Part 23

From the time he had begun to read, a great change had passed over him. "He grew thoughtful and reserved. He was silent and gloomy for long intervals together, speaking to no one, and appearing angry when noticed or disturbed. He would break out into sudden fits of weeping, for which no reason could be assigned; would shut himself in some chamber, and suffer no one to approach him, nor allow himself to be enticed from his seclusion. Often he would go to the length of absenting himself from home altogether, for the space, sometimes, of many hours; and his sister remembered him being most severely chastised for a long absence, at which, however, he did not shed one tear, but merely said, 'It was hard, indeed, to be whipped for reading.' This was before his entering Colston's school, but there he kept up the zealous reading. He is reported to have stood aloof from the society of his schoolmates, to have made few acquaintances, and only among those whose disposition inclined them to reflection. His money, all that he could procure, went to get the perusal of books; and on Sundays, and holidays, and half holidays, he was either wandering solitarily in the fields, sitting beside the tomb of Canynge in the church, or was shut up in a little room at his mother's, attending to no meal-times, and only issuing out, when he did appear, begrimed with ocher, charcoal, and black-lead.

"From twelve to seven, each Saturday, he was always at home; returning punctually a few minutes after the clock had struck, to get to his little room, and to shut himself up. In this room he always had by him a great piece of ocher in a brown pan; pounce-bags full of charcoal dust, which he had from a Miss Sanger, a neighbor; also a bottle of black-lead powder, which they once took to clean the stove with and made him very angry. Every holiday, almost, he passed at home, and often, having been denied the key when he wanted it, because they thought he hurt his health, and made himself dirty, he would come to Mrs. Edkins, and kiss her cheek, and coax her to get it for him, using the most persuasive expressions to effect his end; so that this eagerness of his to be in this room so much alone, the apparatus, the parchments (for he was not then indentured to Mr. Lambert), both plain as well as written on, and the begrimed figure he always presented when he came down at tea-time, his face exhibiting many stains of black and yellow--all these circumstances began to alarm them; and when she could get into his room, she would be very inquisitive, and peep about at every thing. Once he put his foot on a parchment on the floor, to prevent her from taking it up, saying, 'You are too curious and clear-sighted; I wish you would bide out of the room; it is my room.' To this she answered by telling him that it was only a general lumber-room, and that she wanted some parchment to make thread-papers of; but he was offended, and would not permit her to touch any of them, not even those that were not written on; but with a voice of entreaty, said, 'Pray don't touch any thing here,' and seemed very anxious to get her away; and this increased her fears, lest he should be doing something improper, knowing his want of money, and his ambition to appear like others.[9] At last they got a strange idea that these colors were to color himself with, and that, perhaps, he would join some gipsies one day or other, as he seemed so discontented with his station in life, and unhappy."[10]

But the true secret was one far beyond the conception of his simple relatives. Coining and forging, indeed, he was bent upon, and meant to join himself, some day or other, to a company which, in their eyes, would have appeared stranger than a troop of gipsies. He was already, child as he was, forging the name and deeds of Thomas Rowley, and fathering upon him the glorious coinage of his own brain. A great and immortal guest was theirs, and they did not know it. One of themselves was marked by the passing angel of destiny as the one of all his generation doomed to the fearful sacrifice of a sad but eternal fame. The spirit which had stolen upon him and taken possession of him as he had roamed the dim aisles of the old church, and gazed on the great sacred scene of the Ascension of Christ, and on the light avenues of lofty columns, and sat by the tomb of Master Canynge, was now busy with him. It was this which had made him gloomy and retiring, which had caused him to burst into passions of tears, for which no reason could be assigned. A new world had dawned before his inner vision; the sensibilities of the poet were now quivering in every nerve; mysterious shapes moved around him, which one day he must report of to the world--shapes, the offspring of that old church, and its tombs and monuments, and traceries and emblazonments, mingled with the spirit of his solitary readings in history, divinity, and antiquities; and that melancholy foreboding, that _Ahnung_ of the future, as the Germans term it, which, like a present angel of prophecy, unseen, but felt, hangs on the heart of youthful genius with an overpowering sadness, was spread over him like a heavenly cloud, which made the physical face of life dreary and insipid to him.

