CHATTERTON, THOMAS ,1752-1770), English poet, was born at Bristol on Nov. 20, 1752, three months after the death of his father, who had been master of the Pile street free school, at Bristol. In 176o Chatterton was sent to the Colston free school where he stayed for eight years. But this Bristol blue-coat school had little share in the education of its marvel lous pupil. The office of sexton at the church St. Mary Red cliffe had been held for nearly two centuries by the Chatterton family, and under the guidance of his uncle, the child found his favourite haunt in the beautiful old church, deriving a fresh interest, when he was able to read, in certain quaint old chests, where parchment deeds, old as the Wars of the Roses, lay un heeded and forgotten. In i 763 a beautiful cross of curious work manship, which had adorned the churchyard of St. Mary Red cliffe for upwards of three centuries, was destroyed by a church warden, and the boy sent to the local journal on Jan. 7, 1764, a clever satire on the parish vandal. His delight was to lock himself in a little attic, where, with books, cherished parchments, saved from the loot of the muniment room of St. Mary Red cliffe, and drawing materials, he lived in thought with his 15th century heroes and heroines. The first of his literary mystifica tions, the duologue of "Elinoure and Juga," was written before he was twelve years old, and he showed it to the usher at Col ston's hospital, T. Phillips, as the work of a 15th century poet.
His "Rowleian" jargon appears to have been chiefly the result of the study of John Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, and Prof. W. W. Skeat seems to think his knowledge even of Chaucer was very slight. He had already conceived the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century, and lived for the most part in an ideal world of his own, in that elder time when Edward IV. was England's king, and Master William Canynge—familiar to him among the recumbent effigies in Redcliffe church—still ruled in Bristol's civic chair. Canynge is represented as an enlightened patron of literature, and Row ley's dramatic interludes were written for performance at his house. In order to escape a marriage urged by the king, Canynge retired to the college of Westbury in Gloucestershire, where he en joyed the society of Rowley, and eventually became dean of the institution. The literary masquerade which thus constituted the life-dream of the boy was wrought out by him in fragments of prose and verse into a coherent romance, until the credulous scholars and antiquaries of his day were persuaded into the belief that there had lain in the parish chest of Redcliffe church for up wards of three centuries, a collection of mss. of rare merit, the work of Thomas Rowley, an unknown priest of Bristol in the days of Henry VI., and his poet laureate, John Lydgate.
Among the Bristol patrons of Chatterton were two pewter ers, George Catcott and his partner Henry Burgum. Catcott was one of the most zealous believers in Rowley, and continued to collect his reputed writings long after the death of their real author. On Burgum, who had risen in life by his own exertions, the blue-coat boy palmed off the de Bergham pedigree, and other equally apocryphal evidences of the pewterer's descent from an ancestry old as the Norman Conquest. The de Bergham quartering, blazoned on a piece of parchment doubtless recov ered from the Redcliffe muniment chest, was itself supposed to have lain for centuries in that ancient depository. The pedigree was professedly collected by Chatterton from original records, including "The Rowley mss." The pedigree still exists in Chat terton's own handwriting, copied into a book in which he had previously transcribed portions of antique verse, under the title of "Poems by Thomas Rowley, priest of St. John's, in the city of Bristol"; and in one of these, "The Tournament," Syrr Johan de Berghamme plays a conspicuous part. The ennobled pewterer rewarded Chatterton with five shillings, and was satirized for this valuation of a noble pedigree in some of Chatterton's latest verse.
On July I, 1767, Chatterton was transferred to the office of John Lambert, attorney, to whom he was bound apprentice as a clerk. There he found leisure for his own favourite pursuits. An ancient stone bridge on the Avon, built in the reign of Henry II., had been displaced by a new bridge opened in 1768. Shortly afterwards the editor of Felix Farley's Journal received from a correspondent, signing himself Dunelmus Bristoliensis, a "description of the mayor's first passing over the old bridge," professedly derived from an ancient ms. The original manu script is now preserved in the British Museum, along with other Chatterton mss., most of which were ultimately incorporated by William Barrett in his History and Antiquities of the city of Bristol, published nearly 20 years after the poet's death. It was at this time that the definite story made its appearance—over which critics and antiquaries wrangled for nearly a century--of numerous ancient poems and other mss. taken by the elder Chatterton from a coffer in the muniment room of Redcliffe church, and transcribed, and so rescued from oblivion, by his son. The pieces include the "Bristowe Tragedie, or the Dethe of Syr Charles Bawdin," a ballad celebrating the death of the Lancastrian knight, Charles Baldwin; "/Ella," a "Tragycal Enter lude," as Chatterton styles it, but in reality a dramatic poem of sustained power; "Goddwyn," a dramatic fragment; "Tourna ment," "Battle of Hastings," "The Parliament of Sprites," "Balade of Charitie," with numerous shorter pieces, forming al together a volume of poetry, the rare merit of which is indisput able, wholly apart from the fact that it was the production of a mere boy.
