III. BIBLIOGRAPHY.


A great deal more has been written about Chatterton than it is worth
anybody's while to read. To begin with, there are all the volumes and
pamphlets concerning themselves with the question whether the Rowley
poems were written by Chatterton or by Rowley, or by both (Chatterton
adding matter of his own to existing poems written in the fifteenth
century), or by neither. It may be said that these problems were not
conclusively and finally solved till Professor Skeat brought out his
edition of Chatterton in 1871.

Then again there are the various lives of the poet; for the most part
mere random aggregations of such facts, true or imagined, as fell
in the editor's way, filled out with pulpit commonplaces and easy
paragraphs beginning 'But it is ever the way of Genius ...' Professor
Wilson's _Chatterton: a Biographical Study_ is as final in its own way
as Professor Skeat's two volumes. It is a scholarly compilation of
all previous accounts, very well digested and arranged. Moreover,
the Professor has for the most part left the facts to tell their
own story; and thus his book is free from such absurdities as the
sentimental regrets of Gregory and Professor Masson that Chatterton
was led into a course of folly ending in suicide through being
deprived of a father's care. Such a father as Chatterton's was!

While premising that any one who wishes to learn the facts of the
boy-poet's life--his circumstances and surroundings--can find them
all set forth in Professor Wilson's book: while equally if he is
interested in the pseudo-Rowley's language, philologically considered,