Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/459

Rh CHATTERTON 447 Bergham pedigree, and other equally apocryphal evidences of the pewterer s descent from an ancestry old as the Norman Conquest. The De Bergham quarterings, blazoned on a piece of parchment doubtless recovered 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 rscords, including &quot; The Rowley MSS.&quot; Into this he introduced au ingenious romance of one of the pewterer s ancestors, who was also a metallurgist, though after a more dignified fashion. According to this the De Bergham of that elder time obtained from Henry VI. a royal patent to play the alchemist, and so to transmute pewter and other base metals into gold. He left issue four sons, one of whom figures as &quot; Edward Asheton of Chatterton, in Com. Lane, in the right of his wife, the daughter and heiress of Radcliffe de Chatterton of Chatterton, the heir general of many families.&quot; The pedigree still exists in Chatterton s own handwriting, copied into a book in which he had previously transcribed portions of antique verse, under the title of &quot; Poems by Thomas Rowley, priest of St John s, in the city of Bristol ; &quot; and in one of these, &quot; The Tourna ment/ 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 his latest verse. The pedigree and all its accessories are crude enough ; but as the production of a boy not fourteen years of age, whose whole education had been acquired in a charity school, it is a remarkable evidence of precocity. On the 1st of July 1767, before he had completed the seventh year of his residence in Colston s Hospital, Chatterton was transferred to the office of Mr John Lambert, attorney, to whom he was bound apprentice as a clerk. There he was left much alone ; and after fulfilling the routine duties devolving on him, he found leisure for his own favourite pursuits. An ancient stone bridge on the Avon, built in the reign of Henry II., and altered by many later additions into a singularly picturesque but inconvenient thoroughfare, had been displaced by a structure better adapted to modern requirements. In the month of September 1768, when Chatterton was in the second year of his apprenticeship, the new bridge was partially opened for traffic. Shortly afterwards the editor of Felix Farley s Journal received from a correspondent, signing himself jDunelmus Bristoliensis, a &quot; description of the mayor s first passing over the old bridge,&quot; professedly derived from an ancient MS. Mr William Barrett, F.S.A., surgeon and antiquary, who was then accumulating materials for a history of Bristol, secured the original manuscript, which is now preserved in the British Museum, along with other Chatterton MSS., most of which were ultimately incorporated by the credulous antiquary into a learned quarto volume, entitled the History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol, published nearly twenty years after the poet s death. The publication of the description of the ancient opening of the bridge naturally excited inquiry ; for the picturesque narrative acquired a suitable flavour of antiquity, without being too much obscured for the general reader, by its archaic language and spelling ; and so a desire was mani fested to trace it to its source. Chatterton was ere long recognized as its contributor, on presenting himself at the office of the Bristol Jo^^rnal with another of his productions; and then it was that the definite story made its appear ance 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 dream of the boy-poet was of an age devoid of all the sordid meanness of his own, and of a patron of the muses generous as the ideal Canynge of his romance. Living in this imaginary world, he continued to invent, and ascribe to the authorship of the good priest Thomas Rowley, dramatic, lyrical, and descriptive poems, along with letters, fragments of local or general history, and other miscellaneous productions in prose, nearly all of them pertaining to the romance of Eowley and Master Canynge, the old citizen and mayor of Bristol. With a persistent coherence to this ideal, which he had formed in his own mind while still a mere child, Chatterton produced nearly all the marvellous literary creations on which his fame depends. In the interval between his first-known antique ballad, the &quot;Elinoure and Juga,&quot; written while still an inmate of Colston s Hospital, and his leaving Bristol at the age of seventeen, his pieces include the &quot;Bristowe Tragedy,&quot; another and longer ballad ; his &quot;^Ella, a Tragycal Interlude,&quot; as he styles it, but in reality a dramatic poem of sustained power and curious originality of structure; his &quot;Goddwyn,&quot; another dramatic poem; his &quot;Tour nament,&quot; &quot;Battle of Hastings,&quot; &quot;The Parliament of Sprites,&quot; with numerous smaller pieces of autique verse forming altogether a goodly volume of poetry, the rare merit of which is indisputable, wholly apart from the fact that it was the production of a mere boy. Yet this only partially illustrates the fertility of his genius. During the same period he had thrown off numerous lyrics, and had given vent to his satirical humour in several lengthened poems, which, though for the most part inferior in merit to his antique verse, would excite wonder as the sole productions of any boy of his age. But the authorship even of those modern poems was rarely avowed. The habit of secretiveness grew ere long into a love of mystery, which ultimately proved prejudicial to the boy. Unfortunately for him, his ingenious romance had either to be acknowledged as his own creation, and so in all probability be treated with contempt, or it had to be sustained by the manufacture of spurious antiques. To this accordingly Chatterton resorted, and found no difficulty in gulling the most learned of his credulous dupes with his parchments. The literary labours of the boy, though diligently pursued at his desk, were not allowed to interfere with the duties of Mr Lambert s office. Nevertheless such a mode of employing any portion of his time was peculiarly distasteful to the Bristol attorney. He was wont to search his apprentice s drawer, and to tear up any poems or other manuscripts that he could lay his hands upon ; so that it was only during the absences of Mr Lambert from Bristol that he was able to expend his unemployed time in his favourite pursuits. But repeated allusions, both by Chatterton and others, seem to I indicate that such intervals of freedom were of frequent occurrence. ! Then he could finish his average two hours of legitimate office work, i attend to whatever other duties devolved upon him, and thereafter I betake himself to song or satire, or abandon himself to the romance j of that antique world in which his pleasantest hours were passed. But such intervals of freedom only tended to increase his dislike for the restraints of office-life under his master s eye. In every changing mood of mind he was prone to seek relief in his pen ; yielding at times to earnest thought, and giving lyrical form to his religious feelings and convictions ; at other times giving freest scope to his satirical humour, and subjecting all who came within its range to ridicule or scornful invective ; or again, lapsing into ro mantic reverie, and revelling in the creations of his antique muse. Some of his modern poems, such as the piece entitled &quot; Resignation,&quot; are of great beauty ; and these, with the satires, in which he took his revenge on all the local celebrities whose vanity or meanness had excited his ire, are alone sufficient to fill a volume. The Catcotts, Burgum, Barrett, and others of his patrons, figure in these satires, in imprudent yet discriminating caricature, along with mayor, aldermen, bishop, dean, and other notabilities of Bristol. But such satirical sallies were the mere sportive effusions of the boy, in which he thoughtlessly exposed even the foibles of his friends. Towards Lambert his feelings were of too keen a nature to find relief in such sarcasm. &quot;Vhen he does give utterance to them, it is with a bitter sense of one deeply wronged. Doubtless the abilities of the attorney s clerk were widely different from what he had bargained for ; but it is obvious that the boy whom he had received into his house was regarded by him with no more sympathy than any transient menial who drudged for hire. At length, in 1770, Chat terton s connexion with Lambert was brought to an abrupt close. Thus far the muse had rewarded him only by the pleasure of secret hours spent in her service. The very appreciation of his antique poems by the few to whom they had been communicated was accom panied by an utter ignoring of any capacity on the part of their real author ; and every attempt to win recognition of his merits only sub jected him to fresh slights. The ambition to be able to hold his place among his companions, in dress, and in the pastimes suited to their age, made him increasingly sensitive to his menial position, and tempted him to look to his pen for other returns than the pleasure derived from his romantic dream. Mr Cottle gives an extract from a letter written about this time, in which he curses the Muses, exclaiming, &quot; I abominate them and their works. They are the nurses of poverty and insanity.&quot;