Abstract
Before becoming the archetypal Romantic poet, the ‘marvellous Boy’, and the inspiration for innumerable poems, plays, operas, novels, paintings, and lengthy, uninformative biographies, Thomas Chatterton had been a footnote to Rowley and Canynge, a local attraction in Bristol, and, above all, a function of what became known as the Rowley Controversy.1
Hee will goe you forty miles to see a Saint’s well, or a ruin’d Abbey: and if there be but a Crosse or stone footstoole in the way, hee’l be considering it so long, till he forgets his journey.
(John Earle, The Antiquary’)
The question is the desire of thought … the answer is the question’s misfortune, its adversity.
(Maurice Blanchot)
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Notes
Poems, vii; Croft, Herbert, Love and Madness, A Story Too True (London, 1780), 127.
See Groom, Nick, ‘Thomas Rowley Preeste’, in Thomas Woodman, ed., The Early Romantics (London, 1998), 242–55.
Croft, 127; Warton, Thomas, Enquiry into the Authenticity of the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (London, 1782), 7.
Gregory, George, The Life of Thomas Chatterton (London, 1789), 143; A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain, ed. Robert Anderson (London, 1792–5), xi (1795). 313–14.
The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, ed. Alexander Chalmers (London, 1810), xv. 378; Browning, Robert, ‘Conjectures and Researches Concerning the Love, Madness, and Imprisonment of Torquato Tasso’, Foreign Quarterly Review 29 (1842), 465–83 (470); The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton, ed. Walter W. Skeat (London, 1871–2), ii. ix; Russell, Charles Edward, Thomas Chatterton the Marvelous Boy: The Story of a Strange Life 1752–1770 (London, 1909), 237.
See also Sands, Alexander Hamilton, Recreations of a Southern Barrister (Philadelphia, 1859), 25.
See The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer: to which are Added, an Essay upon his Language and Versification; an Introductory Discourse; and Notes, ed. Thomas Tyrwhitt (London, 1775–8), iii. 318; GM 58 (1788), 188;
Powell, L. F., ‘Thomas Tyrwhitt and the Rowley Poems’, RES 7 (1931), 314–26.
Warton, Thomas, The History of English Poetry, From the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1774–81), ii (1778). 139, 153.
GM, 52 (1782), 168, 229–30; SJC, 8–10 September 1778. See also GM 52 (1782), 76. On forgery as an incentive to research see Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, 3rd edn (New York, 1962), 67;
Haywood, Ian, Faking It: Art and the Politics of Forgery (Brighton, 1987), 67;
Grafton, Anthony, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton, 1990), 6.
Hardinge, George, Rowley and Chatterton in the Shades … (London, 1782), 19;
Mathias, Thomas James, An Essay on the Evidence, External and Internal, Relating to the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (London, 1783), 55–6;
Sherwen, John, Introduction to an Examination of Some Part of the Internal Evidence Respecting the Antiquity and Authenticity of Certain Publications … (Bath, 1809), vi;
Maitland, S. R., Chatterton: An Essay (London, 1857), 54.
GM 48 (1778), 201–2; SJC, 29 December 1778; anon. [H. Dampier or F. Woodward], Remarks Upon the Eighth Section of the Second Volume of Mr. Warton’s History of English Poetry (London, [1782]), 3, 24, 47–8, 16; GM 48 (1778), 347–8.
Malone, Edmond, Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (London, 1782), Advertisement, iii, 2–3.
See for instance W. Carew Hazlitt: ‘The opinion of modern critics upon these alleged relics of the fifteenth century is so unanimous … that I do not think I have performed an unacceptable service in expunging altogether Warton’s remarks and selections.’ (A History of English Poetry, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1871), i. ‘Preface to the Present Edition’, xiii).
Ibid. ii. 459, 409, 553–4, 204. Similar arguments can be found throughout the Rowleyan literature. See Edward Greene, Strictures upon a Pamphlet Intitled, Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Rowley (London, 1782), 51–, 55; Milles, 24–5; European Magazine 1 (1782), 262–3.
William Blake, Complete Writings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (Oxford, 1992): annotations to Poems by William Wordsworth (1826), 783.
The dialogical nature of the controversy was obvious from the titles of the pamphlets. Malone’s was: ‘Cursory observations on the poems attributed to Thomas Rowley, a priest of the Fifteenth Century: with some remarks on the commentaries on those poems, by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Milles, Dean of Exeter, and Jacob Bryant, Esq; and a salutary proposal addressed to the friends of those gentlemen’. Greene’s was ‘Strictures upon a pamphlet intitled, cursory observations on the poems attributed to Rowley, a priest of the fifteenth century … with a postscript on Mr. Warton’s enquiry into the same subject’. Tyrwhitt’s was almost a parody: ‘A vindication of the appendix to the poems, called Rowley’s, in reply to the answers of the Dean of Exeter, Jacob Bryant, Esquire, and a third anonymous writer; with some further observations upon these poems, and an examination of the evidence which has been produced in support of their authenticity’. Tyrwhitt found it ‘absolutely necessary’ to reply to Bryant and Milles. Similarly, Warton thought that it was his ‘duty’ to reply to the Rowleyans’ arguments – even to Catcott’s objections that Warton had misquoted the material of the chest that contained the Rowley documents (Tyrwhitt, Thomas, A Vindication of the Appendix to the Poems (London, 1782), 1; Warton, Enquiry, 7).
Walpole, Horace, A Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton (Strawberry Hill, 1772), 39; Malone, 41; Warton, Enquiry, 20, 38, 42, 103; Warton, History, ii. 157; Mathias, 50.
GM 51 (Supplement, 1781), 622; Maty, Henry, A New Review with Literary Curiosities and Literary Intelligence, April 1782, 218; Hardinge, iv, iii.
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© 1999 Maria Grazia Lolla
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Lolla, M.G. (1999). ‘Truth Sacrifising to the Muses’: The Rowley Controversy and the Genesis of the Romantic Chatterton. In: Groom, N. (eds) Thomas Chatterton and Romantic Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390225_9
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