No More Learning

Now
the amazing credulity of these learned people is one of the least
comprehensible circumstances of our poet's strange life. For on being
asked how he had come by his MSS. he refused at first to give any
answer. Then he said he was employed to transcribe some old writings
by 'a gentleman whom he had supplied with poetry to send to a lady the
gentleman was in love with'--the excuse being suggested no doubt by
the case of Miss Hoyland and his friend Baker. Finally when, as we
can only conclude, this explanation was disproved or disbelieved, he
announced that the account was copied from a manuscript his father
had taken from Rowley's chest. And this explanation was considered
perfectly satisfactory.

Yet it seemed obvious that the antiquaries would demand to see the
manuscript, and Chatterton, contrary to his usual practice of secrecy,
called upon his friend Rudhall and, having made him promise to tell
nothing of what he should show him, took a piece of parchment
'about the size of a half sheet of foolscap paper,' wrote on it in
a character which the other did not understand, for it was 'totally
unlike English,' and finally held what he had written over a candle
to give it the 'appearance of antiquity,' which it did by changing the
colour of the ink and making the parchment appear 'black and a little
contracted. ' Rudhall, who kept his secret till 1779 (when he bartered
it for ? 10, to be given to the poet's mother, at that time in
great poverty), believed that no one was shown or asked to see this
document. Why, it is impossible to say.

The present volume contains a reproduction[2] in black and white of
the original MS. of Chatterton's '_Accounte of W. Canynges Feast_'.
This was written in red ink. The parchment is stained with brown,
except one corner, and the first line written in a legal texting hand.
The ageing of his manuscript of the _Vita Burtoni_, to take a further
instance, was effected by smearing the middle of it with glue or
varnish. This document was also written partly in an attorney's
regular engrossing[3] hand. During the next four years Chatterton
'transcribed' a great quantity of ancient documents, including
_AElla, a Tragycal Enterlude_--far the finest of the longer Rowleian
poems--the _Songe to AElla_ and _The Bristowe Tragedy_ (the authorship
of which last he appears in an unguarded moment to have acknowledged
to his mother). He told her also that he had himself written one of
the two poems _Onn oure Ladies Chyrche_--which one, Mrs. Chatterton
could not remember[4], but if it was the first of the two printed in
this edition (p. 275) it was a strange coincidence indeed that led
him to repudiate the antiquity of the only two Rowley poems which
are really at all like 'antiques'--Professor Skeat's convenient
expression. The two Battles of Hastings were written during this
period, and it appears that Barrett the surgeon, on being shown the
first poem, was for once very insistent in asking for the original,
whereupon Chatterton in a momentary panic confessed he had written the
verses for a friend; but he had at home, he said, the copy of what was
really the translation of Turgot's Epic--Turgot was a Saxon monk of
the tenth century--by Rowley the secular priest of the fifteenth. This
was the second _Battle of Hastings_ as printed in this book. Again
this strange explanation, so laboured and so patently disingenuous,
was accepted without comment though probably not believed. And if
it appears matter for surprise that there should ever have been any
controversy about the authorship of the Rowley writings, in view of
the lad's admission that he had written three such signal pieces as
the _Bristowe Tragedy_, the first _Battle of Hastings_, and _Onn oure
Ladies Chyrche_, it must be considered that the production of
the greater part of the poems by a poorly educated boy not turned
seventeen would naturally appear a circumstance more surprising than
that such a boy should tell a lie and claim some of them as his own.

With his acknowledged work, as with Rowley, Chatterton by dint of
continued application was making good progress. In 1769 he had become
a frequent contributor to the _Town and Country Magazine_, to which
he sent articles on heraldry, imitations of Ossian (whom he very much
admired) and various other papers; and in December of this year he
wrote to Dodsley, the well-known publisher, acquainting him that
he could 'procure copies of several ancient poems and an interlude,
perhaps the oldest dramatic piece extant, wrote by one Rowley, a
Priest in Bristol, who lived in the reign of Henry the Sixth and
Edward the Fourth * * * If these pieces would be of any service to
Mr. Dodsley copies should be sent. ' The publisher returned no answer.
Chatterton waited two months, then wrote again and enclosed a specimen
passage from _AElla_. He could procure a copy of this work, he wrote,
upon payment of a guinea to the present owner of the MS.