin," and several boys with Chatterton were all indignant at of the smaller poems. Probably they were the mere suggestion that Rowley and he but submitted to his criticism and approbawere one. They were affronted by the idea. tion. He was a man with a library, and It was a personal injustice to them that their every possibility of getting at books was schoolfellow should be made out a genius. precious to the boy; and this was the comThey had no objection to his acknowledged mencement of a curious kind of friendship, writings, which they considered no better in which there seems to have been little than their own. But Rowley's poems, they regard on the one side or the other, but a were sure, with an indignation which had a considerable attempt at mutual profit. In touch of bitterness in it, were no more his Catcott's hands many of the MSS. remained writing than theirs. He had friends, but after Chatterton's death, and he does not he had nobody who believed in him-a seem to have made a generous use of them; curious distinction of the class in which he nor did any gleam of insight into the strange was born. Had he been a gentleman's son, story occur to the eyes of the self-occupied no doubt a young guard of honour, school- shopkeeper. He too received Rowley with fellows, college friends, half of the youth he undoubting faith. The boy was but a came across in his career, would have been charity-boy - one of the many blue-coated ready to risk their life in proof of his genius. urchins that swarmed past the shop-windows And the chances are, that in these circum- all the year round, and broke the panes, stances the lad himself would never have and got in everybody's way. Genius! Mr. been tempted to the fierce satire and bit-Catcott would have laughed at the idea. ter scorn of many of his youthful productions. But it is necessary for us to accept him as he is, a poor charity-boy among a set of young apprentices, Bristol tradesmen in the bud, all confident of being as good as he or as any one, and capable of no worship of the greater spirit in their midst. After the era of the pedigree, Chatterton seems to have gone on with a still stronger flight. He cannot have been more than fifteen, for he still wore the dress of his school, when he met with the other partner in the pewterer's firm. No doubt Burgum had exhibited proudly to his partner the proofs of his own splendid descent, and pointed out the passing schoolboy to whom he owed it; and Chatterton probably was attracted towards Catcott by the achievement above recorded, his crossing of the half-built bridge upon planks laid from pier to pier, with a daring-do worthy of any knight of romance. This event took place in June 1767; and in July of the same year the lad left school, and put off his yellow stockings and tonsure-cap; so it must have The boy was old Chatterton's grandson, the gravedigger, and no doubt had got at the poems exactly as he said. Not the remotest suspicion of a hoax seems to have disturbed the composure or self-conceit of these shallow men. And thus the boy went and came- to Barrett, who probably gave him an occasional half-crown for the bits of curious information about old Bristol which he brought him from time to time, and who liked to see the light flash up in his great grey shining eyes; to Catcott, who received his MSS. with pompous pretended knowledge; and by-and-by to Catcott's clergyman brother, and other worthies of their set, no doubt with a wonder growing in his mind that no one divined the real source of all these marvels. One can imagine the lad's half-trouble, half-delight, in thus bewildering so many-and at the same time the wistful sense of uncomprehended power which must have grown upon him and driven him back to his visionary associates. We are told even that he tried more than once to confide in Barrett, 66 faltering forth an admission that the fine | Twelve hours in the solitude of the office, and vigorous poem called the "Battle of where now and then the footboy or a maid Hastings," which he presented to the anti- from Mr. Lambert's would come on some quary in his own handwriting, was actually pretended errand to make sure that he was his own composition, and done for a there, for the attorney himself was almost friend." Barrett, wise man of the world, always absent; two hours in the evening not to be taken in by such fictions, laughed spent with his mother among her shreds and at the boy. He pressed him to produce the patches, or in the beloved lumber-room. rest of the poem, which was accordingly Never did monk observe a severer routine done at intervals, in fragments, as they of duty; and yet the poor boy was called a could be composed; and pressed him still profligate: no imputation was ever more further for the original MS., which the lad unjust or untrue. - amazed, disappointed, and yet filled who can wonder?—with a certain mischievous contempt for the man who swallowed every fiction he chose to bring yet laughed at the truth-instantly began to fabricate. His docility in such a case is very comprehensible. All the fun of his schoolboy nature, and all the scorn with which an inexperienced young soul looks upon stupidity and intellectual blindness, must have moved him to fool his patron to the top of his bent. It was the man's sin, if any real sin was in it, and not the boy's. But it would be wrong to suppose that this intermediate period was a loss to Chatterton. Mr. Lambert's business seems to have been a very light one, and his apprentice must have been as much office-boy as clerk-" he had little of his master's business to do, sometimes not two hours in a day," says his sister; and though he was supposed to be "improving himself in professional knowledge" by copying precedents during the remainder of the long lonely days, there was plenty of time left for more congenial work. Nearly four In July 1767, Chatterton was transferred hundred closely-written folio pages "" of from school to the office of an attorney, to these precedents are left to prove that he whom he was bound apprentice, the fee be- did not neglect even this musty working supplied by the Hospital. He was to which is no small tribute to his sense of have no wages, but to be clothed, lodged, duty; for the master