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name of the 'Rowley Poems' gave rise after his death to almost as much angry discussion as the Ossian poetry itself. Some of this work was achieved at school, but most of it after he had been removed from school to the office of a Bristol attorney. A boyish freak resulted in his quitting Bristol for London, on the 24th of April, 1770, and beginning life there as a literary adventurer on a capital of something under five pounds, at a time when the struggle of London literary life was only less dire than it had been thirty years previously, when even the burly figure of Dr. Johnson was nearly succumbing.

He turned to every kind of literary work,-poems, essays, stories, political articles and squibs, burlettas, and even songs for the music gardens of the time at a few pence each. In May and June 1770, he had articles in The Freeholder's Magazine, The Town and Country Magazine, The London Museum, The Political Register, The Court and City Magazine, and even The Gospel Magazine. Among all the literary adventurers of his time there was none perhaps so indomitable as he. Yet, all the while, he cherished as fondly as ever those visions of the past that came to him from St. Mary Redcliffe as he lay dreaming on the grass at Bristol. He was half starving when he wrote The Ballad of Charity, which for reserved power and artistic completeness, no youthful poet has ever approached. Nor did he attack London, as other literary adventurers have done, from the bookseller's shop alone. His sagacity as a man of the world was as wonderful as his literary genius. The penniless country boy, living on a crust in Shoreditch, knew that to conquer London he must conquer the one or two magnates at whose feet the great city. was content to lie. Thousands of ambitious Londoners of that day would have given much for an introduction to the potent Lord Mayor Beckford: before Chatterton had been in London two months he had achieved this, and had so impressed the great man, that Chatterton's future seemed assured. But before Beckford had time to hold out a hand to the young adventurer he suddenly died. This blow seemed fatal to a poor boy with starvation even then staring him in the face. But he fought bravely on, and would have ended victorious but for his pride. That which had been his strength was his weakness now. He would not stoop to conquer, and the time was come when it was necessary to stoop. To live by literature then was almost an impossibility, and he had determined to live by literature or die.

With a masterful pride, for which no parallel can be found, he had already quitted his friends in Shoreditch, lest they should become too familiar with his straits, and taken a garret at 39 Brooke Street, Holborn, where he produced a quantity of literary matter which under any circumstances would have been astonishing, but which is almost incredible if his landlady's story is true, that he was living sometimes on one loaf a week, 'bought stale to make it last longer.' At last, when starvation seemed inevitable, he did make one frantic attempt to obtain the post of ship surgeon, but this failing, he refused to try the commercial world, and steadily rejecting the gift of a penny or a meal from neighbours who tried in vain to help him, he struggled with famine as long as it was possible, and then, on the evening of the 24th of August, 1770, he retired to his garret, locked himself in, tore up all his manuscripts, and poisoned himself with arsenic.

It is not to make capital out of the painful interest attaching to Chatterton's life that I glance at it here on his behalf. Assuredly the personal interest in a poet having such a story as his, is what the critic has specially to guard against in trying to find his proper place in the firmament of our poetic literature. To divest 'the marvellous boy' of that sensational kind of interest which has been associated with his name for more than a century, and at the same time to do justice to an intelligence which Malone compared with Shakspeare's, and a genius which inspired Wordsworth and Coleridge with awe, would require an exhaustive study of that most puzzling chapter of literary history-the chapter that deals with literary forgery. And my defence of him is simply this; that, if such a study were prosecuted, we should find that in matters of literary forgery, besides the impulse of the mere mercenary impostor--as Chatterton appears to empirical critics like Warton-besides the impulse of the masquerading instinct, so strong in men of the Ireland and Horace Walpole type, there is another impulse altogether, the impulse of certain artistic natures to represent, such as we see in Sir Walter Scott (when tampering with the historical ballads), and such as we see in Chatterton when, struggling in his dark garret with famine and despair, he turns from the hack-work that at least might win him bread, to write The Ballad of Gharity, the most purely artistic work perhaps of his time.

W. THEODORE WATTS.

AN EXCELLENT BALLAD OF CHARITY.

