Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/155

 with its authorship by his sister and mother, Chatterton from the first acknowledged that he had written it. Soon after this ‘The Epitaph on Robert Canvnge' was placed in Catcott's hands, and a few days later the largest of all the so-called Rowley parchments, containing, in sixty-six verses, Rowley’s ‘Challenge to Lydgate,’ the noble ‘Songe to Ælla, Lorde of the Castel of Brystowe, ynne daies of yorc,’ and Lydgate’s ‘Answer to Rowley,' It was this dearly prized ‘original' that Catcott exultantly took to William Barret [q. v.] Chatterton’s first gift to Barrett was ‘Turgot’s Account of Bristol, translated by Rowley from Saxon into English,' in return for which Barrett lent the boy for a while Thomas Benson’s ‘Vocabularium Anglo-Saxonicum’ and Stephen Skinner’s ‘Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ’ Chatterton knew no Latin, however, though familiar with English poetry and antiquities. On his subsequent introduction, in 1768, to George Catcott’s elder brother, the Rev. Alexander Catcott, vicar of the Temple Church, Chatterton obtained access to the Bristol Library. Thence he was enabled to borrow Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘History of the Britons,’ Fuller’s 'Church History,’ and Holinshed’s ‘Chronicles.’ Aided by these later researches, Chatterton gave the final touches to the antique poems that he had been secretly preparing. He gave them to George Catcott and William Barrett. A foreshadowing of one of the earliest of these, written when he was fifteen, was the fragment of a so-called ancient poem entitled ‘The Unknown Knight, or the Tournament,' enclosed in his letter of 6 March 1768 to his bedfellow at Colston's, Baker, who had some time before emigrated to Charlestown, South Carolina. He it was for whom, in his explanation at Felix Farley’s printing-office, he affected to be copying the antique manuscripts, and for whom he really, before the close of that year, had written ten love poems addressed to Baker's innamorata, Eleanor Hoyland. The information contained in a more highly elaborated poem, entitled ‘The Tournament,’ was long supposed to have been wholly inaccessible to him save through an old Latin manuscript of William of Worcester; whereas it turned out that these particulars were readily derived by him from a printed record under William Halfpenny's engraving of Redcliffe Church, published in 1746, a copy of which he must often have seen hanging up in the parlour of his friend, Henry Kater, the sugar-baker. Another longer poem, purporting to be written two centuries afterwards by Rowley and John à Iscam, was ‘a most merry interlude,’ called ‘The Parliament of Sprites.' Of another dramatic poem, ‘Goddwyn,' two scenes only have been preserved. The subject of ‘Goddwyn is continued in the ‘Battle of Hastings.’ Duplicate copies of ‘No. 1’ were given by Chatterton to Catcott and Barrett. On being pressed by Barrett to produce the ‘original’ from which it had apparently been copied out, Chatterton admitted that it was his own composition. But, on being further pressed by Barrett, he poroduced as indubitably Rowley's English version from the Saxon of Turgot, ‘No. 2,’ a still lengthier instalment. It was for some time a matter of bewilderment how Chatterton could have contrived to make the names of the chiefs correspond so exactly with the ‘Roll of Battle Abbey,’ the fact being that he had only to turn for them to Holinshed’s ‘Chronicles.’ The ‘Battle of Hastings’ is surpassed by the tragical interlude of ‘Ælla,’ which may be accepted as his masterpiece. ‘Ælla,’ in the poet’s handwriting, was in 1768 handed to Catcott in manuscript. Chatterton, on 21 Dec. 1768, wrote to James Dodsley, offering to procure for him several ancient poems, including ‘the oldest dramatic piece extant,’ written by Rowley, a priest of Bristol, who lived in the reigns of Henry VI and Edward IV, and asking him to direct his answer to ‘D. B., care of Mr. Thomas Chatterton.' Having waited in vain for nearly two months, he wrote again to Dodsley, on 15 Feb. 1769, under his own name, saying that on the receipt of a guinea he should be enabled to obtain a copy of the tragedy of ‘Ælla’ already referred to in his previous communication. It is uncertain whether he ever received any answer from Dodsley. Both these letters were turned up on the clearing out of Dodsley’s counting-house, and were first published in 1813 in John Britton's ‘History of Redcliffe Church,’ pp. 71, 72. On 25 March 1769 he wrote, from Corn Street, Bristol, to Horace Walpole a brief note signed Thomas Chatterton, enclosing, among other curious manuscripts, ‘The Ryse of Peyncteynge in Englande,’ as having possibly an especial interest for the author of ‘Anecdotes of Painting.’ The packet, which contained besides some verses about Richard Coeur de Lion, was sent to Walpole under cover to his bookseller, Bathoe. Walpole answered in a long and courteous letter dated 28 March 1769. Walpole spoke of printing Rowley's poems, and invited further correspondence. Chatterton answered without delay on 30 March, forwarding further particulars as to Rowley and Abbot John, and enclosing additional manuscripts, such as the poem on ‘War,’ and the ‘Historie of Peyncters yn Englande.’ He informed Walpole at the same