“First Robert Neatherd his sore bosom struck,
“Then fell upon the ground, and thus he spoke.”
If however, after all, a little inferiority should be found in Chatterton’s acknowledged productions, it may be easily accounted for. Enjoin a young poet to write verses on any subject, and after he has finished his exercise, show him how Shakspeare, Dryden, and Pope, have treated the same subject. Let him then write a second copy of verses, still on the same theme. This latter will probably be a Cento from the works of the authours that he has just perused. The one will have the merit of originality; the other a finer polish and more glowing imagery. This is exactly Chatterton’s case. The verses that he wrote for Rowley are perhaps better than his others, because they contain the thoughts of our best poets often in their own words. The versification is equally good in both. Let it be remembered too, that the former were composed at his leisure in a period of near a year and a half; the latter in about four months, and many of them to gain bread for the day that was passing over him.
After his arrival in [London], if his forgeries had met with any success, he would undoubtedly have produced ancient poetry without end; but perceiving that the gentleman in whom he expected to find at once a dupe and a patron, was too clear-sighted to be deceived by such evident fictions, and that he could earn a livelihood by his talents, without fabricating old Mss. in order to gain a few shillings from Mess. Barrett and Catcott, he deserted his original plan, and we hear little more of Rowley’s verses.
With regard to the time in which the poems attributed to this priest were produced, which it is urged was much too short for Chatterton to have been the inventor of them, it is indeed astonishing that this youth should have been able to compose, in about eighteen months, three thousand seven hundred verses, on various subjects; but it would have been still more astonishing, if he had transcribed in that time the same number of lines, written on parchment, in a very ancient hand, in the close and indistinct manner, in which these poems are pretended to have been written, [ Q* ] Let those who may be surprised at this assertion, recollect the wonderful inventive faculties of Chatterton, and the various compositions, both in prose and verse, which he produced after his arrival in London, in the short space of four months; not to mention the numerous pieces, which he is known to have written in the same period, and which have not yet been collected—Let them likewise examine any one of the defaced Mss. of the fifteenth century, in the Cotton Library, and see in what time they can transcribe a dozen lines from it. and defaced and obliterated in many places[Q*]:—unless he had been endued with the faculty of a celebrated solicitor, who being desired a few years ago in the House of Lords to read an old deed, excused himself by saying that it was illegible, informing their lordships at the same time that he would make out a fair copy of it against the next day. Chatterton, I believe, understood better how to make fair copies of illegible parchments, than to read any ancient manuscript whatsoever.
It is [amusing] enough to observe the miserable shifts to which his new editor is forced to have recourse, when he is obliged to run full tilt against matters of fact.—Thus Chatterton, we find, owned that he was the authour of the first Battle of Hastings; but we are not to believe his declaration, says Mr. Thistlethwaite, whose doctrine on this subject the reverend commentator has adopted. “Chatterton thought himself not sufficiently rewarded by his Bristol patrons, in proportion to what his communications deserved.” He pretended, therefore, “on Mr. Barrett’s repeated solicitations for the original [of the Battle of Hastings], that he himself wrote that poem for a friend; thinking, perhaps, that if he parted with the original poem, he might not be properly rewarded for the loss of it,[R*]”—As if there was no other way for him to avoid being deprived of a valuable ancient Ms. but by saying that it was a forgery, and that he wrote it himself!—What, however, did he do immediately afterwards? No doubt, he avoided getting into the same difficulty a second time, and subjecting himself again to the same importunity from his ungenerous Bristol patrons, by showing them no more of these rarities? Nothing less. The very same day that he acknowledged this forgery, he informed Mr. Barrett that he had another poem, the copy of an original by Rowley; and at a considerable interval of time (which indeed was requisite for writing his new piece) he produced another Battle of Hastings, much longer than the former; a fair copy from an undoubted original.—He was again, without doubt, pressed by Mr. B. to show the original Ms. of this also; and, according to Mr. Thistlethwaite’s system, he ought again to have asserted that this poem likewise was a forgery; and so afterwards of every copy that he produced.—Can any person that considers this transaction for a moment entertain a doubt that all these poems were his own invention?
[ R* ] Chatterton’s Poems, quarto, edit. Milles, p. 458.
It was not without good reason that the editor was solicitous to disprove Chatterton’s frank confession, respecting this poem; for he perceived clearly that the style, the colouring, and images, are nearly the same in this, and the second poem with the same title, and that every reader of any discernment must see at the first glance, that he who wrote the first Battle of Hastings was the authour of all the other poems ascribed to Rowley.—It is observable that Chatterton in the Battle of Hastings, No 2, frequently imitates himself, or repeats the same images a second time. Thus in the first poem with this title we meet
——“he dying gryp’d the recer’s limbe;
The recer then beganne to flynge and kicke,