In Dec., 1768, in his seventeenth year, he wrote to Dodsley, the London publisher, offering to procure for him "copies of several ancient poems, and an interlude, perhaps the oldest dramatic piece extant, wrote by one Rowley, a priest in Bristol, who lived in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV." To this letter, as well as to another letter enclosing an extract from the tragedy of "/Ella," no answer appears to have been returned. Chatterton then bethought him of Horace Walpole, who not only indulged in a mediaeval renaissance of his own, but was the re puted author of a spurious antique in the Castle of Otranto. He wrote to him offering him a document entitled "The Ryse of Peyncteyne yn Englande, wroten by T. Rowleie, 146g, for Mas tre Canynge," accompanied by notes which included specimens of Rowley's poetry. To this Walpole replied with courteous acknowledgments. He characterized the verses as "wonderful for their harmony and spirit," and added, "Give me leave to ask you where Rowley's poems are to be had? I should not be sorry to print them; or at least a specimen of them, if they have never been printed." Chatterton replied, enclosing additional specimens of antique verse, and telling Walpole that he was the son of a poor widow, and clerk to an attorney, and he hinted a wish that he might help him to some more congenial occupation. Walpole's manner underwent an abrupt change. The specimens of verse had been submitted to his friends, Gray and Mason, and pro nounced modern. He now coldly advised the boy to stick to the attorney's office, and "when he should have made a fortune," he might betake himself to more favourite studies. Chatterton had to write three times before he recovered his mss. Walpole has been loaded with more than his just share of responsibility for the fate of the unhappy poet, of whom he admitted when too late, "I do not believe there ever existed so masterly a genius." Chatterton now began to contribute to the Town and County Magazine and other London periodicals. Assuming the vein of Junius—then in the full blaze of his triumph—he turned his pen against the duke of Grafton, the earl of Bute, and the princess of Wales. He had just despatched one of his political diatribes to the Middlesex Journal, when he sat down on Easter Eve, April 17, 1770, and penned his "Last Will and Testament," a strange satirical compound of jest and earnest, in which he intimated his intention of putting an end to his life the follow ing evening. Among his satirical bequests, such as his "humility" to the Rev. Mr. Camplin, his "religion" to Dean Barton, and his "modesty" along with his "prosody and grammar" to Mr. Burgum, he leaves "to Bristol all his spirit and disinterested ness, parcels of goods unknown on its quay since the days of Canynge and Rowley." In more genuine earnestness he recalls the name of Michael Clayfield, a friend to whom he owed in telligent sympathy. The will was probably purposely prepared in order to frighten his master into letting him go. Lambert can celled his indentures, his friends made him up a purse, and on the 25th or 26th of the month he arrived in London.
Chatterton was already known to the readers of the Middlesex Journal as a rival of Junius, under the nom de plume of Decimus. He had also been a contributor to Hamilton's Town and County Magazine, and speedily found access to the Freeholder's Maga zine, another political miscellany strong for Wilkes and liberty. Wilkes himself had noted his trenchant style, "and expressed a desire to know the author"; and Lord Mayor Beckford gra ciously acknowledged a political address of his, and greeted him "as politely as a citizen could." But of actual money he received little. He was extremely abstemious, but his diligence was great, and his versatility wonderful. He could assume the style of Junius or Smollett, reproduce the satiric bitterness of Church hill, parody Macpherson's Ossian, or write in the manner of Pope, or with the polished grace of Gray and Collins. He wrote political letters, eclogues, lyrics, operas and satires, both in prose and verse. In June, 17 7o—af ter Chatterton had been some nine weeks in London—he removed from Shoreditch, where he had hitherto lodged with a relative, to an attic in Brook street, Holborn, where, for the first time, he enjoyed uninterrupted sol itude. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he tran scribed from an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his "Excelente Balade of Charitie." This fine poem, perversely disguised in archaic language, he sent to the editor of the Town and County Magazine, and had it rejected.