was absent, and there and maintained by his new employer, a Mr. was no one to keep him to the grindstone, Lambert to take his meals with the ser- and so many inducements to drop away. vants and sleep with the footboy; an The office contained, besides a library of arrangement which was supposed by all law-books, a complete edititon of Camden's parties very satisfactory for a Blue-coat boy. "Britannia; " and his friends whom he supSo far as we are informed, he himself does plied with a succession of wonders lent him not seem to have been any way revolted by books at least, which was some small return. it as we are; for it must be remembered A number of dictionaries of Saxon and that Chatterton as yet had only a boy's early English, Speght's" Chaucer," and vaglorious sense of being able to do almost rious old chronicles, fed his mind and anything he tried — the first and perhaps formed his style. We are told that he comthe most delicious sensation of genius piled from these authorities for his own use without knowing what was his own real an elaborate glossary in archaic and modern standing among all the owls and bats who English, which was his constant companion. were so much more important in the world's There can be no doubt, as Sir Walter Scott eye than he. His office hours were from suggests, that to master a style so cumeight o'clock in the morning till eight in the brously and artificially antique must have evening, with an hour in the middle of the taken almost as much time as the learning day for dinner, and he was expected to re- of a new language; but yet there is a great turn to his master's house every night by deal in the trick of such a mode of writing, ten o'clock. Two hours in the evening and we are inclined to believe that the real were thus all he had for recreation of any labour must have been in the compliation kind, and these he almost invariably spent of the glossary, which made the rest easy at his mother's house. During the two enough - especially as the antiquity of the years he remained with Mr. Lambert he was Rowley poems is entirely artificial; and the only once late in returning. These facts young poet does not seem to have felt that effectually dispose of all insinuations made any study of the sentiments or forms of exagainst the poor boy's character. He never pression natural to the period was required drank, avoiding even the most modest po- to give an air of truthfulness to his productations was fond of tea, and not, it would tions, greedily and unhesitatingly as they seem, without an innocent liking for confec- were swallowed by all the authorities round tionery, simplest of all the tastes of youth. him. The fact seems to have been that a certain impetuous, almost feverish, haste | of experience might be found. "The fol to the generality of your readers," he says, signing himself Dunelmus Bristoliensis," to " Farley's Bristol Journal;" and the accompanying extract was given with all formality as it is quoted. The reader will perceive how, under the strange and overelaborate marks of antiquity, are forms of expression audaciously modern, and a general air of to-day, by which no true antiquary could ever be deceived: and impatience had come upon the lad un-lowing description of the Mayor's first passconsciously to himself. The silent moments ing over the Old Bridge, taken from an old flew over him as he laboured in that dreary MS., may not at this time be unacceptable little office. Something in him, something instinctive, inarticulate, incapable of giving any warning of what was to come, had been impressed by a sense of the shortness of the time and the quantity of work to do. We are informed repeatedly that the attorney on his visits to the office tore up pages of poetry which he found in his clerk's handwriting, and which he perceived was not law-work, nor within his range of comprehension; so that it is perfectly probable that "On Fridaie was the Time fixed for passing a much larger quantity of the Rowley poems the newe Brydge: Aboute the Time of the Tolwas produced than those which have reached lynge the tenth Clock, Master Greggorie Dalus. In his ignorance and innocence most benye, mounted on a Fergreyne Horse, enformed likely the boy was swept along by an eager Master Maior all Thyngs were prepared; when desire to set Rowley, and his time and ways two Beadils want fyrst streying fresh stre, next and everything surrounding him the came a Manne dressed up as follows: Hose of friends and citizens and noble knights who Goatskyn, erinepart outwards, Doublet anl were so much kinder, nobler, and more Waystcoat also, over which a white Robe withtrue than anything in the eighteenth century fully before his audience. He wanted, with a certain human longing at the bottom of all his childish trickery and intrigue, to convey to others some glimpse of that splendid visionary world which, from his earliest years, had surrounded himself. And he thought he had succeeded in doing so, poor, brilliant, foolish boy of genius! He thought his painfully-selected, uncouth words, and wonderful spelling, were no masquerade, but gave a real representation of the life he wanted to make apparent to the world. Nothing could show more clearly his unsophisticated simplicity; for he believed in their truth himself as fervently as the most credulous of all his dupes, not in their truth of fact as the poems of Rowley, for that, of course, was impossible; but in their truth to the period they professed to represent, and real faithfulness to its characteristics - a belief which only shows how little educated, how simple and unacquainted with the history of the ages, and the difference between one and another, was the boy poet. The masquerade, transparent as it is to us, was reality to himself. In 1768, when Chatterton was sixteen, after he had been a whole year in Mr. Lambert's office, the new bridge, over which, when half built, Catcott had ridden with so much silly braggadocio, was formally opened; and on occasion of this ceremony, Chatterton tried his hand at a mystification of the general public. He sent an extract to a local paper out of Rowley's wonderful stories, in which, it appeared, every kind of illustration appropriate to every variety out sleeves, much