This was the boy, of eleven or twelve years old, who had already commenced satirist, and launched his arrows of sarcasm at offenders in Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, where "Sly Dick" and "Apostate Will" were pilloried before the whole city by so young a hand. This was the boy, of perhaps fourteen, who astonished the worthy pewterer, Burgum, by bringing to him an historic account of his pedigree, with coats of arms all elaborately painted on parchment, tracing his descent, with minute detail of personages, from no less a distance than the Saxon period, and from no less a person than the great Waltheof, earl of Northumberland, Northampton, and Huntingdon! Great has been the laughter at poor Burgum for swallowing the pleasant deceit; but let any one imagine to himself a charity schoolboy, in old-fashioned costume, and his innocent boy's face, appearing before him, and presenting to him so matter-of-fact a document, as found in a chest in the muniment room of St. Mary's Church, in which this boy was known to pore and hunt about. Could any suspicion of such a boy's forgery of the document at first be entertained? Would any feelings but those of wonder and curiosity be excited? Burgum was completely taken in; and a thousand others who have since laughed at him would have been taken in too. And now began to be sounded about that famous story of the iron-bound chest of Master Canynge, in the muniment room over the north porch of St. Mary Redcliffe Church, from which Chatterton's father had been allowed to carry home whole heaps of parchments, and from which heaps Chatterton professed to have drawn this pedigree of the De Bergham family. This was a most prolific source of strange documents, which from time to time came issuing forth in the shape of transcripts by the boy Chatterton. His fifteenth year, however, saw him, in one day, metamorphosed from a Colston's charity boy into a lawyer's apprentice. He was bound to one Lambert, a man of little practice, and who, besides, is termed "a vulgar, insolent, imperious man; who, because the boy wrote poetry, was of a melancholy and contemplative disposition, and disposed to study and reading, thought him a fit object of insult and contemptuous rage." Need we ask why his mother bound him to such a man? To whom _can_ the poor bind their children? Had Lambert been a pleasant fellow, and in great practice, he would have had rich men's sons offered, and would have demanded a fee that would effectually exclude the poor. Here his life was the life of insult and degradation, which might pretty safely be calculated upon with such a man and such a practice. Twelve hours he was chained to the office, _i. e._, from eight in the morning till eight at night, dinner hour only excepted; and in the house he was confined to the kitchen, slept with the footboy, and was subjected to indignities of a like nature, at which his pride rebelled, and by which his temper was imbittered. Yet here it was, during this life of base humiliation, that Thomas Chatterton worked out the splendid creations of his imagination. In less than three years of the life of a poor attorney's apprentice, fed in the kitchen, and lodged with the footboy, did he here achieve an immortality such as the whole life of not one in ten millions is sufficient to create.

In the long, solitary hours of this empty office--for, not having any business, even the master was very often absent--he had ample leisure and secure opportunity to give scope to the feelings and fancies which had sprung up in the aisles of St. Mary's, but which had since grown with the aliment of historic and poetic knowledge gathered from Fuller, Camden, Chaucer, and the old chroniclers. From time to time, as I have said, came flying forth some precious old piece of local history, which astonished the good people of Bristol, and were always traced to this same wonderful lad, and his inexhaustible parchments from the old chest. A new bridge is built, and in Felix Farley's Journal appears an account of the opening of the old bridge ages before, with all the ceremonies and processions of civil officers, priests, friars, and minstrels, with all their banners and clarions. Then Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, is writing his history of the place, and lacks information respecting the ancient churches; and, lo! the prolific MSS. of Maister Canynge supply not only histories of all churches, but of castles and palaces, with the directions of the ancient streets, and all the particulars of the city walls, and all their gates. Never was an historian so readily and so affluently supplied! Whoever now sees the ponderous quarto of Barrett's History of Bristol, with all the wonders palmed upon the author by Chatterton, must be equally amazed at the daring of the lad and the credulity of the man. He restored in a fine drawing the ancient castle, in a style of architecture such as surely never was seen in any castle before. There were towers of a most lofty and unique description, yet extremely beautiful; there were battlements as unique as if the ancient knights who defended them had left their shields lying upon them; there were tiers of arches, circles, and stars, one above another, in fronts of the most fanciful kind; there were other parts where pilasters ran from ground to battlement, ornamented with alternating cross keys, human figures, lozenges, ovals, zigzag lines, and other ornaments, such as never could have originated but in a poetical and daring brain; yet was the whole worthy of the residence of some knight or king of old romance. It was beautiful, and might suggest to architects in these threadbare days ideas of a style piquantly original and refreshing. This was the view of Bristol Castle in 1138, Rowlie Canonicus, deleniator, 1440, to be seen in Barrett's History. But deeper and deeper does this fortunate youth dive into the treasures of the chest, and more and more amazing are the wonders that he brings up. Never was so rich a chest stowed away in cloisters of the rich old middle ages. Now came up poets, painters, carvers, heralds, architects, and stainers of glass, besides warriors of proudest renown, all flourishing in times that we are wont to deem barren of such glories; and a more than chivalric reign of Arthur--a more than Elizabethan constellation of genius in arts and arms, astonishes the senses of those deeply learned, who fancied that they had explored all possible mines of the past knowledge. The dark ages grow brighter and brighter as the necromantic stripling rubs his lamp in the office of the attorney Lambert, till the living are almost blinded by the blaze of light from the regions of the forgotten dead. No less than eleven poets of great fame did he bring to light, of whom Abbot John, who flourished in 1186, he says, was one of the greatest that ever lived; and Maister John à Iscam not much less, living in the time of the great Maister Canynge, himself also a fine poet! But of all men, most versatile and rich in lore and intellect was Thomas Rowley, the friend of Canynge, and priest of St. John, in Bristol; and, truly, if the poems which he put forth in Rowley's name had been Rowley's, Rowley would have been a famous poet indeed--to say nothing of his sermons, histories, and other writings.

