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.”
Being called upon for the original, he the next day produced a parchment, containing the same poem, in which he had written yprauncing, instead of ifrayning; but by some artifice he had obscured the Ms. so much, to give it an ancient appearance, that Mr. B. could not make out the word without the use of galls.—What follows from all this, but that C. found on examination that there was no such word as ifrayning, and that he substituted another in its place? In the same poem he at one time wrote locks—burlie—brasting—and kennest; at another, hairs—valiant—bursting—and hearest. Variations of this kind he could have produced without end.—These commentators deceive themselves, and use a language that for a moment may deceive others, by talking of one reading being found in the copy, and another in the original, when in fact all the Mss. that C. produced were equally originals. What he called originals indeed, were probably in general more perfect than what he called copies; because the former were always produced after the other, and were in truth nothing more than second editions of the same pieces[O*].
[ O* ] “Bie,” which he wrote inadvertently in the tragedy of Ella, instead of “mie,” (on which Mr. B. has given us a learned dissertation)——“Bie thankes I ever onne you wylle bestowe”——is such a mistake as every man in the hurry of writing is subject to. By had probably occurred just before, or was to begin some subsequent line that he was then forming in his mind. Even the slow and laborious Mr. Capel, who was employed near forty years in preparing and printing an edition of Shakspeare, in a Catalogue which he presented to a publick library at Cambridge, and which he probably had revised for many months before he gave it out of his hands, has written “Bloody Bloody,” as the title of one of Fletcher’s Plays, instead of “Bloody Brother.”
The inequality of the poems which Chatterton owned as his own compositions, when compared with those ascribed to Rowley, has been much insisted upon. But this matter has been greatly exaggerated. Some of the worst lines in Chatterton’s Miscellanies have been selected by Mr. Bryant to prove the point contended for; but in fact they contain the same even and flowing versification as the others, and in general display the some premature abilities[P†].—The truth is, the readers of these pieces are deceived insensibly on this subject. While they are perusing the poems of the fictitious Rowley, they constantly compare them with the poetry of the fifteenth century; and are ready every moment to exclaim, how much he surpasses all his contemporaries. While the verses that Chatterton acknowledged as his own, are passing under their eyes, they still recollect that they are the productions of a boy of seventeen; and are slow to allow them even that merit which they undoubtedly possess. “They are ingenious, but puerile; flowing, but not sufficiently correct.”——The best way of convincing the antiquarian reader of the merit of these compositions, would be to disfigure them with old spelling; as perhaps the most complete confutation of the advocates for the authenticity of what are called Rowley’s poems would be to exhibit an edition of them in modern orthography.—Let us only apply this very simple test,—“handy-dandy let them change places,” and I believe it would puzzle even the President of the Society of Antiquaries himself to determine, “which is the justice, and which is the thief;” which is the pretended ancient, and which the acknowledged modern.
[ P† ] The observations on this subject, of the ingenious authour of the accurate account of Chatterton, in a book entituled Love and Madness, are too pertinent to be here omitted. “It may be asked why Chatterton’s own Miscellanies are inferior to Rowley? Let me ask another question: Are they inferior? Genius, abilities, we may bring into the world with us; these rare ingredients may be mixed up in our compositions by the hand of Nature. But Nature herself cannot create a human being possessed of a complete knowledge of our world almost the moment he is born into it. Is the knowledge of the world which his Miscellanies contain, no proof of his astonishing quickness in seizing every thing he chose? Is it remembered when, and at what age, Chatterton for the first time quitted Bristol, and how few weeks he lived afterwards? Chatterton’s Letters and Miscellanies, and every thing which the warmest advocate for Rowley will not deny to have been Chatterton’s, exhibit an insight into men, manners, and things, for the want of which, in their writings, authors who have died old men, with more opportunities to know the world, (who could have less than Chatterton?) have been thought to make amends by other merits.”—“In London (as the same writer observes) was to be learned that which even genius cannot teach, the knowledge of life. Extemporaneous bread was to be earned more suddenly than even Chatterton could write poems for Rowley; and, in consequence of his employments, as he tells his mother, publick places were to be visited, and mankind to be frequented.”—Hence, after “he left Bristol, we see but one more of Rowley’s poems, The Ballad of Charitie, and that a very short one.”
Of this double transformation I subjoin a short specimen; which is not selected on account of any extraordinary spirit in the lines that precede, or uncommon harmony in those that follow, but chosen (agreeably to the rule that has been observed in all the former quotations) merely because the African Eclogue happens to be the first poetical piece inserted in Chatterton’s acknowledged Miscellanies.
[I.] CHATTERTON in Masquerade.
Narva and Mored: An African Eclogue.
[From Chatterton’s Miscellanies, p. 56.]