like an albe, but not so longe, "In thilk Manner reechyng the Brydge, the Manne with the aulace stode on the fyrst Top of a Mound, yreed in the midst of the Bridge; then want up the Manne with the sheelde, after him the Minstrels and Clarions; and then the Preestes and Freeres, all in white Albs, makyng a most goodlie shewe; the Maior and Eldermen standying round, theie sang, with the sound of Clarions, the Song of Saincte Baldwyn which beyng done, the Manne on the Top threwe with greet Myght his anlace into the see, and the Clarions sounded an auntiant charge and Forloyn: then theie sang againe the Songe of Saincte the Cross, where a Latin Sermon was preached Warburgh, and proceeded up Chryst's Hill to by Ralph de Blundeville. And with sound of clarion theie agayne went to the Brydge, and there dined; spendyng the rest of the Daie in Sportes and Plaies: the Freeres of Saincte Augustine doeyng the Plaie of the Knyghtes of Bristowe, making a greete Fire at Night on Kynwulph Hyll.' "If the reader turn from the biographer's pages to those of the historian and antiquary of Bristol, for information about William Canynge the elder, merchant and mayor of Bristol in the age of Chaucer, when Edward III. and his cerning the younger Canynges of the times of win Fulford, or even of the good priest Rowley, the Roses; of Sir Symon de Byrtoune, Sir Bald he suddenly finds himself involved in the most ludicrous perplexities. Mr. Barrett was, in earlier days, an undoubted believer in Rowley, and continued to welcome with unquestioning credulity the apt discoveries which were ever rewarding the researches of Chatterton among the old parchments purloined by his father from Redcliffe Church. Did the historian attempt to follow up his first chapter of British and Roman Bristol, with its Roman camps, roads, and coins, by a second, treating in like manner of Saxon and Norman Bristol, his mea gre data are forthwith augmented by the discovery of an account by Turgot, a Saxon ecclesiasby Camden for the origin of the city, Of auntic, who lived not long after the time assigned cient coynes found at and near Bristowe, with the historie of the fyrst coynynge, by the Saxonnes, done from the Saxon ynto Englyshe, by T. Rowlie.' From the same veracious pen follows an account of Mayster Canynge, hys cabinet of auntyaunte monuments;' the same being a wondrous library and antiquarian museum of Bristol in the days of Henry VI. Did Leland fail the historian, painfully assiduous in researches into early ecclesiastical foundations: an old MS. of Rowley fortunately turns up, with Baldwyn's Street; the Chapelle of St. Mary valuable notes on St. Baldwyn's Chapelle in Magdalen, in the time of Earl Goodwyne; Seyncte Austin's Chapelle, with its aunciauntrie and nice carvellynge; and other equally curious and apocryphal edifices. This bit of supposed antiquity caused a considerable sensation in the town. It had been brought to the printing-office by a stranger, and it was only on his return with another communication of a similar character that his identity was discovered. Cat-grandson Richard reigned; or for the facts concott, to whom the narrative was doubly interesting on account of his recent exploit, had made eager inquiries about the source from which it came, and was no doubt confirmed in his belief in Rowley by finding that this wonderful piece of narrative proceeded from the same inexhaustible stores. The boy appears to have been rather roughly handled by the printing-house people. His age and appearance altogether precluded the idea of his being the author;" and when peremptorily questioned as to where he got it, he drew back within himself, and became as obstinate as his questioners were surly. It was only when they softened, and begged for the information which he alone could afford, that he yielded. He gave the same reply that he had already done to Catcott and Burgum-that this was one of the many MSS. which his father had taken from the muniment-room at Redcliffe Church.. At the very same time, however, he showed to a certain John Rudhall, one of his comrades, with boyish imprudence, the process by which he prepared his parchments and imitated the ancient writing. No doubt the publication of this scrap of history gave fresh energy to his dealings with Barrett, whom he served in the strangest way, humouring his longing for original documents, and inventing, as he went along, with a miraculous appropriateness to the need of the moment, which one would think must have excited some suspicion in the mind of the historian. Authorities do not generally drop down from heaven upon a writer exactly when he wants them in this lavish way. But no doubt seems to have crossed the mind of the antiquary. "No one surely ever had such good fortune as myself," he cried many years after ecstatically, "in procuring MSS. and ancient deeds to help me in investigating the history and antiquities of this city." It does not seem ever to have occurred to the self-absorbed compiler that there was anything remarkable in the fact of the lad Chatterton being able to decipher and identify such documents, even had his possession of them been fully explained. Ile took everything for granted with the most admirable imbecility, and made the fullest use of them, as will be seen from the following account of his work, which we quote from Dr. Wilson: "So it is throughout the volume." It seems to have been only when he had thus fully convinced all the authorities round him — and of course such men as the Catcotts and Barrett were, till he saw through them, great men to the attorney's apprentice, the charity-boy and descendant of grave-d.ggers-that Chatterton began to dream of fame and fortune. No doubt it must have been every way bad for the boy to fathom so speedily, and find out the narrowness and meanness of the only people he had to look up to. When he perceived with his clear eyes how utterly deceivable they were and yet how selfish, taking from him what they wanted without any attempt to help him, or the slightest appreciation of his powers, it is not wonderful if the natural impulse of arrogant youth to despise its pottering commonplace seniors, grew stronger and more bitter within him. took these small luminaries as a type of the He |