THE ROWLEY POEMS by Thomas Chatterton
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THE ROWLEY POEMS By Thomas Chatterton Published by the Ex-classics Project, 2009 http://www.exclassics.com Public Domain -1- THOMAS CHATTERTON The Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis -2- THE ROWLEY POEMS CONTENTS TITLE PAGE OF 1778 EDITION.................................................................................4 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................5 PREFACE....................................................................................................................25 INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF THE SEVERAL PIECES CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME...........................................................................................................28 ADVERTISEMENT. ...................................................................................................34 ECLOGUE THE FIRST. .............................................................................................35 ECLOGUE THE SECOND. ........................................................................................38 ECLOGUE THE THIRD.............................................................................................43 ELINOURE AND JUGA.............................................................................................47 SONGE TO AELLA, LORDE OF THE CASTEL OF BRYSTOWE YNNE DAIES OF YORE.....................................................................................................................49 THE TOURNAMENT. AN INTERLUDE..................................................................51 BRISTOWE TRAGEDIE: OR THE DETHE OF SYR CHARLES BAWDIN..........59 ÆLLA ..........................................................................................................................67 ÆLLA -- PERSONNES REPRESENTEDD...............................................................68 EPISTLE TO MASTRE CANYNGE ON ÆLLA.......................................................69 LETTER TO THE DYGNE MASTRE CANYNGE...................................................71 ENTRODUCTIONNE.................................................................................................73 Ælla, A Tragycal Enterlude. ........................................................................................74 ACT I. SCENE I. .........................................................................................................74 GODDWYN; A TRAGEDIE. ...................................................................................108 ENGLYSH METAMORPHOSIS..............................................................................119 AN EXCELENTE BALADE OF CHARITIE:..........................................................123 BATTLE OF HASTINGS (No 1.).............................................................................127 BATTLE OF HASTINGS (No 2.).............................................................................137 ONN OURE LADIES CHYRCHE............................................................................150 ON THE SAME.........................................................................................................151 THE STORIE OF WILLIAM CANYNGE. ..............................................................153 ON HAPPIENESSE...................................................................................................156 ONN JOHN A DALBENIE.......................................................................................157 THE GOULER'S REQUIEM ....................................................................................158 THE ACCOUNTE OF W.CANYNGES FEAST. .....................................................159 A GLOSSARY OF UNCOMMON WORDS IN THIS VOLUME...........................161 APPENDIX................................................................................................................182 -3- THOMAS CHATTERTON TITLE PAGE OF 1778 EDITION POEMS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN AT BRISTOL, BY THOMAS ROWLEY, AND OTHERS, IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. THE THIRD EDITION; TO WHICH IS ADDED AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON THE LANGUAGE OF THESE POEMS; TENDING TO PROVE, THAT THEY WERE WRITTEN, NOT BY ANY ANCIENT AUTHOR, BUT ENTIRELY BY THOMAS CHATTERTON. LONDON: Printed for T. PAYNE and SON, at the MEWS-GATE. MDCCLXXVIII. -4- THE ROWLEY POEMS EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. I. CHATTERTON'S LIFE AND DEATH AND THE GENESIS OF THE ROWLEY POEMS. THOMAS CHATTERTON was born in Bristol on the 20th of November 1752. His father -- also Thomas -- dead three months before his son's birth, had been a subchaunter in Bristol Cathedral and had held the mastership in a local free school. We are told that he was fond of reading and music; that he made a collection of Roman coins, and believed in magic (or so he said), studying the black art in the pages of Cornelius Agrippa. With all the self-acquired culture and learning that raised him above his class (his father and grandfathers before him for more than a hundred years had been sextons to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe) he is described as a dissipated, 'rather brutal fellow'. Lastly, he appears to have been 'very proud', self- confident, and self-reliant. Of Chatterton's mother little need be said. Gentle and rather foolish, she was devoted to her two children Mary and, his sister's junior by two years, Thomas the Poet. Of these Mary seems to have inherited the colourless character of her mother; but Thomas must always have been remarkable. We have the fullest accounts of his childhood, and the details that might with another set down as chronicles of the nursery will be seen to have their importance in the case of this boy who set himself consciously to be famous when he was eight, wrote fine imaginative verse before he was thirteen, and killed himself aged seventeen and nine months. Thomas, then, was a moody baby, a dull small boy who knew few of his letters at four; and was superannuated -- such was his impenetrability to learning -- at the age of five from the school of which his father had been master. He was moreover till the age of six and a half so frequently subject to long fits of abstraction and of apparently causeless crying that his mother and grand mother feared for his reason and thought him 'an absolute fool'. We are told also by his sister -- and there is no incongruity in the two accounts -- that he early displayed a taste for 'preheminence and would preside over his playmates as their master and they his hired servants'. At seven and a half he dissipated his mother's fear that she had borne a fool by rapidly learning to read in a great black-letter Bible; for characteristically 'he objected to read in a small book'. In a very short time from this he appears to have devoured eagerly the contents of every volume he could lay his hands on. He had a thirst for knowledge at large -- for any kind of information; and as the merest child read with a careless voracity books of heraldry, history, astronomy, theology, and such other subjects as would repel most children, and perhaps one may say, most men. At the age of eight we hear of him reading 'all day or as long as they would let him', confident that he was going to be famous, and promising his mother and sister 'a great deal of finery' for their care of him when the day of his fame arrived. Before he was nine he was nominated for Colston's Hospital, a local school where the Bluecoat dress was worn and at which the 'three Rs' were taught but very little else, so that the boy, disappointed of the hope of knowledge, complained he could work better at home. To this period we should -5- THOMAS CHATTERTON probably assign the delightful story of Chatterton and a friendly potter who promised to give him an earthenware bowl with what inscription he pleased upon it -- such writing presumably intended to be 'Tommy his bowl' or 'Tommy Chatterton'. 'Paint me', said the small boy to the friendly potter, 'an Angel with Wings and a Trumpet to trumpet my Name over the World.' At ten he was making progress in arithmetic, and it should be mentioned that he 'occupied himself with mechanical pursuits so that if anything was out of order in the house he was set to mend it'. At school he read during play hours and made few friends, but those were 'solid fellows', his sister tells us; while at home he had appropriated to himself a small attic where he would read, write and draw pictures -- a number of which are preserved in the British Museum -- of knights and churches, and heraldic designs in red and yellow ochre, charcoal, and black-lead. In this attic too he had stored -- though at what date is uncertain -- a number of writings on parchment which had a rather singular history. In the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe, the church in which Chatterton's ancestors had served as sextons, there were six or seven great oak chests, of which one, greater than the others and secured by no fewer than six locks, was traditionally called 'Canynges Cofre' after William Canynge the younger, with whose name the erection and completion of St. Mary's were especially associated. These had contained deeds and papers dealing with parochial matters and the affairs of the Church, but some years before Chatterton's birth the Vestry had determined to examine these documents, some of which may have been as old as the building itself. The keys had in the course of time been lost, and the vestrymen accordingly broke open the chests and removed to another place what they thought of value, leaving Canynge's Coffer and its fellows gutted and open but by no means