Spite of the wretchedness of his domestic position in Lambert's house, this must have been the happiest portion of Chatterton's life. His bringing out these treasures to the day had given him great consideration, among not only some of the most leading men, but among the youth of Bristol. With his excitable temperament, his spirits rose occasionally into great gayety and confidence. He began to entertain dreams of a lofty ambition. He had created a new world for himself, in which he lived. He had made Rowley its great heroic bard. He had raised Maister Canynge again from his marble rest in the south transept of St. Mary's, and placed him in his ancient glory in Bristol. Beneath his hands St. Mary's rose like a fairy fabric out of the earth, and was consecrated amid the most glorious hymns, and with the most gorgeous processions of priests and minstrels. Great and magnificent was Canynge in his wealth and his goodness once more in his native city; and in the brave lays of Rowley the valiant Ella fought, and the fierce Harold and William the Norman made the Hill of Battell the eternal monument of the loss and gain of England.

"He was always," says Mr. Smyth, one of his intimate companions, "extremely fond of walking in the fields, particularly in Redcliffe Meadows, and of talking about these manuscripts, and sometimes reading them there. 'Come,' he would say, 'you and I will take a walk in the meadow. I have got the cleverest thing for you imaginable; it is worth half a crown merely to have a sight of it, and to hear me read it to you.' When we arrived at the place proposed, he would produce his parchment, show it me, and read it to me. There was one spot in particular, full in view of the church, in which he would take a particular delight. He would frequently lay himself down, fix his eyes upon the church, and seem as if he were in a kind of trance. Then, on a sudden, abruptly he would tell me, 'That steeple was burned down by lightning; that was the place where they formerly acted plays.'

"His Sundays were commonly spent in walking alone into the country about Bristol, as far as the duration of daylight would allow; and from those excursions he never failed to bring home with him drawings of churches, or some other objects which had impressed his romantic imagination."

This was one of those brief seasons in the poet's life when the heaven of his spirit has cast its glory on the nether world. When the light and splendor of his own beautiful creations invest the common earth, and he walks in the summer of his heart's joy. Every imagination seems to have become a reality; every hope to expand before him into fame and felicity; and the flowers beneath his tread, the sky above him, the air that breathes upon his cheek--all nature, in short, is full of the intoxication of poetic triumph. Bristol was become quite too narrow for him and Rowley; he shifted the field of his ambition to London, and the whole enchanted realm of his anticipations passed like a Fata Morgana, and was gone! There came instead, cruel contempt, soul-withering neglect, hunger, despair, and suicide!

Such was the history of the life of one of England's greatest poets, who perished by his own hand, stung to the soul by the utter neglect of his country, and too proud to receive that bread from compassion which the reading public of Great Britain refused to his poetic labors. Of this, of Walpole, and Gray, and Sam Johnson, and the like, we will speak more anon. Here let us pause, and select a few specimens of that poetry which the people of England, at the latter end of the eighteenth century, would fain have suffered to perish with its author. That they may be better understood, we will modernize them.

The chief of his Rowley Poems are, Ella, a tragical Interlude, or discoursing Tragedy; Godwin, the fragment of another Tragedy; the Battle of Hastings, the fragment of an Epic; and the Parliament of Sprytes, a most merry Interlude; with smaller ones.

ROUNDELAY, SUNG BY THE MINSTRELS IN ELLA.

"O! sing unto my roundelay, O! drop the briny tear with me; Dance no more at holiday; Like a running river be. My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed, All under the willow-tree.

"Black his hair as the winter night, White his neck as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light; Cold he lies in the grave below. My love is dead, &c.

"Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note, Quick in dance as thought can be, Daft his tabor, cudgel stout; O! he lies by the willow-tree. My love is dead, &c.

"Hark! the raven flaps his wing In the briered dell below; Hark! the death-owl loud doth sing To the nightmares, as they go. My love is dead, &c.

"See! the white moon shines on high-- Whiter is my true love's shroud; Whiter than the morning sky, Whiter than the evening cloud. My love is dead, &c.

"Here, upon my true love's grave, Shall the barren flowers be laid; Not one holy saint to save All the coldness of a maid. My love is dead, &c.

