Chapter 4

IV. And on this head we are told by Mr. B. that the hand-writing, indeed, is not that of any particular age, but that it is very difficult to know precisely the era of a Ms., especially when of great antiquity; that our kings wrote very different hands, and many of them such, that it is impossible to distinguish one from the other; and that the diminutive size of the parchments on which these poems were written, (of which, I think, the largest that these Commentators talk of is eight inches and a half long, and four and a half broad[F],) was owing to the great scarcity of parchment in former times, on which account the lines often appear in continuation, without regard to the termination of the verse.

[Footnote F: At the bottom of each sheet of old deeds (of which there were many in the Bristol chest) there is usually a blank space of about four or five inches in breadth. C. therefore found these slips of discoloured parchment at hand.]

Most of these assertions are mere _gratis dicta_, without any foundation in truth. I am not very well acquainted with the ancient Mss. of the fourteenth or fifteenth century: but I have now before me a very fair Ms. of the latter end of the sixteenth century, in which the characters are as regular and uniform as possible. If twenty Mss. were produced to me, some of that era, and others of eras prior and subsequent to it, I would undertake to point out the hand-writing of the age of queen Elizabeth, which is that of the Ms. I speak of, from all the rest; and I make no doubt that persons who are conversant with the hand-writing of preceding centuries, could with equal precision ascertain the age of more ancient Mss. than any that I am possessed of. But the truth is, (as any one may see, who accurately examines the _fac simile_ exhibited originally by Mr. Tyrwhitt in his edition of these poems, and now again by the Dean of Exeter in the new edition of them,) that Chatterton could not, accurately and for any continuance, copy the hand-writing of the fifteenth century; nor do the Mss. that he produced exhibit the hand-writing of _any_ century whatever. He had a turn for drawing and emblazoning; and he found, without doubt, some ancient deeds in his father’s old chest. These he copied to the best of his power; but the hand-writing usually found in deeds is very different from the current hand-writing of the same age, and from that employed in transcribing poems. To copy even these deeds to any great extent, would have been dangerous, and have subjected him to detection. Hence it was, that he never produced any parchment so large as a leaf of common folio. --What we are told of the great scarcity of parchment formerly, is too ridiculous to be answered. Who has not seen the various beautiful Mss. of the works of Gower and Chaucer, in several publick and private libraries, on parchment and on vellum, a small part of any one of which would have been sufficient to contain all the poems of Rowley, in the manner in which they are pretended to have been written? --But any speculation on this point is but waste of time. If such a man as Rowley had existed, who could troul off whole verses of Shakspeare, Dryden, and Pope, in the middle of the fifteenth century, he would have had half the parchment in the kingdom at his command; statues would have been erected to him as the greatest prodigy that the world had ever seen; and in a few years afterwards, when printing came to be practised, the presses of Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde would have groaned with his productions.

Much stress is laid upon Chatterton’s having been seen frequently writing, with old crumpled parchments before him. No doubt of the fact. How else could he have imitated old hands in _any_ manner, or have been able to form even the few pretended originals that he did produce? But to whom did he ever show these old Mss. when he was transcribing them? To whom did he ever say-- “Such and such characters denote such letters, and the verse that I now show you in this old parchment is of this import?” Whom did he call upon, knowing in ancient hands, (and such undoubtedly he might have found,) to establish, by the testimony of his own eyes, the antiquity, not of one, but of all these Mss? If an ingenuous youth (as Mr. W. justly observes), “enamoured of poetry, had really found a large quantity of old poems, what would he have done? Produced them cautiously, and one by one, studied them, and copied their style, and exhibited sometimes a genuine, and sometimes a fictitious piece? or blazed the discovery abroad, and called in every lover of poetry and antiquity to participation of the treasure? The characters of imposture are on every part of the story; and were it true, it would still remain one of those improbable wonders, which we have no reason for believing.”

What has been said already concerning forged compositions, cannot be too often repeated. If these Mss. or any part of them exist, why are they not deposited in the British Museum, or some publick library, for the examination of the curious? Till they are produced, we have a right to use the language that Voltaire tells us was used to the Abbé Nodot. “Show us your Ms. of Petronius, which you say was found at Belgrade, or consent that nobody shall believe you. It is as false that you have the genuine satire of Petronius in your hands, as it is false that that ancient satire was the work of a consul, and a picture of Nero’s conduct. Desist from attempting to deceive the learned; you can only deceive the vulgar.”

