CHAP. IX. Sir Stentor Ranger and the Baron. memorable one of the famous Earl of Salisbury: this is to inform him that, unless he can wear it without fisting it in the clumsy manner he does, it shall be taken from him." But the keenest assault of Chatterton's trenchant satire occurs in another of his contributions to the Town and Country Magazine entitled "The Memoirs of a Sad Dog." Sir Stentor Ranger, the Rake's brother-in-law, a sporting knight who has converted an ancient Abbey into his stable, and turned the Chapel into a dog-kennel, "had many curious visitors, on account of his ancient painted glass windows: among the rest was the redoubted Baron Otranto, who has spent his whole life in conjectures." After dinner, and some talk, at cross purposes, between the sporting knight and his antiquarian guest, they adThe antique journ to the antique dog-kennel. "The Baron found many things worthy his notice in the ruinated chapel; but the Knight was so full of the praises of his harriers, that the Antiquary had not opportunity to form one conjecture. After looking round the chapel for some moveable piece, of age, on which he might employ his speculative talents, to the eternal honour of his judgment, he pitched upon a stone which had no antiquity at all; and, transported with his fancied prize, placed it upon his head, and bore it triumphantly to his chamber, desiring the Knight to give him no disturbance the next day, as he intended to devote it to the service of futurity. dog-kennel. An antiquarian prize. "This important piece of stone had, by the huntsman, been sacrilegiously stolen from the neighbouring churchyard, and employed, with others, to stop up a breach in the kennel, through which the adventurous Jowler had squeezed his lank carcase. Nothing can escape the clutches of curiosity. The letters being ill cut, had an appearance of something Gothic; and the Baron was so far gone in this Quixotism of literature, that at the first glance he determined them to be of the third Runic alphabet of Wormius. The original inscription was: James Hicks lieth here, with Hester his wife.' The broken stone is here represented :— "The Baron having turned over Camden, Dugdale, Leyland, and Weever, at last determined it to be: Hic jacet corpus Kenelma Sancto Legero; requiescat, &c., &c. What confirmed him in the above reading, and made it impossible for him to be mistaken, was, that a great man of the name of Sancto Legero had been buried in the country about five hundred years ago. Its publica tion to the learned "Elated with the happy discovery, the Baron had an elegant engraving of the curiosity executed, and presented it to the Society of Antiquaries, who look upon world." it as one of the most important discoveries which have been made since the great Dr. Trefoil found out that the word kine came from the Saxon cowine." vindictive sensitive Walpole undoubtedly winced under the sarcasms of The his assailant; though in one of his letters to the Rev. William Cole he disclaims all feeling in reference to the plant. attack "under the title of Baron of Otranto, which is written with humour. I must," he adds, "have been the sensitive plant, if anything in that character had hurt. me!" and then, in the very next sentence, he betrays the vindictive sensitive plant that he really was, by exclaiming: "Think of that young rascal's note, summing up his gains and losses by writing for and against Beckford. . . There was a lad of too nice honour to be guilty of a forgery!" The fancy that Horace Walpole was to prove the Mæcenas of the poet had thus been dissipated beyond recall. Chatterton had learned a hard lesson of world's experience, which, unhappily, brought with it none of the sweet uses of adversity. One can see in stray allusions to his plans and hopes, that he had been looking earnestly into the uncertain future, revolving Hard lesson of world's experience. CHAP. IX. The real many schemes for emancipation, and falling back on his old dream of a Canynge worthy of the true Rowley; battle of life. and now came this harsh awakening to the truth that the battle of life had to be fought by himself, as by many another less gifted, without the aid of patronage or help from without. His pride remained unsubdued, and his will resolute as ever; but his moral nature had suffered a shock only too painfully traceable in the brief months of his fevered life that remained. It is to this later period, as we shall find, that his bitter personal satires, and his irreverent assaults on everything most sacred, belong. CHAPTER X. THE SATIRIST. CHAP. X. The Rev. Alexander Catcott AMONG those who influenced Chatterton, and extended some friendly aid to the boy towards the close of his career, the Rev. Alexander Catcott, brother of the more notable pewterer, claims special notice. Their father has been already referred to as master of the Grammar School; but he was also the author of a Latin treatise, published in 1738, on the Hutchinsonian philosophy, and its interpretations of the Mosaic Creation. The book, with its mystical tabulæ of planetary diagrams, elucidated with the help of Hebrew and Latin formulæ, is a specimen of darkening counsel by words without knowledge, which even its later editor, Mr. Maxwell, admits to be "confused, extremely coarse, and not always intelligible." But his son, as was natural, had formed a much higher estimate of the work, and strove to follow in his father's footsteps, with all the advantages that learning and science could supply. He was a man of very different character from his brother; A scientific a clergyman and a scholar, with scientific tastes and vicar. literary aspirations to which he still owes some remembrance. But when, ere long, he and his protégé came into collision, it was not without some of the verisimilitude which gives the sting to satire that Chatterton described him as : "By birth to prejudice and whim allied, 1 The Ancient Principles of the True and Sacred Philosophy, &c. P. 120. CHAP. X. Presentation to the Temple Mr. Catcott was presented to the vicarage of Temple Church, Bristol, the same year in which Chatterton left. Colston's Hospital; and one of his minor poems helps us to trace their mutual relations during the poet's last year in Bristol. The Vicar had not been left in ignorance of the treasures his brother was accumulating from the supposed spoils of Redcliffe Church. But his faith in his brother's judgment in such matters, and his estimate of the worth of the most genuine poetical treasures, were on Estimate of a par. According to a contemporary, "he considered poetry. poetry to have an idle, if not an evil tendency; and was so far from regarding the Rowley specimens of antiquity with an eye of pleasure or curiosity, that he condemned his brother for misspending his time in attending to them." He parted with the greater part of his own library, after a time, reserving only books of divinity and the whole Hutchinsonian controversy; but subsequently finding among the reserved volumes a copy of Barclay's "Ship of Fools," he transferred it to the kitchen for use as waste paper. Wide tastes. 1 The direction of the Vicar's tastes lay in all respects diversity of far apart from any of Chatterton's favourite pursuits. He is spoken of as one of the best Hebrew scholars of his day. But his chief fame rests on certain theophilosophical speculations, in which he strove, with the combined aid of science and theology, to solve the problems of Creation and the Deluge. So early as 1750, he had explored the neighbouring caves of Banwell,2 and formed an interesting palæontological collection, still preserved in the Bristol City Library. A writer in the Town and Country Magazine, after referring to his collection of minerals and fossils, says: "If you pay him a visit, he conducts you into his best parlour, where are deposited the above valuable curiosities. After he has explained the beauty and remarkableness of each class, the place where they were found, as also how they came into his possession, he asks you, with a look of infinite satis1 MSS. Bristol City Library. Geological researches. 2 In Somersetshire, about sixteen miles from Bristol. |