animal magnetism that can read nature just as well with the pit of the stomach as the eye, and sleeping as waking. Such have to learn that no undying work was ever produced by sleight of hand. The things "that posterity will not willingly let die," are creations educed by powers adequately exerted, not by the chance struggles of

feebleness in its fits. Your Byron boasts of a Corsair, written in some ten days; your Dante or Milton make a life-work of a Divina Commedia. Let critics, too, remember that which the labor of genius has produced is not to be judged of at a glance or dismissed in a flippant period.

From the Metropolitan.

THE LITERARY FORGERIES OF CHATTERTON.

In the year 1768, there appeared in Farley's Weekly Journal-a Bristol newspaper an account of the opening of the old bridge in that place, said to have been taken from a very ancient MS.; attention was drawn to it, inquiries were made respecting the source whence it was derived. After a little search, it was traced to a lad

of the name of Chatterton.

of the life of Chatterton. Those few events which marked the short space of eighteen years, have been preserved by the pen of the biographer, and have been embalmed and rendered sacred by the talents- and sympathy paid by men who, gifted themselves, could rightly esteem and sincerely lament genius struggling with adversity, chilled by poverty, quenched by early This was the first step towards that great death. With tears have they watered his imposition with which this singularly-en- grave-with cypress have they beautified dowed, but unfortunate youth, attempted it. His memory is graven on all hearts, to deceive the public. It was quickly fol- for it is married to immortal verse. Poetry lowed by others; verses, ascribed to Row- and prose have been employed to build a ley, Canynge, and others, appeared in swift memorial to him who walked this earth as succession; the puzzle of scholars versed in a stranger in a strange land, against whom antique lore, affording ample materials for beat its bitterest blasts-who, leaning on a controversy as famous as that between broken reeds, bending the knee to idols Boyle and Bentley, enlisting on one side or formed of clay, burning with hopes destined the other the acutest critics of the day-to be blasted, glowing with visions of deep Warton, Tyrrwhit, Walpole, the Dean of Exeter, president of the Antiquarian Society, and others less known to fame-carried on with a sincere desire to know the truth, and, with what is rare, even in antiquarian discussions, without any of that personality and recrimination with which literary warfare even is too often disgraced. This controversy, the fruithful source of at least twenty-eight publications, long survived him who by his forgeries gave rise to it. Alienated by misconduct from his friends, by his own folly rendered poor, at the early age of eighteen,-the victim of want, of disappointment, of scorn-Chatterton committed suicide. The day of trial came, and, like a coward, he forsook his post. Far more wisely did Johnson act: He lived on, and won for himself fame and power. Crabbe did the same, and became chaplain to a duke.

It is not our purpose to give an account

joy, which faded as he gazed-found life and all life's concerns to be vain, delusive, and unsatisfying-found earth and all its scenes, in their truest and saddest sense, to be vanity and vexation of spirit.

Though we do not attempt to give the life of Chatterton, yet we feel obliged to give a part of his character, and that part not the best. It is no wish of ours to misrepresent him-to place him in a bad light-to make him appear worse than he really was, therefore we regret that here we must leave out his amiable qualities, and portray him only in that character in which he appears as a clever, bold, and barefaced impostor. In this light, however, his mental power is displayed to the best advantage. The productions, published under his own name, being much inferior to the forgeries attributed to Canynge and Rowley. We will make, then, a few extracts from George Catcott's account of him, who, it may be as well to

