Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/154

 to Chatterton's selection of the name of Rowley from a passage in Bailey's Dictionary, which accounts for Charles II's nickname of Rowley. An old epitaph in St. John's Church, Bristol, recording the death, on 23 Jan. 1478, of Thomas Rowley, a merchant of that seaport, might as readily have guided him in his choice of the christian name and parish, in 1465, of his purely imaginary Rowley, ‘prieste of St. Johan's, Bristowe.’ What is most wonderful, however, about the ‘Rowley Romance’ is that Chatterton produced with his boyish hand the poetical works not of one alone, but of twelve antique poets. While he was preparing the earlier of these elaborate fabrications, he left the school, on 1 July 1767, and on the same day was apprenticed to John Lambert, an attorney of Bristol, whose office at the time was on St. John's Steps. At the signing of his indentures 10l. was paid over by Colston's trustees to Lambert. Chatterton's office hours were worse even than his school hours, being from 7 to 8  all the year round. He was treated persistently as a mere office drudge, required to sleep with the office boy, and to take his meals in the kitchen. He was allowed every day to spend an hour at his own home, from 8 to 9 He was only once—upon a Christmas eve—known to have exceeded the prescribed limit, till 10  Shortly after the commencement of Chatterton's apprenticeship the attorney's office was removed to the first floor of the house now numbered 37 Corn Street, opposite the Exchange. Chatterton had many friends, conspicuous among whom were Thomas Palmer, apprentice to a jeweller in the same house; Thomas Cary, a pipe-maker, called his ‘second self;’ William Smith, sailor and actor; John Broughton, an attorney, who afterwards collected his miscellanies, and many others. But he confided his secret to no one. He worked regularly at the office. His duties, which were chiefly the copying of precedents, engaged him upon an average no more than two hours every day. But after two years and nine months' occupation he had penned three large volumes: a folio of 334 closely written pages of law forms and precedents, another containing thirty-six notarial acts, and the ordinary book filled with notices and letters; all of them in his symmetrical and clerkly handwriting. The rest of his time was given up to self-education, and to the elaboration of an extraordinary number of his pseudo-antique poems. His studies ranged, according to Thistlethwaite's account (, p. 456), from heraldry to metaphysics, from astronomy to medicine, from music to antiquities and mathematics. On the Sundays he took solitary rambles into the country, whence he seldom returned without bringing back with him sketches he had taken of churches or ruins.

In September 1768 a new bridge had been opened for foot passengers, and it was generally known that in the following November it would be publicly inaugurated. The whole city was startled by the appearance in ‘Felix Farley's Bristol Journal,’ on 1 Oct. 1768, of an account of the mayor's first passing over the old bridge in 1248. The description purported to have been taken ‘from an old manuscript,’ and was transmitted to the printer of the journal by one signing himself ‘Dunelmus Bristoliensis.’ Curiosity was at once awakened as to the source from which this curious document had emanated, the original of which is now at the British Museum (Add. MS. 5766 B 8). Chatterton shortly afterwards appeared at the newspaper office, and was recognised as the bearer of this singular contribution. He said upon inquiry that he was employed by a gentleman in transcribing certain ancient manuscripts, and that he was at the same time writing complimentary verses to a lady to whom the gentleman in question was engaged. The description, he added, was copied from a parchment procured by his father from the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe. Yet Chatterton frankly admitted to a friend of his own age, John Rudhall, that ‘he was the author of it’ (, 437), showing him afterwards how the appearance of antiquity might be readily counterfeited. He had meanwhile applied, under his now familiar assumed name, to contribute to the ‘Town and Country Magazine,’ in the next number of which (November 1768) appeared this notice: ‘D. B. of Bristol's favour will be gladly received.’ Three weeks or a month after the account of the procession over the old bridge had been published, George Catcott, Burgum's partner, heard for the first time, according to his own statement (Gent. Mag. 11 Sept. 1788), of certain ancient manuscripts in the muniment room of St. Mary's. Elsewhere he says, less probably, that it was a year earlier (see ib. xlviii. 347, 403). Catcott was a bustling, vain, and eccentric man, who boasted that there were no books in his library less than a hundred years old. He now made Chatterton's acquaintance, and received from him, as gifts, one after another of the Rowley poems. First among them in point of time was the ‘Bristowe Tragedie, or the Dethe of Syr Charles Bawdin’—four years afterwards published in quarto, as the earliest of all the Rowley poems separately printed. On its being first issued from the press, in 1772, Horace Walpole ascribed it to Dr. Percy, the bishop of Dromore. When taxed