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 Poetical
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 monu-
ment 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.

4

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.

Removal of the

monument.

The poet's

true memorial.

"TO THE MEMORY OF

THOMAS CHATTERTON.

Reader! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he

To that

shall be judged by a Superior Power.
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.