age, reduced to indigence, and in great suffering from cancer in her breast, yet bearing all with Christian fortitude; the sister, Mrs. Newton, then also a widow, -struggling unsuccessfully to carry on the school; and her little orphan daughter completing the sad family group.1

CHAP. XV.

A sad

family

group.

The head of

St John's

College.

Southey and

Cottle's efforts.

The writer dates from Oxford, towards the close of 1790. But long before that another Oxford man, the Rev. Dr. Fry, head of St. John's College there, made his way to Bristol, the very year of Chatterton's death, bent on hunting up the discoverer or author of certain wonderful antiques that had fallen into his hands. Much has been said of what might have happened had Dr. Fry reached Bristol in time. It may be that the head of St. John's College would have appreciated the genius of the boy, and stood his friend, in spite of waywardnesses and self-assertions such as Oxford dons are least tolerant of. All we do know is that the poor mother, after years of suffering, died at last, in 1791, in poverty and neglect. At the very close of the century, the poet Southey, and his friend Joseph Cottle,-themselves natives of Bristol,-prepared an edition of Chatterton's works, to be published by subscription, for behoof of his sister, whose sight was then beginning to fail.2 Hitherto, as Southey says in the preface, they "had been published only for the emolument of strangers, who procured them by gift or purchase from the author himself, or pilfered them from his family." The subscription proved a failure; but Messrs. Longman and Rees entered into friendly arrangements with Southey, and he was able to Opportune help to Mrs. report, in 1804, that Mrs. Newton lived to receive 184/. 155. from the profits, which supported her in the decline of life, when, as she expressed it, she would otherwise have wanted bread. Ultimately Mary Ann Newton, the poet's niece, received, it is said, about 600l., the fruits of the generous exertions of a brother poet, and of others 1 Gent. Mag. vol. Ix. part ii. p. 988.

Southey's Letter, Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. part i. p. 226. 3 Gent. Mag. vol. lxxiv. part ii. p. 723.

Y

CHAP. XV.

Hannah More's kindness.

anxious to make some tardy requital to the Chatterton family.

Miss Hannah More, who had shown kindness to the widow for her son's sake, continued it to her granddaughter, after the death of Mrs. Newton; and she resided for some time under her roof at Barleywood, not, as has been said, as a servant, but as a friend. But she also died, in 1807, at the age of twenty-four, leaving the larger portion of the money to her paternal relatives, the Newtons, then resident at the Little Minories, London; but bequeathing 100l. to a young man, a manufacturer in Bristol, to whom she was about to be married. More

than half a century afterwards Mr. George Pryce derived Interesting from him some interesting recollections of her converrecollections. sations with him. Among these, perhaps the most noteworthy is that of Mrs. Newton telling her that, on the arrival of the news of Chatterton's death, their mother became so distressed that she burnt lapfuls of his papers, in order to remove whatever might recall to her the bitter remembrance of her loss.1 The incident seems to conflict with the recollections of another contemporary, already referred to, of her deriving a melancholy pleasure from pondering over such relics of her gifted son.2 But Mrs. Newton's reference was probably to the later period, described by Sir Herbert Croft, when parochial authorities were demanding restitution of lost parchments, and the terrified widow might well destroy what she was learning to regard as criminal forgeries of the boy.

Bristol's

memorial of the poet.

After repeated efforts, a sum of money was at length raised, in 1840, sufficient to erect, in Bristol, a memorial of its boy-poet. It was the desire of those with whom it originated to place the monument within the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, as its most appropriate site. But it was only after a prolonged struggle that one was yielded for it in the churchyard. Time had soothed many local asperities, and healed the wounds of personal vanity. But prejudices, secular and ecclesiastical, had still to be 1 Notes and Queries, second edition, vol. iv. p. 93.

2 Dix, App. p. 303.

overcome; and there is perhaps poetical justice, and a CHAP. XV.
certain fitness of things, in the perpetuation, on the very Poet cal
monument of the boy, of the antagonism between the justice.
vicars of St. Mary Redcliffe and the heir of line of
its hereditary sextons. The friendly hand of a Bristol
clergyman had supplied a metrical inscription, closing
with the couplet :

"He lived a mystery-died; Here, reader, pause:
Let God be judge, and mercy plead the cause."

minded intolerance.

But "the quality of mercy" meted out to Chatterton Narrow-
was still unchanged. The appeal proved ineffective
seventy years after his death; and before the design
could obtain the needful ecclesiastical approval, it in-
cluded, as an indispensable feature, the appropriation of
its most prominent panel, facing Redcliffe Street, to a
passage dictated by the vicar, from Young's "Night
Thoughts," beginning:-

"Know all; know, infidels: unapt to know;
'Tis immortality your nature solves,” &c.1

condition

Without the perpetration of this offence against good taste and feeling, no site would be allowed for the monument of the boy to whom St. Mary Redcliffe owes a world-wide fame. The admirers of the poet accepted Hard the hard condition. It only required them to supple-imposed. ment it with the vicar's name, and convert it into a fitter monument of his own intolerance. Good men might hesitate about the erection of any monument; but they could have no doubt that a memorial of the dead should not be converted into a tasteless insult. It was all the Better more objectionable, since the better taste of those by whom the monument was erected had already led them to select the brief, but appropriate words supplied by the

1 Young's "Night's Thoughts," Night VII. nine lines. The monument has five sides. The various inscriptions engraved on them originally are given at length in Pryce's "Canynges Family," p. 296.

taste.

CHAP. XV. poet's own pen; which only need the dates of his birth and death to make the inscription complete :

The poet's

own epitaph.

"TO THE MEMORY OF

THOMAS

CHATTERTON.

Removal of the monument.

The poet's

true memorial.

Reader! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he
shall be judged by a Superior Power. To that
Power only is he now answerable.”

After evading or overcoming many difficulties, the poet's
monument was at length erected, in 1840, on the north
side of Redcliffe Church, between the tower and the
muniment-room, so intimately associated with the ro-
mantic dream of his life. But ere long the restoration
of the north porch, of which the muniment-room forms
a part, furnished an excuse for its removal; and only
after long delay, and renewed difficulties, has it been re-
built on another site. No inscription has yet been placed
on it; and as a new vicar now exercises authority, it may
be presumed that better taste will be allowed to prevail
in refilling the panels of the restored monument.

It was scarcely needed for the poet. His works are a more durable memorial even than the venerable edifice he had already appropriated as a monument, by titles beyond the challenge of any ecclesiastical consistory. But it was due to the city in which the boy had achieved such triumphs of genius, amid poverty, and every impediment that an unbelieving generation could interpose, to make such reparation to itself, if not to him. And so the monument, which in seeming jest he willed and directed to be executed, has at length been reared within the consecrated precincts of St. Mary Redcliffe; and Bristol now mingles somewhat of pride with the conflicting emotions with which it recalls the name of Chatterton.

INDEX.