Beside the marks of forgery already pointed out, these poems bear yet another badge of fraud, which has not, I believe, been noticed by any critick. Chatterton’s verses have been shown to be too smooth and harmonious to be genuine compositions of antiquity: they are liable at the same time to the very opposite objection; they are too old for the era to which they are ascribed. This sounds like a paradox; yet it will be found to be true. The versification is too modern; the language often too ancient. It is not the language of any particular period of antiquity, but of _two entire_ centuries. --This is easily accounted for. Chatterton had no other means of writing old language, but by applying to glossaries and dictionaries, and these comprise all the antiquated words of preceding times; many provincial words used perhaps by a northern poet, and entirely unknown to a southern inhabitant; many words also, used in a singular sense by our ancient bards, and perhaps by them only once. Chatterton drawing his stores from such a copious source, his verses must necessarily contain words of various and widely-distant periods. It is highly probable, for this reason, that many of his lines would not have been understood by one who lived in the fifteenth century. --That the diction of these poems is often too obsolete for the era to which they are allotted[G], appears clearly from hence; many of them are much more difficult to a reader of this day, without a glossary, than any one of the metrical compositions of the age of Edward IV. Let any person, who is not very profoundly skilled in the language of our elder poets, read a few pages of any of the poems of the age of that king, from whence I have already given short extracts, without any glossary or assistance whatsoever; he will doubtless meet sometimes with words he does not understand, but he will find much fewer difficulties of this kind, than while he is perusing the poems attributed to Rowley. The language of the latter, without a perpetual comment, would in most places be unintelligible to a common reader. He might, indeed, from the context, _guess_ at something like the meaning; but the lines, I am confident, will be found, on examination, to contain twenty times more obsolete and obscure words than any one poem of the age of king Edward IV, now extant.

[Footnote G: Mr. Bryant seems to have been aware of this objection, and thus endeavours to obviate it. “Indeed in some places the language seems more obsolete than could be expected for the time of king Edward the Fourth; and the reason is, that some of the poems, however new modelled, were prior to that æra. For _Rowley himself_ [i.e. Chatterton] tells us that he borrowed from Turgot; and we have reason to think that _he_ likewise copied from Chedder.” This same Chedder, he acquaints us in a note, was “a poet mentioned in _the_ Mss., [that is, in Chatterton’s Mss., for I believe his name is not to be found elsewhere.] who is supposed to have flourished about the year 1330. He is said [by Chatterton] to have had some _maumeries_ at the _comitating_ the city.” _Observations_, p. 553. I wonder the learned commentator did not likewise inform us, from the same _unquestionable authority_, what wight _Maistre_ Chedder copied.]

Before I conclude, I cannot omit to take notice of two or three particulars on which the Dean of Exeter and Mr. Bryant much rely. The former, in his Dissertation on _Ella_, says, “Whatever claim might have been made in favour of Chatterton as the author [of _the Battle of Hastings_], founded either on his own unsupported and improbable assertion, or on the supposed possibility of his writing these two poems, assisted by Mr. Pope’s translation [of Homer], no plea of this kind can be urged with regard to any other poem in the collection, and least of all to the dramatick works, or the tragedy of _Ella_; which required not only an elevation of poetic genius far superior to that possessed by Chatterton, but also such moral and mental qualifications as never entered into any part of his character or conduct, and which could not possibly be acquired by a youth of his age and inexperience.” “Where (we are triumphantly asked) could he learn the nice rules of the Interlude, by the introduction of a chorus, and the application of their songs to the moral and virtuous object of the performance?”-- Where?-- from Mr. Mason’s _Elfrida_ and _Caractacus_, in which he found a perfect model of the Greek drama, and which doubtless he had read. But ELLA “_inculcates the precepts of morality_;” and Chatterton, it is urged, was idle and dissolute, and therefore could not have been the authour of it. Has then the reverend editor never heard of instances of the purest system of morality being powerfully enforced from the pulpit by those who in their own lives have not been always found to adhere rigidly to the rules that they laid down for the conduct of others? Perhaps not; but I suppose many instances of this kind will occur to every reader. The world would be pure indeed, if speculative and practical morality were one and the same thing. “That knowledge of times, of men, and manners,” without which, it is said, _Ella_ could not have been written, I find no difficulty in believing to have been possessed by this very extraordinary youth. Did he not, when he came to London, instead of being dazzled and confounded by the various new objects that surrounded him, become in a short time, by that almost intuitive faculty which accompanies genius, so well acquainted with all the reigning topicks of discourse, with the manners and different pursuits of various classes of men, with the state of parties, &c. as to pour out from the press a multitude of compositions on almost every subject that could exercise the pen of the oldest and most experienced writer[H]? He who could do this, could compose the tragedy of ELLA[I]: (a name, by the by, that he probably found in Dr. Percy’s _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_, Vol. I. p. xxiv.)

