.jpg?w=1)
Details
CHATTERTON, Thomas. -- Five autograph letters signed, to Revd. Jeremiah Milles, on the subject of Chatterton's poetry, by the following:
Francis WOODFORD [of Bristol], relating that Dr. Glynn of Salisbury had seen Stevens 'who confirms his conversation with young Chatterton upon the subject of Rowley', and a lady 'who by accident was in Mr. Lambert's Company who talked much of Chatterton, (his Clerk), who said, he was a lad of a most wretched & uncommonly wicked Disposition -- spoke of ... the exceedingly ill treatment he had received from H. Walpole, Bath, 4 June 1778; [Revd.] Philip BARTON [Prebendary of Chichester 1730, and of Winchester 1731, Vicar of Buriton 1732, FRS]. 'The external Evidence, I presume, is not yet exhausted; how expert a Dissembler soever this Boy may have been; He had Relations, Acquaintances, Friends; At his Age He could hardly be without Confidents, to whom something or other must have transpired, either favorable to the Authenticity of the Poems, or destructive of it ...', Buriton, 30 June 1778; Brownlow NORTH, Bishop of Winchester, 'I am sorry that Tyrwhitt hath thrown his weight into the scale against Rowley & I especially wish that he had stay'd till the Friends of the unfortunate Poet had had time to say something for him', Hartlebury, 15 September 1778; George MOORE, 'I have ... looked at the Passage you referred me to in Ben Jonson, and am not persuaded that the lines in Rowley are not borrowed from Hudibras', Hevitree, 9 May 1781; William BLAKE, 'Old M.. White who is my neighbour & was once a shoolmaster ... told me again & again that he saw Rowlie's Poems in the possession of the Father before young Chatterton was born', Bristol, 11 November 1783, together 13 pages, 4to.
Revd. Jeremiah Milles (1714-1784), Dean of Exeter, President of the Society of Antiquaries, published an extravagant edition of Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol ... by Thomas Rowley, Priest, 1782, in which he maintained the antiquity of the poems. His comments provoked replies from Edmond Malone, Thomas Tyrtwhitt and Thomas Warton. On Dean Milles's part in the controversy, Coleridge wrote that he 'foully calumniated Chatterton, an owl mangling a poor dead nightingale'. (5)
Francis WOODFORD [of Bristol], relating that Dr. Glynn of Salisbury had seen Stevens 'who confirms his conversation with young Chatterton upon the subject of Rowley', and a lady 'who by accident was in Mr. Lambert's Company who talked much of Chatterton, (his Clerk), who said, he was a lad of a most wretched & uncommonly wicked Disposition -- spoke of ... the exceedingly ill treatment he had received from H. Walpole, Bath, 4 June 1778; [Revd.] Philip BARTON [Prebendary of Chichester 1730, and of Winchester 1731, Vicar of Buriton 1732, FRS]. 'The external Evidence, I presume, is not yet exhausted; how expert a Dissembler soever this Boy may have been; He had Relations, Acquaintances, Friends; At his Age He could hardly be without Confidents, to whom something or other must have transpired, either favorable to the Authenticity of the Poems, or destructive of it ...', Buriton, 30 June 1778; Brownlow NORTH, Bishop of Winchester, 'I am sorry that Tyrwhitt hath thrown his weight into the scale against Rowley & I especially wish that he had stay'd till the Friends of the unfortunate Poet had had time to say something for him', Hartlebury, 15 September 1778; George MOORE, 'I have ... looked at the Passage you referred me to in Ben Jonson, and am not persuaded that the lines in Rowley are not borrowed from Hudibras', Hevitree, 9 May 1781; William BLAKE, 'Old M.. White who is my neighbour & was once a shoolmaster ... told me again & again that he saw Rowlie's Poems in the possession of the Father before young Chatterton was born', Bristol, 11 November 1783, together 13 pages, 4to.
Revd. Jeremiah Milles (1714-1784), Dean of Exeter, President of the Society of Antiquaries, published an extravagant edition of Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol ... by Thomas Rowley, Priest, 1782, in which he maintained the antiquity of the poems. His comments provoked replies from Edmond Malone, Thomas Tyrtwhitt and Thomas Warton. On Dean Milles's part in the controversy, Coleridge wrote that he 'foully calumniated Chatterton, an owl mangling a poor dead nightingale'. (5)