"With my hands I'll bend the briers Round his holy corse to gre:[11] Elfin fairies, light your fires; Here my body still shall be. My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed, All under the willow-tree.

"Come with acorn-cup and thorn, Drain my heart's blood all away; Life and all its good I scorn, Dance by night, or feast by day. My love is dead, &c.

"Water-witches, crowned with reytes,[12] Bear me to your lethal tide. I die! I come! my true love waits: Thus the damsel spoke, and died."

This roundelay has always, and most justly, been greatly admired for its true pathos, and that fine harmony which charms us so much in the fragments of similar songs preserved by Shakspeare. Not less beautiful is the chorus in Godwin. There is something singularly great and majestic in its imagery.

CHORUS IN GODWIN.

"When Freedom, dressed in blood-stained vest, To every knight her war-song sung, Upon her head wild weeds were spread; A gory anlace by her hung: She danced upon the heath; She heard the voice of death; Pale-eyed Affright, his heart of silver hue, In vain assailed her bosom to acale;[13] She heard unmoved the shrieking voice of woe, And Sadness in the owlet shake the dale. She shook the pointed spear, On high she reared her shield; Her foemen all appear, And fly along the field.

Power, with his head aloft unto the skies, His spear a sunbeam, and his shield a star, Like two fierce flaming meteors rolled his eyes, Chafes with his iron feet and sounds to war. She sits upon a rock, She bends before his spear, She rises with the shock, Wielding her own in air. Hard as the thunder doth she drive it on; Wit, closely mantled, guides it to his crown, His long, sharp spear, his spreading shield is gone: He falls, and falling, rolleth thousands down. War, gore-faced War, by Envy armed, arist,[14] His fiery helmet nodding to the air. Ten bloody arrows in his straining fist."

*...*...*...*

Next let us take a poem whose truest criticism is contained in its own title:

AN EXCELLENT BALLAD OF CHARITY.

"From Virgo did the sun diffuse his sheen, And hot upon the meads did cast his ray; Red grew the apple from its paly green, And the soft pear did bend the leafy spray; The piéd goldfinch sung the livelong day: 'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year, And eke the ground was dight in its most deft aumere.[15]

"The sun was gleaming in the midst of day, Dead still the air, and eke the welkin blue, When from the sea arose in drear array A heap of clouds of sable, sullen hue; The which full fast unto the woodlands drew, Hiding at once the sun's rejoicing face, And the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace.

"Beneath an holm fast by a pathway side, Which did unto St. Godwin's convent lead, A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide; In aspect poor, and wretched in his weed. Long filléd with the miseries of need, Where from the hailstone could the almer[16] fly? He had no house at hand, nor any convent nigh.

"Look in his glooméd face, his sprite there scan; How woe-begone, how withered, dry, and dead! Haste to thy church-glebe-house,[17] unhappy man! Haste to thy coffin, thy sole sleeping bed. Cold as the clay which will lie on thy head Is charity and love among high elves; Now knights and barons live for pleasure and themselves.

"The gathered storm is rife; the big drops fall; The sun-burned meadows smoke and drink the rain; The coming _ghastness_[18] doth the cattle 'pall, And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain. Dashed from the clouds, the waters fly again; The welkin opes; the yellow levin flies, And the hot, fiery stream in the wide flashing dies.

"List! now the thunder's rattling, dinning sound Moves slowly on, and then augmented clangs, Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drowned, Still on the startled ear of terror hangs. The winds are up; the lofty elm-tree swings! Again the levin, and the thunder pours, And the full clouds at once are burst in stony showers.

"Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain, The Abbot of St. Godwin's convent came; His chapournette[19] was drenchéd with the rain, His painted girdle met with mickle shame; He backward told his bead-roll at the same; The storm grew stronger, and he drew aside With the poor alms-craver near to the holm to bide.

"His cloak was all of Lincoln cloth so fine, A golden button fastened near his chin; His _autremete_[20] was edged with golden twine, And his peaked shoes a noble's might have been; Full well it showed that he thought cost no sin; The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight, For the horse-milliner his head with roses dight.[21]

"'An alms, Sir Priest!' the dropping pilgrim said; 'O! let me wait within your convent door, Till the sun shineth high above our head, And the loud tempest of the air is o'er; Helpless and old am I, alas! and poor; No house, nor friend, nor money in my pouch; All that I call my own is this my silver _crouche_.'[22]

"'Varlet!' replied the abbot, 'cease your din; This is no season alms and prayers to give; My porter never lets a stroller in; None touch my ring who not in honor live.' And now the sun with the black clouds did strive, And shedding on the ground his glaring ray, The abbot spurred his steed, and eftsoons rode away.