In Virginè the sultry Sun 'gan sheene
And hot upon the meads did cast his ray:
The apple ruddied from its paly green,

And the soft pear did bend the leafy spray;
The pied chelandry1 sang the livelong day:
'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,
And eke the ground was dight in its most deft aumere2

The sun was gleaming in the mid of day,
Dead still the air and eke the welkin blue,
When from the sea arist in drear array

A heap of clouds of sable sullen hue,

The which full fast unto the woodland drew, Hiding at once the Sunnè's festive face;

And the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace.

Beneath an holm, fast by a pathway side

Which did unto Saint Godwyn's convent lead,
A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide,

Poor in his view, ungentle in his weed,
Long breast-full of the miseries of need.
Where from the hailstorm could the beggar fly?
He had no housen there, nor any convent nigh.

Look in his gloomèd face; his sprite there scan,
How woe-begone, how withered, sapless, dead!
Haste to thy church-glebe-house, accursèd man,
Haste to thy coffin, thy sole slumbering-bed3!
Cold as the clay which will grow on thy head
Are Charity and Love among high elves;

The Knights and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.

1 Goldfinch.

2 Used by Chatterton as mantle.'

8 Dortoure bedde.' 'Dourtoure, a sleeping room.'-Chatterton.

The gathered storm is ripe; the big drops fall;
The sunburnt meadows smoke and drink the rain;
The coming ghastness doth the cattle appal,

And the full flocks are driving o'er the plain;
Dashed from the clouds, the waters gush again;
The welkin opes, the yellow levin flies,

And the hot fiery steam in the wide flame-lowe2 dies.

3

List! now the thunder's rattling clamouring sound
Moves slowly on, and then upswollen clangs,
Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drown'd,
Still on the affrighted ear of terror hangs ;
The winds are up; the lofty elm-tree swangs;
Again the levin and the thunder pours,

And the full clouds are burst at once in stormy showers.

Spurring his palfrey o'er the watery plain,

The Abbot of Saint Godwyn's convent came;
His chapournette was drenched with the rain,
His painted girdle met with mickle shame ;
He backwards told his bederoll at the same.
The storm increasèd, and he drew aside,

With the poor alms-craver near to the holm to bide.

His cope was all of Lincoln cloth so fine,

With a gold button fastened near his chin;
His autremete5 was edged with golden twine,

And his peak'd shoe a lordling's might have been;
Full well it showed he counted cost no sin:
The trammels of the palfrey pleased his sight,
For the horse-milliner his head with roses dight.

6

1 Here Chatterton's text-word is 'flott,' and his gloss 'fly.' seems more appropriate.

2lowings-flames.-Chatterton.

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3 Clymmynge,' noisy.-Chatterton.

in sound to his text-word.

To signify cursing.'-Chatterton.

'Gush'

Clamouring' is adopted as nearer

5 'A loose white robe worn by priests.'-Chatterton.

Steevens, being in Bristol in 1776, saw horse-milliner' inscribed over

a shop door, outside which stood a wooden horse decked with ribbons.

'An alms, Sir Priest!' the drooping 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 crouch1.

'Varlet,' replied the Abbot, 'cease your din ; This is no season alms and prayers to give;' My porter never lets a beggar in;

None touch my ring who not in honour live.'

And now the sun with the black clouds did strive, And shot upon the ground his glaring ray:

The Abbot spurred his steed, and eftsoons rode away.

Once more the sky was black, the thunder roll'd:
Fast running o'er the plain a priest was seen,

Not dight full proud nor buttoned up in gold;

His cope and jape 2 were grey, and eke were clean;

3

A Limitour he was, of order seen;

And from the pathway side then turnèd he,

Where the poor beggar lay beneath the holmen tree.

'An alms, Sir Priest,' the drooping pilgrim said, 'For sweet Saint Mary and your order's sake!' The Limitour then loosened his pouch-thread And did thereout a groat of silver take; The needy pilgrim did for gladness shake. 'Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care; We are God's stewards all,-nought of our own we bear.

'But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me, Scarce any give a rentroll to their Lord:

Here, take my semicope,—thou'rt bare, I see;

6

1 Cross, crucifix.'-Chatterton.

2 A short surplice worn by friars of inferior class.-Chatterton.

3 A licensed begging friar.-Chatterton.

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