As Phillips was, no doubt, a man of literary tastes. to his actual merits as a poet they may have been small enough. Thistlethwaite evidently regarded him as one whose preeminent genius was proved by the triumphs achieved over himself and other youthful poets of the Bluecoat School. The kindly relations established between him and them prove him, at any rate, to have possessed in an eminent degree that sympathetic ardour, so invaluable in a teacher, which enkindled in the group of charity boys among whom his lot was cast a spirit of poetic emulation, little to be looked for in such a class of pupils. But when we learn that in all his contests with them, "Phillips still, to the mortification of his opponents, came off victorious and unhurt,"1 it would seem that he found gratification in such triumphs; and we are less tempted to think of him, with Chatterton, as: "Phillips! great master of the boundless lyre," than as a genial counterpart of Goldsmith's village schoolmaster, content with such preeminence within his own narrow domain. On him Chatterton essayed his first serious attempt to pass off his own verse as the production of a poet of the fifteenth century. The boldness of this poetical masquerading was, under all the circumstances, fully equal to the later attempts on the credulity of Barrett, or even Walpole himself. How far a sincere confidence was subsequently established. between them can only be surmised; but in him the boy found a congenial sympathiser, eager to solve the mystery of the supposed antique parchment, yet not less ready to enter into the aspiring hopes of the young poet. As to Thistlethwaite he is a fair type of old and young in the common circle of Chatterton's acquaintance. To his purblind vision the boy, who was his junior at an age when the difference of a year or two constitutes an important element in the relations of schoolmates, 1 Letter of Thistlethwaite to Dean Milles. CHAP. III. Merits of Phillips as a poet. First pro duction of professed antiques. CHAP. III. Healthful Colston's Hospital. appeared as simply contenting himself with the sports and pastimes more immediately adapted to his age, and apparently possessing neither inclination, nor indeed ability, for literary pursuits! The confidence extended to such a companion was not likely to include any hint of the real authorship of the romantic ballad of the White Rose. When in the But, notwithstanding the utter inadequacy of Colston's influences of Hospital to satisfy the cravings of the remarkable boy who wore its garb, and partook of the best training it had to offer, it is obvious that its influences were, on the whole, of a healthful nature; and, above all, the moral culture to which its founder attached such just value appears to have been sound. However evanescent may have been the first religious impressions, which found expression in his Epiphany verses and other juvenile poems, including a lost paraphrase of some portions of Isaiah: all that we know of his youth indicates sound moral feeling. "He was a lover of truth," says his sister, “from the earliest dawn of reason, and nothing would move him so much as being belied. school, we were informed by the usher, his pended on his veracity on all occasions."1 mother describes him, at seven years of 66 age, as sensible of every one's distresses." At twelve the same sensibility remained unblunted. "He could not bear to hear of any one suffering;" and would part with his last halfpence, and submit to the privation of coveted objects he was about to purchase, in order to relieve the beggars who frequented the drawbridge, over which his usual road from school lay. If he had no money, Mrs. Edkins adds, he would request a penny from her for the object of his compassion, telling her "he loved her for it as much as if she had given it to himself." 2 At a later date she describes him as a good son and brother, preferring his home to every other resort; and there Tender sensibility to distress. 1 Mrs. Newton's Letter, Croft, p. 162. master deHis foster tenderly 2 Mrs. Edkins to G. Cumberland, Esq., Dix, App. p. 315. CHAP. III. attracting the love of all who knew him.1 For, curiously enough though silent, reserved, and spending from Social choice much of his time alone; he was, nevertheless, disposition. of a social disposition, and at a very early age displayed a singular power of winning the sympathy both of old and young. 1 Mrs. Edkins to G. Cumberland, Esq., Dix, App. p. 309. E CHAPTER IV. THE DE BERGHAM PEDIGREE. CHAP. IV. Augustine's Mr. Barrett's mansion. WHEN the “Great House" was selected by Colston as the hospital in which his Bluecoat boys should be lodged, House on St. it stood amid gardens and orchards, with the open greensward in front reaching to the river's brink. Though the mason's handiwork had encroached on garden and grassplot by the time Chatterton became an inmate there, it was still a pleasant neighbourhood, to which well-to-do citizens resorted ; and in one of the mansions close by, the Bristol surgeon and antiquary, Mr. William Barrett, resided, with his well-stocked library and other attractions, the value of which were somehow or other discovered and made available by the Bluecoat boy. They trafficked ere long in old parchments, in borrowed books, and in talk on many subjects strange enough to most inmates of a charity school. The surgeon could not fail to see in him something out of the ordinary run of Bluecoat boys; took special note of his bright, intelligent eye; and used often to send for him that he might enjoy his eager discussion of some disputed point. In this way Chatterton escaped at times from the hospital and his juvenile associates there, returning with some borrowed volume over which to pore while they were sporting in the playground. Holiday route home. On Saturdays and other half-holidays his road home lay by the drawbridge over the river Frome, a tributary of the Avon, on which the hospital stood, and so by the old bridge to the Somersetshire side of the Avon, and on to Redcliffe Hill. For the most part we know that he made straight for home with as little delay as possible; and then, after a loving welcome from mother and sister, was speedily ensconced in his favourite attic, amid his parchments and drawing materials. But little as the cloistral life of Colston's Hospital seemed calculated to prepare its inmates for free intercourse with the outer world of Bristol, Chatterton appears to have made acquaintance with some of its notabilities at a very early period, and turned them to account. The hospital system of training was framed in part with a view to counteract the evil tendencies which its founder imagined to be inseparable from nonconformity; but to this were added other features, which might seem as though they were directly inherited from the old Friars Carmelites who had been the precursors of the Bluecoat boys. Not only did the boy-monks wear the blue-gown, but they appear to have perpetuated something symbolical of the old friars' shaven crown. "Mr. Capel," says Bryant, "told me that he saw Chatterton the very day that he came from Colston's, with the tonsure on his head, and in the habit of the place;" and Mr. George Catcott, whose shop he passed every time he crossed the bridge, when telling of his receipt of Rowley manuscripts from the boy, says: "He gave me the poems in the beginning of the year 1768. He had then the tonsure on his head, being just come from Mr. Colston's charity school." 1 CHAP. IV. Boy-monks to the Blue cout boy. Probably in the Bristol of a century ago, as in London Facilities even now, the quaint garb of the Bluecoat boy was a passport that facilitated ingress to many resorts not otherwise accessible. But the peculiar tastes and habits of Chatterton must have singled him out ere long, and attracted special notice from some, whose attentions he soon turned to account. There appears to have been a strange fascination about the boy; and when it pleased him it almost seemed as though he could make friends at will. Writing to his mother soon after his arrival in London, he tells her of a stranger he encountered in Drury Lane 1 Gent. Mag. vol. xlviii. p. 348. |