Welsh Journals

FRESH LIGHT ON CHATTERTON by P. G. Thomas, M.A. CHATTERTON 'S literary forgeries-in which he pretended, by trying to imitate the writing and the language of the past, that a number of poems and prose works which he wrote himself were the works of a fifteenth century priest named Thomas Rowley-have always keenly interested lovers of eighteenth century literature. His was a sad and most forgiveable forgery, for it was closely connected with his tragic end, and held the strength and beauty of his own genius. By attributing his own work to a fifteenth century priest, he merely sought to attract more attention to himself, because it was the fashion of the day to publish old poetical manuscripts, the discoverers of which were praised more than the original authors. And Chatterton, being young and ambitious and conscious of his genius, wanted to be in the fashion, that he, too, might be regarded as one who "had rescued the re- mains of. genius from oblivion." For years after his death, in 1769, fierce con- troversy raged concerning the authorship of the Rowley poems. It was not until 1871, when Professor Skeat, the arch-critic of Chatterton, published an edition of the poems, that the question was finally settled. By an exhaustive analysis of the language of the poems he fixed the authorship upon Chatterton himself. But a hundred years before Skeat, another critic had proved that the poems could not have been written by any fifteenth century priest; but his arguments, though quite as conclusive in their way as Skeat's, were not published. This critic was Bishop Percy, and he hated public controversy and kept out of it, though he was one of the few who were competent to express an opinion. Therefore, it was with great pleasure, while rummaging among eighteenth century literary manuscripts, that I discovered a letter, written by Percy to Lord Dacre, in which he clearly set forth his views upon the authorship of the Rowley poems. Barrett, Qhatterton's friend, who had come into possession of most of Chat- terton's manuscripts, sent some of them to Dacre for his inspection. He sent them to Percy, at the same time inviting him to express an opinion upon their authenticity. His reply, which is given in the letter below, has never been printed before. It proves that Percy was one of Chat- terton's most searching, yet sympathetic critics Alnwick Castle, My Lord. Sept. 6, 1773. My Lord. I received the honour of your lordship's most obliging letter accompanied with the specimens of writing on parchment attributed to Rowlie. I am extremely thankful for this ocular inspec- tion, which is quite decisive of the question so far as it depends on the genuineness of these writings; for these are undoubtedly spurious and modern. By good fortune I had with me a gentleman who is one of the best judges in England of old writing, having had for many years the custody of all the ancient Records and Charters, etc., of the Northumberland family, and been all his life conversant with English manuscripts, etc. of every age, who is critically exact in distinguish- ing the modes of writings and the several alpha- bets which prevailed in every era, and who, having never heard of the controversy concerning the Bristol poetry, was quite impartial. This gentleman is Thomas Butler, Esq., Clerk of the Peace for the County of Middlesex, and principal agent to the Duke of Northumberland. To him I showed the specimens your lordship sent me, and he immediately pronounced them spurious. Not only so, but he declared them to be the most bungling attempts to imitate old writing he ever saw, in which I cannot but entirely agree with him. For the characters uniformly resembles the writings of no era what- soever, nor are in any degree uniform and con- sistent with themselves, but are evidently written by a modern Pen, which has endeavoured to render the letters as uncouth and obscure as possible, and yet is frequently betrayed into escapes which are in the most modern charac- ters. As for instance, in the larger MS. Tho in the first line and The in the second, could only have been written since our current hand was adapted and altered to the Roman and Italian alphabets in books. Before that time handwriting was formed after the Gothic alphabet. This continued generally to prevail so late as the middle of the last century. Similar instances occur in every line; and it is even diverting to observe how in the process of writing, as the writer went on, he altered and changed the form of his letters, so that the lines towards the bottom are tenfold more uncouth and obscure than those towards the top and are not reducible to the same alphabets. We remarked some of the letters to have been written in four or five different manners, so that the writer evidently went upon no principles, had previously formed to himself no alphabet, had a very imperfect random guess at the old alpha- bets, and was incapable of imitating any of them