[Footnote H: The following notices, which Mr. Walpole has preserved, are too curious to be omitted. They will give the reader a full idea of the professed authorship of Chatterton. In a list of pieces written by him, but never published, are the following:

5. “TO LORD NORTH. A Letter signed the MODERATOR, and dated May 26, 1770, beginning thus: “My Lord-- It gives me a painful pleasure, &c.-- This (says Mr. W.) is an encomium on administration for rejecting the Lord Mayor Beckford’s Remonstrance.

6. _A Letter to Lord Mayor Beckford_, signed PROBUS, dated May 26, 1770. --This is a violent abuse of Government for rejecting the Remonstrance, and begins thus: “When the endeavours of a spirited people to free themselves from an insupportable slavery”----. On the back of this essay, which is directed to Chatterton’s friend, Cary, is this indorsement:

“Accepted by Bingley-- set for and thrown out of _The North Briton_, 21 June, on account of the Lord Mayor’s death.

Lost by his death on this Essay 1 11 6 Gained in Elegies 2 2 0 ------ in Essays 3 3 0 Am glad he is dead by 3 13 6”]

[Footnote I: Chatterton wrote also “a _Monks_ Tragedy,” which, if his forgeries had met with a more favourable reception than they did, he would doubtless have produced as an ancient composition. With the ardour of true genius, he wandered to the untrodden paths of the little Isle of Man for a subject, and aspired

_petere inde coronam,_ _Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Musæ._]

Almost every part of the Dissertation on this tragedy is as open to observation as that now mentioned. It is not true, as is asserted, (p. 175.) that the _rythmical tales_, before called _tragedies_, first assumed a regular dramatick form in the time of king Edward IV. These melancholy tales went under the name of tragedies for above a century afterwards. Many of the pieces of Drayton were called _tragedies_ in the time of Queen Elizabeth, though he is not known to have ever written a single drama. But without staying to point out all the mistakes of the reverend critick on this subject, I recommend to those readers who wish to form a decided opinion on these poems, the same test for the tragedy of _Ella_ that I have already suggested for the _Battle of Hastings_. If they are not furnished with any of our dramatick pieces in the original editions, let them only cast their eyes on those ancient interludes which take up the greater part of Mr. Hawkins’s first volume of _The Origin of the English Drama_ (the earliest of them composed in 1512); and I believe they will not hesitate to pronounce _Ella_ a modern composition. The dramas which are yet extant (if they can deserve that name), composed between the years 1540 and 1570, are such wretched stuff, that nothing but antiquarian curiosity can endure to read a page of them. Yet the period I speak of is near a century after the era of the pretended Rowley.

The argument of Mr. B. on this subject is too curious to be omitted: “I am sensible (says he, in his _Observations_, p. 166,) that the plays mentioned above [the Chester Mysteries] seem to have been confined to religious subjects. --But though the monks of the times confined themselves to these subjects, it does not follow that people of more learning and genius were limited in the same manner. As plays certainly existed, the plan might sometimes be varied; and the transition from sacred history to profane, was very natural and easy. Many generous attempts may have been made towards the improvement of the rude drama, and the introduction of compositions on a better model: but the ignorance of the monks, and the depraved taste of the times, may have prevented such writings being either countenanced or preserved. It may be said, that we have no examples of any compositions of this sort. But this is begging the question; _while we have the plays of _Ælla_ and _Godwin_ before us. The former is particularly transmitted to us as _Rowley’s_[K]._” I believe no reader will be at a loss to determine, who it is that in this case _begs the question_. Here we have another remarkable instance of that kind of circular proof of which I have already taken notice.

[Footnote K: In the same manner argues the learned pewterer of Bristol, Mr. George Catcott. These poems are certainly genuine, “for Rowley himself mentions them in the YELLOW ROLL.” See his letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. XLVIII. p. 348.]

In the multitude of topicks agitated by these commentators, I had almost forgot one, much relied upon by the last-mentioned gentleman. It is the name of _Widdeville_, which, we are informed, (p. 317.) is written in all the old chronicles _Woodville_; and the question is triumphantly asked, “how could Chatterton, in his _Memoirs of Cannynge_, [_Miscell._ p. 119.] vary from all these chronicles? --Where could he have found the name of _Widdeville_ except in one of those manuscripts to which we are so much beholden?” If the learned commentator’s book should arrive at a second edition, I recommend it to him to cancel this page (as well as a former, in which he appears not to have known that “_happy_ man _be his dole_!” is a common expression in Shakspeare, and for his ignorance of which he is forced to make an awkward apology in his Appendix); and beg leave to inform him, that Chatterton found the name of _Widdeville_ in a very modern, though now scarce, book, the _Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England_[L], by Mr. Walpole, every one of whose works most assuredly Chatterton had read.

[Footnote L: See the first volume of that entertaining work, p. 67; art. _Antony_ Widwille, _Earl Rivers_.]

