THE ROWLEY POEMS BY THOMAS CHATTERTON REPRINTED FROM TYRWHITT'S THIRD EDITION EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY MAURICE EVAN HARE MCMXI CONTENTS. EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION I. CHATTERTON'S LIFE AND DEATH AND THE GENESIS OF THE ROWLEY POEMS II. THE VALUE OF THE ROWLEY POEMS III. BIBLIOGRAPHY IV. NOTE ON THE TEXT V. NOTES VI. APPENDIX ON THE ROWLEY CONTROVERSY REPRINT OF THE EDITION OF 1778. (The Table of Contents follows the 1778 title-page.) EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. I. CHATTERTON'S LIFE AND DEATH AND THE GENESIS OF THE ROWLEY POEMS Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on the 20th of November 1752. His father--also Thomas--dead three months before his son's birth, had been a subchaunter in Bristol Cathedral and had held the mastership in a local free school. We are told that he was fond of reading and music; that he made a collection of Roman coins, and believed in magic (or so he said), studying the black art in the pages of Cornelius Agrippa. With all the self-acquired culture and learning that raised him above his class (his father and grandfathers before him for more than a hundred years had been sextons to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe) he is described as a dissipated, 'rather brutal fellow'. Lastly, he appears to have been 'very proud', self-confident, and self-reliant. Of Chatterton's mother little need be said. Gentle and rather foolish, she was devoted to her two children Mary and, his sister's junior by two years, Thomas the Poet. Of these Mary seems to have inherited the colourless character of her mother; but Thomas must always have been remarkable. We have the fullest accounts of his childhood, and the details that might with another be set down as chronicles of the nursery will be seen to have their importance in the case of this boy who set himself consciously to be famous when he was eight, wrote fine imaginative verse before he was thirteen, and killed himself aged seventeen and nine months.