Hawthornden that 'Fletcher and Chapman were loved of him;' but the friendship between Chapman and Jonson was interrupted at a later date, for in a commonplace hook preserved among the Ashmole MSS. is a lengthy fragment of a violent 'Invective written by Mr. George Chapman against Mr. Ben Jonson.' Prefixed to Fletcher's 'Faithful Shepherdess' (1610?) is a copy of verses by Chapman, who also contributed some prefatory verses to 'Parthenia' (1611), and 'A Woman is a Weathercock ' (1612), a comedy of 'his loved son,' Nat. Field. Some verses signed 'G. C.,' prefixed to 'The True History of the Tragicke loves of Hipolito and Isabella' (1628), are probably to be assigned to Chapman. There are verses by Chapman beneath the portrait of Prince Henry in Holland's 'Heroologia,' 1620.
Wood describes Chapman as 'a person of most reverend aspect, religious and temperate, qualities rarely meeting in a poet.' From many references scattered throughout his works it may be gathered that the poet suffered from poverty and neglect. John Davies of Hereford, in the 'Scourge of Joy' (1611), alludes to Chapman's straitened circumstances in a quaint copy of verses addressed 'To my highly vallued Mr. George Chapman, Father of our English Poets.' Oldys states that in later life Chapman was 'much resorted to by young persons of parts as a poetical chronicle; but was very choice who he admitted to him, and preserved in his own person the dignity of Poetry, which he compared to a flower of the sun, that disdains to open its leaves to the eye of a smoking taper.'
Chapman died in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields on 12 May 1634, and was buried on the south side of St. Giles's churchyard. The monument erected to his memory by Inigo Jones is still standing; but the inscription, which has been recut, does not tally with the inscription given by Wood. Habington in his 'Castara' (ed. 1635) alludes to Chapman's grave being outside the church, and expresses a hope that some person might be found 'so seriously devote to poesie' as to remove his relics and 'in the warme church to build him up a tombe.'
Chapman's Homer was excellently edited in 1857 by the Rev. Richard Hooper ('Iliad,' 2 vols.; 'Odyssey,' 2 vols.; 'Hymns,' &c., 1 vol.) In 1873 appeared a reprint, with the old spelling retained, of the dramatic works, in three volumes. A complete collection of Chapman's works, in three volumes, was seen through the press by Mr. K. H. Shepherd in 1873–5; the dramatic works fill one volume, the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' another, and the third volume is devoted to the 'Miscellaneous Poems and Translations.' To the volume of miscellaneous works is prefixed an elaborate, just, and eloquent essay (afterwards issued in a separate form) by Mr. A. C. Swinburne.
[Wood's Athen. Oxon. (ed. Bliss); Langbaine's Dramatick Poets, with manuscript annotations by Oldys; Henslowe's Diary (ed. J. P. Collier); Hooper's Introductions to Chapman's Homer; Swinburne's Essay on Chapman; Coleridge's Literary Remains, i. 259–63; Lamb's specimens of Dramatic Poets.]
CHAPMAN, GEORGE (1723–1806), schoolmaster and writer on education, was born at the farm of Little Blacktown in the parish of Alvah, Banffshire, in August 1723. He was educated at the grammar school of Banff, and at King's College, Aberdeen, graduating M.A. in 1741, After acting for some time as master in the parish school of Alvah, he in 1747 became assistant master in an academy at Dalkeith. In 1751 he removed to Dumfries, to become joint master of the grammar school; shortly afterwards he became sole headmaster, and he held this office till 1774. On account of infirm health he relinquished it to take up a small private academy, but, finding that this was regarded as injurious to the grammar school, he removed to Banffshire, where he kept an academy at his native farmhouse. Some time afterwards, at the request of the magistrates, he undertook the superintendence of the Banff academy. Latterly he removed to Edinburgh, where he carried on business as a printer. He died at Rose Street, Edinburgh, 22 Feb. 1800. In 1773 he published 'A Treatise on Education, with a Sketch of the Author's Method of Instruction while he taught the school of Dumfries, and a view of other Books on Education,' which reached a fifth edition in 1792. In 1804 he obtained the prize offered by Dr. Buchanan for a poem and essay on the civilisation of India, and they were published at Edinburgh in 1805 under the title, 'East India Tracts, viz. Collegium Bengalense, a Latin Poem with an English Translation and a Dissertation,' &c. He was also the author of 'Hints on the Eduuation of the Lower Ranks of the People, and the Appointment of Parochial Schoolmasters; 'Advantages of a Classical Education;' and an 'Abridgement of Mr. Ruddiman's Rudiments and Latin Grammar.' He received the degree of LL.D. from the university of Aberdeen.
[Memoirs of his Life, 1806; Scots Mag. lxviii. 238, 404-5; Gent. Mag. lxxvi. pt. i. 285; Chalmers's Biog. Dict. ii. 128-9.]
