Besides all these serious presentations of Chatterton there are a number of burlesques—such as Rowley and Chatterton in the Shades (1782) and An Archæological Epistle to Jeremiah Milles (1782), which are clever and amusing, and three plays, two in English, and one in French by Alfred de Vigny, which represents the love affair of Chatterton and an apocryphal Mme. Kitty Bell.
The whole of Chatterton's writings—Rowley, acknowledged poems, and private letters, have been translated into French prose. Oeuvres complètes de Thomas Chatterton traduites par Javelin Pagnon, précédées d'une Vie de Chatterton par A. Callet (1839). Callet's treatment of Chatterton is very sympathetic and interesting.
Finally for further works on Chatterton the reader is referred to Bohn's Edition of Lowndes' Bibliographer's Manual—but the most important have been enumerated above.
IV. NOTE ON THE TEXT.
This edition is a reprint of Tyrwhitt's third (1778) edition, which it follows page for page (except the glossary; see note on p. 291). The reference numbers in text and glossary, which are often wrong in 1778, have been corrected; line-numbers have been corrected when wrong, and added to one or two poems which are without them in 1778, and the text has been collated throughout with that of 1777 and corrected from it in many places where the 1778 printer was at fault. These corrections have been made silently; all other corrections and additions are indicated by footnotes enclosed in square brackets.
V. NOTES.
1. The Tournament, lines 7-10.
Wythe straunge depyctures, Nature maie nott yeelde, &c.
'This is neither sense nor grammar as it stands' says Professor Skeat. But Chatterton is frequently ungrammatical, and the sense of the passage is quite clear if either of the two following possible meanings is attributed to unryghte.
(1)=to present an intelligible significance otherwise than by writing—as 'rebus'd shields' do (un-write);