TOMB OF CANYNGE.
It is impossible not to pause at every page of this boy's brief but eventful life, and lament that he had no friend; reading, as we do, by the light of other days, we can see so many passages where judicious counsel, given with the intelligent affection that would at once have opened his heart, must have saved him; his heart, once laid bare to friendship, would have been purified by the air of truth; it was its closeness which infected his nature. And yet the scrivener considered him a good apprentice. His industry was amazing; his frequent employment was to copy precedents, and one volume, in his handwriting, which is still extant, consists of three hundred and forty-four closely-written folio pages. There was in that gloomy office an edition of Camden's "Britannia," and, having borrowed from Mr. Green, a bookseller, Speight's "Chaucer," he compiled therefrom an ingenious glossary, for his own use, in two parts. "The first," Mr. Dix says, "contained old words, with the modern English—the second, the modern English, with the old words; this enabled him to turn modern English into old, as an English and Latin dictionary enables the student to turn English into Latin." How miserable it is, amongst these evidences of his industry and genius, to find that all his ingenuity turned to the furtherance of a fraud. He seems to have been morally dead to every thing like the disgrace attending falsehood; for, when struggling afterwards in London to appear prosperous while starving, he wrote home to Mr. Catcott, and concludes his letter by stating that he intended going abroad as a surgeon, adding, "Mr. Barrett has it in his power to assist me greatly, by his giving me a physical character; I hope he will." He seems to have had no idea that he was asking Mr. Barrett to do a dishonest action.
But the grand fraud of his short life was boldly dared by this boy in his sixteenth year. Why he should have ever descended to forge when he felt the high pressure of genius so strong within him, is inexplicable. Why, with his daring pride, he should have submitted to be considered a transcriber, where he originated, is more than marvellous. The spell of a benighting antiquity seemed around him; it might lead one to a belief in "Gramarie"—that some fake spirit had issued forth from the "cofre of Mr. Canynge,"[7] so long preserved in the room over the north porch of this Bristol church of Redcliffe—a "cofre" secured by six keys, all of which being lost or mislaid, the vestry ordered the "cofre" to be opened; and not only "Canynge's cofre," but all the "cofres," in the mysterious chamber: not from any love of antiquity, but because of the hope of obtaining certain title-deeds supposed to be contained therein. Well, these intelligent worthies, having found what concerned themselves, took them away, leaving behind, and open, parchments and documents which might have enriched our antiquarian literature beyond all calculation.[8] Chatterton's father used to carry these parchments away wholesale, and covered with the precious relics, bibles, and school-books: most likely other officers of the church did the same. After his death, his widow conveyed many of them, with her children and furniture, to her new residence, and, woman-like, formed them into dolls and thread-papers. In process of time, the child's attention being aroused by the illuminated manuscripts, he conveyed every bit of parchment he could find to a small den of a room in his mother's house, which he called his own: and, when he grew a little older, set forth, with considerable tact, in answer to all questions asked of him as to how he obtained the poems and information, that he himself had searched the old "cofres,"[9] and discovered the poems of the Monk Rowley. Certainly he could not have had a better person to trumpet his discovery than "a talkative fool" like Burgum, who was so proud of his pedigree as to torment the officers of the Herald's College about his ancestors; and he was not the only one imposed on by Chatterton's talent. His simple-minded mother bore testimony to his joy at discovering those "written parchments upon the covered books:" and, of course, each discovery added to his antiquarian knowledge; for, though no trace exists of the Monk Rowley's originals, there is little doubt that on some of those parchments he found enough to set him thinking, and with him to think and act was the same thing; indeed, there is one passage in his poems bearing so fully upon the fraud, that we transcribe it. He is writing of having discharged all his obligations to Mr. Catcott:—
"If ever obligated to thy purse,
Rowley discharges all, my first chief curse!
For had I never known the antique lore,
I ne'er had ventured from my peaceful shore,
But, happy in my humble sphere, had moved
Untroubled, unsuspected, unbeloved."[10]
MUNIMENT ROOM.
A Mr. Rudhall[11] said that, when Chatterton wrote on a parchment, he held it over a candle to give it the appearance of antiquity; and a Mr. Gardener has recorded, that he once saw Chatterton rub a parchment over with ochre, and afterwards rub it on the ground, saying, "that was the way to antiquate it." This exposé of Chatterton's craft is so at variance with his usual caution that we can hardly credit it. A humble woman, Mrs. Edkins, speaks of his spending all his holidays in the little den of a room we have mentioned, where he locked himself in, and would remain the entire day without meals, returning with his hands and face completely begrimed with dirt and charcoal; and she well remembers his having a charcoal pounce-bag and parchment and letters on a little deal table, and all over the ground was a litter of parchments; and she and his mother at one time fancied he intended to discolor himself and run away to the gipsies; but afterwards Mrs. Edkins believed that he was laboring at the Rowley manuscripts, and she thought he got himself bound to a lawyer that he might get at old law books. The testimony she bears to his affectionate tenderness towards his mother and sister is touching: while his pride led him to seek for notoriety for himself, it was only to render his mother and sister comfortable that he coveted wealth.
It is not our province to enter into the controversy as to whether the MSS. were originals or forgeries: it would seem to be as undecided to-day as it was three quarters of a century ago; the boy "died and made no sign:" and the world has not been put in possession of any additional facts by which the question might be determined: the balance of proof appears in favor of those who contend they were the sole offspring of his mind, suggested merely by ancient documents from which he could have borrowed no idea except that of rude spelling; yet it is by no means impossible that poems did actually exist, and came into his hands, which he altered and interpolated, but which he did not create.