The names of the combatants in _the Battle of Hastings_, an enumeration of which takes up one third of this commentator’s work, and which, he tells us, are only to be found in Doomsday-book and other ancient records that Chatterton could not have seen, have been already shown by others to be almost all mentioned in Fox’s _Book of Martyrs_, and the _Chronicles_ of Holinshed and Stowe. And what difficulty is there in supposing that the names not mentioned in any printed work (if any such there are) were found in the old deeds that he undoubtedly examined, and which were more likely to furnish him with a catalogue of names than any other ancient muniment whatsoever? It is highly probable also, that in the same chest which contained these deeds, he found some old Diary of events relating to Bristol, written by a mayor or alderman of the fifteenth century, that furnished him with some account of Rowley and Cannynge, and with those circumstances which the commentators say are only to traced in William de Wircester. The practice of keeping diaries was at that time very general, and continued to be much in use to the middle of the last century. This, it must be owned, is a mere hypothesis, but by no means an improbable one.

I cannot dismiss this gentleman without taking notice of a position which he has laid down, and is indeed the basis of almost all the arguments that he has urged to prove the authenticity of the Bristol Mss. It is this; that as every authour must know his own meaning, and as Chatterton has sometimes given wrong interpretations of words that are found in the poems attributed to Rowley, he could not be the authour of those poems.

If Chatterton had originally written these poems, in the form in which they now appear, this argument might in a doubtful question have some weight. But although I have as high an opinion of his abilities as perhaps any person whatsoever, and do indeed believe him to have been the greatest genius that England has produced since the days of Shakspeare, I am not ready to acknowledge that he was endued with any miraculous powers. Devoted as he was from his infancy to the study of antiquities, he could not have been so conversant with ancient language, or have had all the words necessary to be used so present to his mind, as to write antiquated poetry of any considerable length, off hand. He, without doubt, wrote his verses in plain English, and afterwards embroidered them with such old words as would suit the sense and metre. With these he furnished himself, sometimes probably from memory, and sometimes from glossaries; and annexed such interpretations as he found or made. When he could not readily find a word that would suit his metre, he invented one[M]. If then his old words afford some sense, and yet are sometimes interpreted wrong, nothing more follows than that his glossaries were imperfect, or his knowledge inaccurate; (still however he might have had a confused, though not complete, idea of their import:) if, as the commentator asserts, the words that he has explained not only suit the places in which they stand, but are often more apposite than he imagined, and have a latent and significant meaning, that never occurred to him, this will only show, that a man’s book is sometimes wiser than himself; a truth of which we have every day so many striking instances, that it was scarcely necessary for this learned antiquarian to have exhibited a new proof of it.

[Footnote M: In Chatterton’s poems many words occur, that were undoubtedly coined by him; as _mole_, _dolce_, _droke_, _glytted_, _aluste_, &c. All these his new editor has inserted in a very curious performance which he is pleased to call a Glossary, _with such interpretations at the context supplied_, without even attempting to support them either by analogy or the authority of our ancient writers.]

Let it be considered too, that the glossary and the text were not always written at the same time; that Chatterton might not always remember the precise sense in which he had used antiquated words; and from a confused recollection, or from the want of the very same books that he had consulted while he was writing his poems, might add sometimes a false, and sometimes an imperfect, interpretation. --This is not a mere hypothesis; for in one instance we know that the comment was written at some interval of time after the text. “The glossary of the poem entitled _the Englysh Metamorposis_ (Mr. Tyrwhitt informs us) was written down by C. extemporally, without the assistance of any book, at the desire and in the presence of Mr. Barrett.”

I have here given this objection all the force that it can claim, and more perhaps than it deserves; for I doubt much whether in Chatterton’s whole volume six instances can be pointed out, where he has annexed false interpretations to words that appear when rightly understood to suit the context, and to convey a clear meaning: and these mistakes, if even there are so many as have been mentioned, are very easily accounted for from the causes now assigned.

Perhaps it may be urged, that when I talk of the manner in which these poems were composed, I am myself guilty of the fault with which I have charged others, that of assuming the very point in controversy; and the observation would be just, if there were not many collateral and decisive circumstances, by which Chatterton is clearly proved to have written them. All these concurring to show that he forged these pieces, an investigation of the _manner_ in which he forged them, cannot by any fair reasoning be construed into an assumption of the question in dispute.

Great stress is also laid by this commentator on some variations being found in the copies of these poems that were produced by Chatterton at different times; or, to use his own words, “there is often a material variation between the copy and the original, which never could have happened if he had been the author of both[N]. He must have known his own writing, and would not have deviated from his own purpose.” ----Thus in one copy of _the Song to Ella_, which C. gave to Mr. Barrett, these lines were found:

“Or seest the hatched steed, “_Ifrayning_ o’er the mead.”