The high hopes of the sanguine boy had begun to fade. He had not yet completed his second month in London, and already failure and starvation stared him in the face. The note of his actual receipts, found in his pocket-book after his death, shows that Hamilton, Fell and other editors who had been so liberal in flattery had paid him at the rate of a shilling for an article, and somewhat less than eightpence each for his songs; while much which had been accepted was held in reserve, and still unpaid for. The beginning of a new month revealed to him the indefinite postponement of the publication and payment of his work. He had wished, according to his foster-mother, to study medicine with Barrett ; in his desperation he now reverted to this, and wrote to Barrett for a letter to help him to an open ing as a surgeon's assistant on board an African trader. He ap pealed also to Mr. Catcott to forward his plan, but in vain. On Aug. 24, 177o, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook street, carrying with him the arsenic which he there drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand.
He was only seventeen years and nine months old ; but the best of his numerous productions, both in prose and verse, require no allowance to be made for the immature years of their author. He pictures Lydgate, the monk of Bury St. Edmund's, chal lenging Rowley to a trial at versemaking, and under cover of this fiction, produces his "Songe of /Ella," a piece of rare lyrical beauty, worthy of comparison with any antique or modern pro duction of its class. Again, in his "Tragedy of Goddwyn," of which only a fragment has been preserved, the "Ode to Liberty," with which it abruptly closes, may claim a place among the finest martial lyrics in the language. The death of Chatterton attracted little notice at the time; for the few who then entertained any appreciative estimate of the Rowley poems regarded him as their mere transcriber. He was interred in a burying-ground attached to Shoe Lane Workhouse. A monument has since been erected to his memory in Redcliffe churchyard, Bristol, with the appropriate inscription, borrowed from his "Will," and so sup plied by the poet's own pen—"To the memory of Thomas Chat terton. Reader! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a Superior Power. To that Power only is he now answerable." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Bibliography.-Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777) was edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt; Thomas Warton, in his History of English Poetry (1778) ; vol. ii., section viii., gives Rowley a place among the 15th century poets ; but neither of these critics believed in the antiquity of the poems. In 1782 a new edition of Rowley's poems appeared, with a "Commentary, in which the antiquity of them is considered and defended," by Jeremiah Milles, dean of Exeter. The controversy which raged round the Rowley poems is discussed in A. Kippis Biographia Britannica (vol. iv., 1789) , where there is a detailed account by G. Gregory of Chatterton's life (pp. 573-619). This was reprinted in the edition (1803) of Chatterton's Works by R. Southey and J. Cottle, published for the benefit of the poet's sister. The neglected condition of the study of earlier English in the 18th century alone accounts for the temporary success of Chatterton's mystification. It has long been agreed that Chatterton was solely responsible for the Rowley Poems, but the language and style are analysed in confirmation of this view by Prof. W. W. Skeat in an introductory essay prefaced to vol. ii. of The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (1871) in the "Aldine Edition of the British Poets." This, which is the most convenient edition, also contains a memoir of the poet by Edward Bell. The spelling of the Rowley poems is there modernized, and many of the archaic words are replaced by modern equivalents provided in many cases from Chatterton's own notes, the theory being that Chatterton usually composed in modern English, and inserted his peculiar words and his complicated or thography afterwards. See also H. B. Forman, Thomas Chatterton and his latest Editor (1874) . The Chatterton mss., originally in the possession of William Barrett of Bristol, were left by his heir to the British Museum in 1800. Others are preserved in the Bristol library.
Chatterton's genius and his tragic death are commemorated by Shelley in Adonais, by Wordsworth in "Resolution and Independence," by Coleridge in "A Monody on the Death of Chatterton," by D. G. Rossetti in "Five English Poets" ; John Keats inscribed Endymion "to the memory of Thomas Chatterton." Alfred de Vigny's drama of Chatterton gives an altogether fictitious account of the poet. Sir Herbert Croft, in his Love and Madness, interpolated a long and valuable account of Chatterton, giving many of the poet's letters, and much information obtained from his family and friends (pp. 125-244, letter li.) . There is a valuable collection of "Chattertoniana" in the British Museum, consisting of separate works by Chatterton, newspaper cuttings, articles, dealing with the Rowley controversy and other subjects, with ms. notes by Joseph Haslewood, and several autograph letters. F. A. Hyatt and W. Bazeley, Chattertoniana (Glou cester, 1914), a catalogue of printed matter.
Among biographies of Chatterton may be mentioned Daniel Wilson, Chatterton: A Biographical Study (1869) ; D. Masson, Chatterton: A Biography (1899) ; Helene Richter, "Thomas Chatterton" (igoo), in Wiener Beitrage zur engl. Philologie; C. E. Russell, Chatterton, (1909) ; J. H. Ingram, The True Chatterton (191o) ; Sir E. Clarke, New Lights on Chatterton (1916), a paper read before the Biblio graphical Society, London.