C H A 



756 



C H A 



Chatter- 

 ton. 



in the daily papers, and Songs for the public gar- 

 dens, were his actual or projected tasks. An extra- 

 ordinary elevation was given to his spirits, by the no- 

 tice which his political principles attracted from the 

 Lord Mayor Beckford, to whom he was introduced. 

 On this, as on every other circumstance which filled 

 his heart with high anticipation, he wrote with much 

 affection to his mother and sisters, promising they 

 should be partakers in his future fortune, and even 

 sending them presents at times, when there was every 

 probability that he was himself nearly,in want of the 

 necessaries of life. During two months from the date 

 of his arrival, it appears from the list of his communica- 

 tions to public papers, and from his songs, &c. that he 

 was industrious in the midst of this intoxicating dream 

 of success. But his hopes had been probably Founded 

 in the extravagant idea of making himself of political 

 consequence by his writings ; and when that delusion 

 vanished, he found that unremitting industry alone 

 would ensure to him a competence among the dealers 

 in literary ware. No delusion is more common to 

 youthful genius than to over- rate its future powers 

 of patient drudgery. Chatterton set out, therefore, 

 with the fire of the racer, but his unequal spirits seem 

 to have sunk under the burthens of the course. The 

 history of his few remaining days is melancholy, but 

 obscure. About the end of July, he removed from 

 a house in Shoreditch, to the house of a Mrs Angel, 

 a sack-maker in Brook- street, Holborn, where he 

 became poor and unhappy, abandoning his literary 

 pursuits, and proposing to go out to Africa as a na- 

 val surgeon's mate. He had picked up some know- 

 ledge of surgery, and now requested that gentleman's 

 recommendation, which Mr Barret thought proper 

 to refuse. It is certain, that either from want of en- 

 couragement from the booksellers, or, which is much 

 more probable, from the gloomy despondency of his 

 mind, he no longer employed his pen, and that the 

 short remainder of his days was spent in a conflict 

 between pride and poverty. On the day preceding 

 his death, he refused an offer from Mrs Angel to 

 partake of her dinner, assuring her that he was not 

 hungry. At that time she believed that he had eat 

 nothing for two or three days. On the 25th of Au- 

 gust, he was found dead, in consequence of hav- 

 ing swallowed poison. He was buried in a shell in 

 the burying- ground belonging to Shoelane work- 

 house. Previous to his death he had torn all his 

 manuscripts in small pieces. 



On the short and tragical career of " this mighty 

 stripling," it is impossible to reflect without regret 

 and astonishment. The authenticity of Rowley's 

 poems is now given up. Mr Warton has proved, that, 

 wonderful as it may seem for Chatterton to have 

 written them, it is impossible that they could have 

 been written by Rowley ; and these must have been 

 composed by the boy of Bristol before he had com- 

 pleted his 16th year. Some deduction may perhaps 

 be made from the admiration with which they are 

 contemplated through the medium of an antiquated 

 language ; but the intrinsic value of some of those 

 pieces is sterling, independent of all considerations 

 either of their author's age, or of the veil of language 

 which softens their defects by obscurity. Among 

 these is the ballad of Sir Charles Bawdin. The he- 

 roic conception of character, the simple and well-clio- 

 sen incidents, the pathos and picturesqueness of this 



poem, would do honour to the matured imagination 

 of the greatest genius. The chorus in Godwynne, 

 beginning, 



" When Freedom drest in bloodstain'd vest- 

 To many a knight her war-song sung," &c. 



is fraught with the boldest spirit of lyrical enthu- 

 siasm. 



His life (says Lord Orford) should be compared with 

 the powers of his mind ; the perfection of his poetry ; 

 his knowledge of the world, which, though in some 

 respects erroneous, spoke quick intuition ; his humour, 

 his vein of satire, and above all, the amazing number 

 of books he must have looked into, though chain- 

 ed down to a laborious and almost incessant service, 

 and confined to Bristol except for the last five months 

 of his life. The rapidity with which he seized all the 

 topics of conversation then in vogue, whether of po- 

 litics, literature, or fashion ; and when, added to all 

 this mass of reflection, it is remembered that his 

 youthful passions were indulged to excess, faith in 

 such a prodigy may well be suspended, and we should 

 look for some secret agent behind the curtain, if it 

 were not as difficult to believe that any man possessing 

 such a genuine vein of poetry, would have submitted 

 to lie concealed while he actuated a puppet, or would 

 have stooped to prostitute his muse to so many un- 

 worthy functions. But nothing in Chatterton can 

 be separated from Chatterton. His noblest flights 

 and his sweetest strains, his grossest ribaldry and his 

 most common-place imitations of the productions of 

 magazines, were all the effervescence of the same un- 

 governable impulse which, cameleon-like, imbibed 

 the colours of all it looked upon. It was Ossian, or 

 a Saxon monk, or Gray, or Smollet, or Junius; and 

 if it failed most in what it most affected to be, a poet 

 of the 15th century, it was because it could not imir 

 tate what had not existed, (n) 



CHAUCER, GEOFFREY, the Morning Star of 

 English poetry, was born in London in 1328. His 

 descent appears, from the name, to have been Nor- 

 man ; and his father, though variously described, was 

 most probably a merchant. At what university he 

 studied, is a disputed point which even Mr Tyrwhitt 

 has left unsettled. Leland and Warton place him at 

 Oxford, without adducing any proof. His signa- 

 ture of Philoginet of Cambridge affixed to his first 

 poem, The Court of Love, is brought by other bio- 

 graphers as direct testimony that he studied at the 

 other university ; but the signature, it should be re- 

 membered, is fictitious in point of name, and might 

 be equally so in point of date. 



Leland, who is so often inaccurate, tells us that he 

 studied in France. Mr Godwin undertakes to prove 

 this doubtful part of his history, from the circum- 

 stance of a Parisian education being so commonly 

 given to young Englishmen in those days, and from 

 Chaucer's fluently speaking French. The reader 

 will admit these proofs at his own discretion. The pre- 

 sumption of Chaucer's having studied at the Temple, 

 and the story of his having been fined whilst a stu- 

 dent there, for thrashing a friar in Fleet-street, rest 

 also on the weakest authority. 



The precise time at which he attracted the notice 

 of Edward the Third, and of his munificent patron 

 John of Gaunt, is not ascertained, but he certainly 

 enjoyed that patronage before his thirty-first year, 



Chatter- 

 Chaucer. 