observe, was a firm believer in the truth of unknown youth in a provincial town, in the the Rowleian MSS... In the preface to a seventeenth, is very probable. Nor is it copy of the poems, published in 1777, he much to be wondered at, that he should remarks, that he was a young man of all along continue to deny that the poems he very uncommon abilities, but bad princi- had published were forgeries. Having once ples." Again we are informed, "he dis- asserted their genuineness, he felt himself covered an uncommon taste for poetry; he bound, by every principle of honor, to was also a great proficient in heraldry." maintain it. Chatterton's notions of right "He was not, however, of an open or in- and wrong, were neither rigid nor troublegenuous disposition; and consequently some; and, to a person of his habit of never would give any satisfactory account thinking, the doubtful fame resulting from of what he possessed, but only from time to a connexion with the ideal Rowley, might time, as his necessities obliged him, pro- seem much preferable to that which the duced some transcripts from these origi- poems, divested of the charm of antiquity, nals" so Mr. Catcott, in his simplicity, might obtain for their author. At any rate, thought them; "and it was with great the forgery once committed, his (to use his difficulty and some expense, I have procur- own words) "native unconquerable pride" ed what I have." Mr. Catcott's avidity, would never suffer him to own them to be as Dr. Johnson would say, were he alive, simply, the productions of his muse. is singularly refreshing. Surely, of all men But even allowing the forgeries to be he must have been the most guileless, the genuine, even then, the contents of the most easily imposed on by old wives' fables. writings, and the time of the discovery are, Here was a young man whose whole life to say the least, calculated to excite suspihad been devoted to the study of antiqui- cion. It is strange-passing strange-a ties, drinking in that spirit from his very thing most rare even in our days, when, if birth-"falling in love," as his mother we may believe the newspapers, no one is says, at an early age, with the illuminated old-fashioned enough to look surprised on capitals of a French MS.-learning to read tales, in comparison with which the advenfrom an old black-lettered Bible; passion- tures of Baron Munchausen are mere dull, ately fond of poetry; at the age of eleven, sober, every day facts, that there should be writing better verses, more readable, with such an admirable, such an extraordinary better rhymes, more neatly expressed than adaptation of the contents of the papers to are those of many men or women twice that the circumstances of the localities in which age; of no principles whatever; unnoticed they were published, or to the characters of and unknown; panting for fame; necessi- those to whom they were addressed. Thus tous to an extreme. Surely here are the a new bridge is built over the Avonvery materials for a literary impostor, as in straightway there appears an account of the the singular, unsuspecting confidence of passing over the old bridge for the first Mr. Catcott, there were those for a ready time in the thirteenth century; an account dupe. All this we have said about Chat- accidentally found and published by Chatterton, and more Mr. Catcott knew, for he terton Our poet's friend, Mr. Burgham, acted the part of patron and a friend; yet reckons amongst his other amiable weakthough, as he himself says, he could get no nesses, a love of heraldic honors-directly satisfactory information, though the myste- Chatterton traces his pedigree from the rious pretended originals were carefully time of William the Conqueror, and allies kept from his sight, knowing as he did, that him to some of the first families in the Chatterton was a young man of bad princi- kingdom, by means of old manuscripts acci ples, of great talents, and equally great dentally discovered. Again, Mr. Burgham, necessities, without any suspicion, against which is very natural, believes these Rowall probability, through evil and good re- leian manuscripts to be genuine. Chatport, believed, asserted, contended for the terton, to reward and strengthen his creduauthenticity of the Rowleian MSS. lity, presents him with a poem entitled, This knowledge of Chatterton's character"The Romaunt of the Cnyghte," written will enable us the better to judge of the about four hundred and fifty years before degree of importance to be attached to his by one John de Burgham, one of his own own statements. That he might imagine ancestors. Chatterton wishes to please one that the public would be more likely to of his own relations, a Mr. Stephens; he take an interest in the poems of a monk of does so by proving him to be the descendthe fifteenth century, than in those of an ant of Fitz-Stephen, grandson of the Earl

of Blois, who flourished in the year 1095. | Rowley's verses, prove him to have been no Another friend, no less a personage than contemporary of Oceleve or Lydgate, the Mr. Catcott, is a most worthy and religious principal poets of that time. man, mighty in the scriptures, learned in According to the well-known oriental protheology; Chatterton presents him with a verb, "the darkest hour in the twenty-four copy of an ancient fragment of a sermon on is the hour before day." In the history of the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, "as writ- our literature that hour had now come. The ten by Thomas Rowley," of course, after War of the Roses fills an insulated space this convincing proof, John Catcott's doubts, between the cessation of Latin and the rise if he had any, as to the authenticity of the of English writers. The poet and the oramanuscripts were at once dispelled. Was tor had done but little for our mother tongue. a friend desirous of proving the antiquity of Its capabilities were almost untried, and, conBristol? no sooner was the wish expressed, sequently, almost unknown. As yet it was than it appeared by a certain document destitute of the burning power which renwhich Chatterton accidentally discovered, dered it immortal, when it became, as Wordsthat a Saxon of the name of Arlward lived worth finely says-.

cares, or ever did.

"The treasures of antiquity laid up,
In old historic rolls I opened."

"The tongue that Shakspeare spake."

in Bristol in the year 718. Did any one set about writing the history of Bristol, then plans and descriptions of churches and It was a time of war, and the sword outchapels existing five hundred years before, shone the pen, the camp not the cloister was appeared in abundance, as if by special the school; poems were not written, for each Providence everything relating to Bristol man, in his small way, endeavored to act was religiously preserved from the ravages an heroic poem for himself. The battle field of tumult and time. Horace Walpole, with its bannered hosts of war, with its deadthat great historian of tea-tables and scan-ly rivalry, and its cruel rage, was poetry dal, is writing a history of Bristol painters, enough. Dr. Henry, in his view of the liteChatterton most fortunately happens to rature of that age remarks, "that one of the have found, in some other place than an most obvious defects in all the authors of this old chest, we suspect, notwithstanding his period is a total want of taste." Their ideas assertion to the contrary, a list of aun-were couched in the most ordinary language, cient carvillers and peyncters" who flour- with no polish, and no attempt at polish whatished in Bristol, whom no one knows or ever; and it was but rarely they attempted Beaumont finely says: to be anything else but dull, or to write any thing else but common place. They invariably adopted the language of bombast and rhodomontade. Latin was the medium through which these scholars, as they are The old historic rolls Chatterton opened by courtesy called, communicated their ideas, might have made the most credulous pause and that was wretched, worse than the reere they credited their authenticity. The fuse of the lowest form of the most ignorant few facts we have brought forward, are such grammar school of the present day. Thus, as must create scepticism as to the truth of William of Wyrcester tells us, the Duke of Chatterton's assertions in the mind of any York returned from Ireland, "et arrivatus unprejudiced man of ordinary intelligence; apud Rebdanke prope Cestriam," and arrived that man must have a living and active at Redbanke, near Chester. And John Rous, faith who can read all this, and yet have the antiquarian, says, the Marquis of Dorset, no suspicions that some one else, besides and his uncle Sir Thomas Grey, were good Thomas Rowley, was in rather more obliged to fly the country, "quod ipsi contra than a slight degree in some way connected viscent mortem ducis protectoris Anglia," bewith the affair. cause they had contrived the death of the Thomas Rowley, the hero of the contro- Duke, the Protector of England. Such was versy, the principal writer of these poems the prose, we need not add that the poetry (for others are introduced), is said to have was infamous, such as neither men nor gods flourished in the reigns of Henry VI. and allow. Chaucer and Gower were no more, Edward IV., between the years 1422 and and their mantle had fallen on none; Oceleve 1483; it is, therefore, necessary that we and Lydgate are the only poets worth menshould consider the state of literature at tioning, the rest oblivion has shielded from that period. It will not be very difficult to contempt. Oceleye writes thus, the subject show that the structure, the smoothness of Chaucer :

