fool enough to believe C. was the only blind, fubterraneous channel, through which thefe things were to emerge to day, and float for ever down the stream of fame ? This (without mentioning other objections to such a ridiculous belief) were to fuppofe two people to determine on the fame ftrange conduct, and two people (the real and the fofter father) to keep with equal fidelity the fame fecret. And would the foster father have been as fond and careful of another's fecret, as of the offspring of his own invention ? It is not clear to me that C.'s life (if fuch a fcrap of existence can be called a life) does not exhibit circumstances ftill more extraordinary, if poffible, than his being the author of Rowley's poems. But I poffefs not the abilities which Johnfon difplayed in his famous life of Savage: nor is this a formal life of Chatterton; though fuch a thing might well employ even the pen of Johnfon. This is only an idle letter to my dear M. ---Oh, my M. you, who contributed fo liberally, laft year, to extricate from diftrefs the abilities of not have done for a Chat a -- what would ; terton ! you Thomas Chatterton, deftin'd to puzzle at least, if not to impofe upon, the ableft critics and antiquarians which the most polifhed age of England has has produced, was born at Bristol, Nov. 20, 1752, His father had been mafter of the free-school in Pile-street in that city, and was fexton of St. Mary Redcliffe church. Hiftory condefcends not to relate any thing more of fuch an ignoble family, than that they had been sextons of the fame church for near a century and an half. It feems to have been determined by fortune that this poor lad, I ought rather to say this extraordinary human being, fhould have no obligation but to genius and to himself. His father, as he was a schoolmafter, and is reported to have been a tolerable poet for a fexton, might perhaps have given his fon a free-fchool education, had he lived to fee him old enough for inftruction. The fexton died very foon after, if not before, the birth of his fon; who indisputably received no other education than what he picked up at a charity fchool at a place called St. Augustine's Back in Briftol. Reading, writing and accounts, compofed the whole circle of fciences which were taught at this university of our Briftol Shakespear. On the 1ft of July, 1767, he was articled clerk to an attorney of Bristol, whom I have not been able to find out. From him, I understand, has been procured a ftrange, mad MS. of Chatterton, which he called his will. When When the new bridge at Bristol was finished, there appeared, in Farly's Briftol Journal, an account of the ceremonies on opening the old bridge (the piece is prefixed to the volume of Chatterton's Mifcellanies), preceded by thefe words:---"To the Printer. Oct. 1, 1768. The "following defcription of the fryars' firft paffing "over the old bridge, taken from an old MS. 66 may not at this time be unacceptable to the ge66 nerality of your readers. Your's, Dunhelmus "Bristolienfis." Curiofity at laft traced the infertion of this curious memoir to Chatterton. To the threats of thofe who treated him (agreeably to his age and appearance) as a child, he returned nothing but haughtiness and a refufal to give any account. To milder ufage and many promifes the boy, after fome time, confeffed that he had received that and other MSS. from his father, which he had found in an iron cheft placed by William Cannynge (the founder of the church of which C.'s family had fo long been fextons) in a muniment room over the northern portico of St. Mary Redcliffe. Warton (in his history of English poetry) fays when this appeared he was about seventeen. Days are more material in C.'s life than years in the lives of others. He wanted, you fee, fomething of fixteen.---One fact is curious, that, though it was not poffible for for him to have picked up Latin at a charity fchool where Latin was not taught, his note to the printer has, for no apparent reason, a Latin fignature, Dunhelmus Bristolienfis. This Latin certainly was not Rowley's. It must have been C.'s. The mernoir procured C. the acquaintance of fome gentlemen of Bristol, who, because they condescended to receive from him the compofitions which he brought them, without giving him much, if any thing, in return, fondly ima gined themfelves the patrons of genius. Mr. 'Catcott and Mr. Barrett, a pewterer and a furgeon, of his obligations to whom you will fee him fpeak in his letters, were his principal, if not his only patrons. To these gentlemen he produced, between Oct. 1768, and April 1770 (befides many things which he confeffed to be his own, and many which, in the interval, appeared in the Town and Country Magazine), all Rowley's poems, except the "ballad of Charitie." Of thefe only two, I think, and those the fhorteft, he pretended to be the original MSS. The reft were tranfcripts, in his own hand; of fome of which he acknowledged himself the author. Concerning thefe curiofities no diftinct or fatisfactory account, by friend or enemy, by threat or promife, could ever be drawn from him. For For thefe curiofities how much he received from his Bristol patrons does not appear. His patrons do not boast of their generofity to him. They (Catcott at leaft) received no inconfiderable fum for Rowley's poems; nor has the fale of them turned out badly. In confequence of the money got by poems which Chatterton certainly brought to light, which I firmly believe C. to have written, his mother acknowledges to have received the immense sum of five guineas, by the hands of Mr. Catcott; and Mr. Barrett, without fee or reward, cured the whitlowed finger of the fifter. Talk no more of the neglect of genius in any age or country, when, in this age and country, Rowley's poems have produced fuch fortunes to the author and his family. Should I ever appear in print on this fubject, I would publickly call upon the gentlemen concerned in this transaction, to ftate their accounts. Has not the world a right to know what Catcott fairly bought of Chatterton (he does not pretend to have bought all), and what was the fair purchase-money of these inestimable treafures? Let us know what the editors of Rowley's poems gave and received for them, and what the fale of them has produced? Is the fon to be declared guilty of forgery? Are his forgegeries |