CHAP. XII. A flash of earnestness. Quarrel of Too tardy production of the burletta. CUPID. Hence, monster, hence! I scorn thy flowing bowl; Here spoke the poet, with a flash of earnestness, almost out of keeping with Dan Cupid, on whom Bacchus retorts the charge "He plays with ethics like a bell and coral." The dialogue proceeds, in greatly varied measure, adapted to recitative and airs, till Cupid transfixes the drunken god with his arrow: on which Bacchus throws the contents of the bowl in his face, and runs off. After the plot has set all its Olympian characters at crosspurposes, harmony is at last restored; and Bacchus and Cupid, turning to the audience, pay, in song, their duty to the fair and gay, closing thus: "BACCHUS. For you the vine's delicious fruit Shall on the lofty mountains shoot; CUPID. For you shall Handel's lofty flight And the soft, melting, sinking lay In gentle accents die away; And not a whisper shall appear, Which modesty would blush to hear." This spirited burletta there can be little doubt Chatterton did not live to see produced, with all the charms of music and scenery. His letter to Cary is undated; but it appears to have been written in the end of June, when the London Museum was on the eve of publication, with his second African Eclogue, "The Death of Nicou." He had then heard several airs of his burletta sung; and his head was so full of music, that much of his letter is taken up with a discussion of it, and its Bristol professors. The original receipt, attached to the last chorus of the burletta, was accidentally recovered in 1824. It is dated July 6th, 1770,-only seven weeks before the fatal close, CHAP. XII. Recovery of —and shows that he received five guineas for his labours.1 Three years later, Mr. Upcott, one of the librarians of the London Institution, picked up, among the waste the MS. paper on the counter of a City cheesemonger, the original manuscript, in Chatterton's handwriting, written in a common school copybook, as was his wont; and with some additional songs, after the receipt to Mr. Atterbury.2 It had been given by the latter to Mr. Egerton, for the purpose of printing; and after its issue from his press in 1795, the MS. was reported to have been lost at the printing-office where it no doubt lay, till transferred with other waste copy to the cheesemonger's use.3 : remunera tion. lost. The remuneration for the burletta was liberal in com- Liberal parison with most of Chatterton's pecuniary returns: and probably the largest sum he ever received for any literary production. His sister recovered a pocket-book after his death, in which, among other entries of moneys received, Mr. Hamilton is credited with payment of ten shillings and sixpence for sixteen songs; or somewhat less than eightpence each. Of those, and probably Ephemeral many other ephemeral productions, we have no trace. productions Walpole describes among the manuscripts seen by him "The Flight; addressed to a great man; Lord B- -e,' -no doubt a political satire on the Scottish favourite. It extended to forty stanzas of six lines each; and had been rejected by the Political Register because of its length. A second satire dealt with Mr. Alexander Catcott and his book on the Deluge; and no doubt others have perished, or can no longer be traced in the periodicals to which they were contributed. : work. From all this we can form some idea of the amount Amount and and variety of literary work accomplished by a youth of variety of seventeen, during four months' sojourn amid the distracting novelties and temptations of London. Much of it was mere task-work; but indications are not wanting to 1 Gent. Mag. vol. xcv. Part I. p. 99. 2 Ibid. vol. xcvii. Part II. p. 355. 3 J. H. Cottle. List of publications relating to Chatterton, p. 537. CHAP. XII. Revival of the old inspiration. show that even then, amid all the exactions which necessity imposed on him, the old inspiration revived; and he lived and wrote once more as the poet-monk of an elder and nobler time. The resources of his brain seemed inexhaustible. But such mental strain, followed as it was by disappointment, and utter failure even in the poor return for which so much of it had been undertaken, may amply account for the despondency which ended in despair. CHAPTER XIII. THE LAST HOPE. CHAP. XIII. Rowley The MS. BRISTOL is not so inferior to London, as are most of the hasty productions of Chatterton's pen during his brief sojourn there to the true Rowley Poems. He carried the manuscripts of these with him; but could Thomas Rowley, priest and poet, live in that intoxicating fever of politics, strife, and dissipation, amid which there seemed even less hope of an appreciative audience than on the banks of the Avon? This at least seems certain, that, at a very early period after he reached London, he meditated the resumption of his antique art. When little more than a fortnight from home, we find him specially naming "the glossary. MS. glossary, composed of one small book, annexed to a larger," as most needful among his missing volumes. Again, some two weeks later, on the 30th May, he writes his sister: "The manuscript glossary I mentioned in my last must not be omitted." No doubt, therefore, he not only cherished the dream of his youth, but even then contemplated perpetuating the old reveries of Redcliffe Hill in his new lodging, at Shoreditch, or elsewhere. The last, seemingly, of all his Rowley Poems in point of date, and the fitting close to the whole, is his "Balade of Charitie." Some ten weeks after his arrival in London it was forwarded to Mr. Hamilton, of the Town and Country Magazine, where his "Elinoure and Juga" had already appeared. According to his first editor, the note which accompanied it bore the date: "Bristol, July 4th, 1770;" so that he was still guarding the secret of his in Last of the Rowley Poems. Its appropriate tone and senti ment. CHAP. XIII. antique muse with even more than his old precautions. The tone and sentiment of this fine ballad are so appropriate to a date which brings us within little more than a month of the last sad scene of all, that it seems as though it foreshadowed the ending. But a month is an important item in the brief life of Chatterton, and a large portion of his whole London career. Dating professedly from Bristol on the 4th, we may presume that the packet was not actually delivered till the 6th of July: which brings us to the very day on which he signed the receipt for his well-earned five guineas, the price of his burletta. Never, perhaps, was he in better spirits. The prosecutions of the press had driven him back to verse, and here was a substantial return. Generous remem brance of home. Boastful extravagance. There is indeed. touching evidence that this was the only remuneration Chatterton received on such a scale as really to seem to leave him a surplus in hand. He had meditated from the first making the dear ones at home sharers in his earliest good fortune. Before he had been three weeks in London, we find him telling his mother: "Thorne shall not be forgot, when I remit the small trifles to you." In his letter from Tom's Coffee-house, on the last day of the month, replete with high anticipations, he tells his sister: "Assure yourself every month shall end to your advantage. I will send you two silks this summer, and expect, in answer to this, what colours you prefer. My mother shall not be forgotten;" and as he closes with the usual greetings to mother and grandmother, he adds: "Sincerely and without ceremony, wishing them both happy. When it is in my power to make them so, it shall be so." The letter, in which this occurs, is the same in which he recounts his interview with the Lord Mayor, and much else. Amid its boastful extravagance, we might be tempted to fancy such promises mere empty talk. May passes over; June succeeds, and draws to a close; his sister, as we discover from one of his own letters, fails not to inform him of her choice of colour for the silks: but still there is no word of the promised gifts. But on |