CHATTERTON, Thomas, an unfortunate poet, whose fate and performances excited in no small degree the public attention, as well as gave rise to much literary controversy. He was born at Bristol on the 20th of November 1752, and educated at a charity school on St Augustin’s Back, where nothing more was taught than reading, writing, and accounts. At the age of fourteen he was articled as a clerk to an attorney at Bristol, with whom he continued about three years; yet, though his education was thus confined, he discovered an early propensity for poetry and English antiquities, and particularly towards heraldry. How soon lie took to writing and became an author is not known. In the Town and Country Magazine for March 1769, there are two letters, probably from him, as they are dated from Bristol, and subscribed with his usual signature, D. B. that is, Dunnebnus Pristoliensis. The former contains short extracts from two manuscripts “written 300 years ago by one Rowley, a monk,” concerning dress in the age of Henry II.; the latter “Ethelgar, a Saxon poem,” in bombast prose. In the same magazine for May 1769 there are three communications from Bristol, with the same signature D. B. one of them entitled “Observations upon Saxon Heraldry, with drawings of Saxon Achievements;” and in the subsequent months of 1769 and 1770 there are several other pieces in the same magazine, which are undoubtedly of his composition.

In April 1770 he left Bristol, disgusted with his profession, and filled with irreconcilable aversion to the line of life for which he was intended; and coming to London in hopes of advancing his fortune by his pen, he sunk at once from the sublimity of his views to an absolute dependence on the patronage of booksellers. He wrote incessantly in various periodical publications. In July 1770, he tells bis sister that he had pieces last month in several magazines; in the Gospel Magazine, the Town and Country, the Court and City, the London, the Political Register, &c. But all these exertions of his genius brought in so little profit, that he was soon reduced to extreme indigence; so that at last, oppressed with poverty and disease, he in a fit of despair put an end to his existence, August 1770, by means of poison.

In 1777 were published, in one volume 8vo, “Poems, supposed to have been written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley and others, in the fifteenth century; the greatest part now first published from the most authentic copies, with an engraved specimen of one of the MSS.; to which are added, a Preface, an Introductory Account of the several pieces, and a Glossary.” And in 1778 were published, in one volume 8vo, “Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, by Thomas Chatterton, the supposed author of the Poems published under the names of Rowley, &c.” Of Rowley’s poems we have the following account in the preface, given in the words of Mr George Catcott of Bristol, to whom, it is said, the public is indebted for them. “The first discovery of certain MSS. having been deposited in Redclift church above three centuries ago, was made in the year 1768, at the time of opening the new bridge at Bristol; and was owing to a publication in Farley’s Weckly Journal, Oct. 1, containing an account of the ceremonies observed at the opening of the old bridge, taken, as it was said, from a very ancient MS. This excited the curiosity of some persons to inquire after the original. The printer, Mr Farley, could give no account of it, or of the person who brought the copy; but after much inquiry, it was discovered that this person was a youth between fifteen and sixteen years of age, whose name was Thomas Chatterton, and whose family had been sextons of Redclift church for near 150 years. His father, who was now dead, had also been master of the free school in Pile Street. The young man was at first very unwilling to discover from whence he had the original; but, after many promises made to him, was at last prevailed on to acknowledge that he had received this, together with many other MSS. from his father, who had found them in a large chest in an upper room over the chapel on the north side of Redclift church.” It is added, that soon after this Mr Catcott commenced an acquaintance with Chatterton, and succeeded in procuring from him, partly as presents, partly as purchases, copies of many of his manuscripts in prose and verse; and other copies were disposed of in like manner to different persons. But whatever may have been Chatterton’s part in this very extraordinary transaction; whether he was the author, or only, as he constantly asserted, the copier of all these productions; he appears to have kept the secret entirely to himself, and not to have put it in any one’s power to bear certain testimony either to his fraud or to his veracity.

This affair, however, gave rise to a protracted controversy among the critics. The poems in question, published[7:6:336] in 1777, were republished in 1778, with an “Appendix, containing some observations upon the language of the poems attributed to Rowley; tending to prove that they were written, not by any ancient author, but entirely by Thomas Chatterton.” Mr Warton, in the third volume of his History of English Poetry, espoused the same side of the question. On the other hand there have appeared, “Observations” upon these poems, “in which their authenticity is ascertained,” by Jacob Bryant, Esq. 1781, 8vo; and another edition of the “Poems, with a Commentary, in which their antiquity is considered and defended, by Jeremiah Milles, D. D. Dean of Exeter, 1782,” 4to.

That Chatterton was the author of the Rowley poems is now admitted by all intelligent critics. However wonderful it may seem that they were composed by a youth who had not completed his sixteenth year, it has been satisfactorily proved by Mr Warton that it was impossible that the poems could have been written by Rowley in the fifteenth century. A subscription edition of Chatterton’s works, for the benefit of his sister Mrs Newton, was announced in 1799; but for want of encouragement the publication was postponed till 1803, when it came forth under the joint editorship of Messrs Southey and Cottle, in three vols. 8vo, with the life of Chatterton prefixed, by G. Gregory, D. D., which had appeared in Kippis’s edition of the Biographia Britannica.