:

Swellynge like bubbles in a boillynge welle, Or new-braste* brooklettes gently whyspringe in the delle.

"Browne as the fylberte dropping from the shelle,
Browne as the nappy ale at Hocktyde game,
So browne the crokydef rynges, that featlie fell‡
Over the neck of the all-beauteous dame.
Greie as the morne before the ruddie flame
Of Phoebus' charyotte rollynge thro the skie;
Greie as the steel-horn'd goats Conyan made
tame,

So greie appear'd her featly sparklynge eye;
Those eyne, that dyd oft mickle pleased look
On Adhelm valyaunt man, the virtues' doomsday
book.

Majestic as the grove of okes that stoode,
Before the abbie buylt by Oswald kynge:
Majestic as Hybernies holie woode,

Where sainctes and souls departed masses

synge;

Such awe from her sweete looke forth issuynge
At once for reveraunce and love did calle;
Sweet as the voice of thraslarks in the Spring,
So sweet the wordes that from her lippes did
falle;

None fell in vayne; all shewed some entent;
Her wordies did displaie her great entendement.||

This is called poetry, and in the age when such stuff was written, and, we presume, read (for the supply, according to the politi-" cal economists, creates the demand), has Chatterton ascribed the date of Rowley's existence. Nothing could have been more unfortunate; it was impossible to have made a more egregious blunder; he has, with the most praiseworthy ignorance of facts, chosen the very darkest period in the history of our literature, as the time when verses as beautiful, as harmonious, as liquid as those of Spenser himself, were written; as if the same people could read and admire the "Lyfe of our Lady," and the "Battle of Hastings," the "Divers Ballads against the Seven Deadly Sins," or the beautiful lyrics of Rowley. An extract from the latter will at once prove his vast, his immeasurable superiority, to the writers whom we have quoted. We take the following, though long and minute, description of the "Wife of Aldhelm," extracted from the "Battle of Hastings:

"He married was to Kenewalchae faire,

The fynest dame the sun or moone adave ;*
She was the myghtie Aderedus' heyre,
Who was alreadie hastynge to the grave;
As the blue Bruton, rysinge from the wave,
Like sea-gods seeme in most majestic guise,
And round about the risynge waters lave,t
And their long hayre arounde their bodie flies,
Such majestie was in her porte displaid,
To be excell'd bie none but Homer's martial maid.

"White as the Chaulkie clyffes of Brittaines isle,
Red as the highest colour'd Gallic wine,
Gaie as all nature at the mornynge smile,
Those hues with pleasaunce on her lippes
combine-

Her lippes more redde than summer evenynge.
skyne,‡

Or Phoebus rysing in a frostie morne,

Her breste more white than snow in feeldes that

lyene,

Or lillie lambes that never have been shorne,

"Tapre as candles layde at Cuthbert's shryne,
Tapre as elmes that Goodricke's abbie shrove,¶
Tapre as silver chalices for wine,

So tapre was her armes and shape ygrove.
As skilful mynemenne by the stones above
Can ken what metalle is ylach'd belowe,
So Kennewalcha's face, ymade for love,
The lovelie ymage of her soule did shewe;
Thus was she outward form'd; the sun her mind

Did guide her mortal shape and all her charms re

fin'd."

With a few antiquarian terms struck out, this quotation might pass for a production of the present age. No person of ordinary literary information can attribute it to the fifteenth century. The transition of the Saxon tongue into English was proceeding then, it is true, but at a very different rate

to what Chatterton would have us believe. Sir Frederick Madden, the able editor of "Lazamons Brut," or "Chronicle of Britain," remarks that the successive stages of development in our language may be indicated with tolerable correctness; thus ;