234 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"^ S. VIII. Sept. 17. '5?. 



CUATTERTON MSS. 



(2"'^ S. 94. 194.) 



Your correspondent Mr. Hugh Owen asks 

 triumphantly, " Is there any evidence that Chat- 

 terton ever exhibited a single scrap of the sup- 

 posed literary labours of Rowley, said to have 

 been found in the Redcliff chest ? " I am not 

 going to raise a controversy which it is hopeless 

 should now be ever determined, for poor Chat- 

 terton in the year 1869 — a period fast coming 

 upon us — will have gone to his last account one 

 hundred years ago ; but when his memory is so 

 continually made the subject of attack, and we 

 hear " forgery" and "a long career of deception " 

 charged upon him, there are some considerations 

 which, I think, in fairness, should be stated ; and 

 it does not seem to me that they have yet been 

 sufficiently brought before the public. 



Whether Chatterton himself ever obtained any 

 papers from the chests in Redclifi" church or not, 

 and whether the parchments now in the British 

 Museum ever came from the repositories over 

 Redcliffe porch or not, it seems quite admitted, 

 on all hands, that his father did abstract both 

 parchments and papers from Canynge's chests, and 

 used them for his own purposes. These MSS. 

 seem afterwards to have been in his son's hands, 

 and what could have become of them ? 



If we refer to Dr. Gregory's Life of Chatter- 

 ton, the first occasion upon which attention was 

 attracted to these MSS. was upon the publication 

 of one in Felix Farley s Bristol Journal, giving an 

 account of the friar's passing the old bridge. In 

 consequence of the inquiries of the friends of 

 Dr. Barrett, who was then writing a History of 

 Bristol, it was discovered that the transcript was 

 brought to the Journal Office by a youth named 

 Thomas Chatterton, who, when questioned and 

 threatened, refused to enter into particulars. Upon 

 this statement two questions may be asked, — 

 "Was the conduct of the youth that of one en- 

 tering upon a career of deception ? and secondly, 

 upon what ground comW he have been threatened? 

 I see none, except that he was in possession of 

 papers which certainly did not belong to him. 



Chatterton was articled to an attorney, and 

 •would know very well the real bearing of his 

 case. He had taste enough to find out the 

 genuine merit of the writings, and sufficient 

 knowledge of law to be aware that he had no 

 claim to them. But there was one certain mode 

 of making them his own, — by transcribing the 

 poems, and burning the originals. And this, I 

 suppose, he did. 



This will explain a thousand difficulties ; and 

 doubtless he bitterly repented of what he had 

 done, and would have given all he had to get the 

 originals back, so soon as he was made sensible of 

 their real value, and that his own ignorance and 



blunders in transcription had rendered it doubtful 

 whether there were ever any originals at all. But 

 it was too late. The parchments in the British 

 Museum I conceive to be merely attempts to re- 

 pair his error ; for many of the characters are his, 

 though imitated from old ones. But the most 

 serious evil is, that he probably introduced his 

 own words to make the verse run more smoothly, 

 and at other times absolutely blundered through 

 ignorance, as in the verse, — 



" Noe, bestoikerre, I will go," 

 the second word of which line Bryant has shown 

 was really heswikerre ; and to any one conversant 

 with old writing, the mistake of the first part of 

 the letter w, then carried above the line, for the 

 letter t, is easy and palpable. Again : it is said 

 that his forgeries are clear, because he has intro- 

 duced blank verse, not known until Surrey's time, 

 into the tragedy of jElla. There are some lines 

 in blank verse in the tragedy of JElla, which is a 

 regular and finished poem, and very bad they are, 

 the worst in the piece. But why should any one 

 who could write so much better in the other parts 

 insert these ? Simply, I believe, because some 

 stanzas of the tragedy there were lost, and Chat- 

 terton put them in to carry on the story, either 

 from inability or want of time to write in the 

 strain of the original. 



True it is, that Chatterton was very unpopular 

 with the corporation of Bristol. He satirised 

 them, and they hated and persecuted him in re- 

 turn. But it is time these feelings should rest 

 in his grave, and his sad story be thought of 

 only with regret. Railroad improvements have 

 demolished the little school in which he first re- 

 ceived the early rudiments of education ; the 

 curious little sign of the " horse milliner " has 

 disappeared ; strangers are required to give in 

 their name before they can be admitted to look at 

 W. Canynge's chests and boxes ; and the Rowley 

 stone at St. John's is carefully covered up, though 

 it is to be hoped not damaged or destroyed. But 

 the strains, whether Rowley's or Chatterton's, 

 still survive, despite the art and malice of Wal- 

 pole, KT%a is aei, an eternal possession. When 

 we peruse them, let us no longer speak of " im- 

 postors" or "deceivers," but drop a tear to the 

 memory of him, who, in whatever capacity, was 

 the unhappy instrument of introducing them to 

 the notice of the world. W. 



Perhaps I may be allowed in reply to Mr. Hugh 

 Owen to say I was not the person who took this 

 MS. to the Bristol Literary Institution for com- 

 parison with Chatterton's will ; for my knowledge 

 of his handwriting rendered it unnecessary. 



On looking through my two volumes of the 

 De Bergham Pedigree, in Chatterton's Autograph, 

 I find some of the Latin paragraphs translated by 



