much which had been accepted was held in reserve, and still unpaid for. The beginning of a new month revealed to him the indefinite postponement of their publication, and with it of the prospect either of payment or of further demand for his labours. He had wished, according to his foster-mother, to study medicine with Barrett ; and one of his companions specially refers to the charm which the practice of physic had for him. In his desperation he now reverted to this, and wrote to Barrett for such a letter as might help him to an opening as a surgeon s assistant on board an African trader. He appealed also to Mr Catcott to forward his plan, but in vain. The letters were written before the middle of the month, and he continued to hope against hope, as he awaited their replies. What these were we can only surmise. On the 24th of August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carry ing with him the poison which he there drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand. In the morning he was found, with limbs and features distorted by his last con vulsions, a ghastly corpse.
Thus perished by his own hand, in an obscure lodging in London, among strangers and in absolute want, a youth assuredly without his equal in that eighteenth century. He was only seventeen years and nine months old ; yet he had already written poems which fill two ample volumes, and which now, upwards of a century after his death, command our admiring wonder for the rare evidence of genius and sustained power which they display. The intelligent labours of the Rev. W. W. Skeat have at length presented them in a form worthy of their unique merit, not only as evidence of fine poetic genius, but as an unparalleled example of youthful precocity displayed in spite of every disadvantage that poverty and adverse fate could interpose to prevent its display. Yet even now com paratively few know what a rich vein of romance and true poetry lies concealed under the antique guise of the Rowley poems, or how singular is the study which they involve. The best of his numerous productions, both in prose and verse, require no allowance to be made for the immature years of their author, when comparing him with the ablest of his contemporaries. Yet he was writing spirited satires at ten, and he produced some of the finest of his antique verse before he was sixteen years of age. He pictures Lydgate, the monk of Bury St Edmunds, challenging Rowley to a trial at versemaking, and under cover of this fiction, produces his "Songe of jElla," a piece of rare lyrical beauty, worthy of comparison with any antique or modern production of its class. Again, in his Tragedy of Goddwyn, " of which only a fragment has been preserved, the "Ode to Liberty," with which it abruptly closes, is a wonderful specimen of bold imagery which may claim a place among the finest martial lyrics in the language.
The collection of poems in which such specimens occur furnishes by far the most remarkable example of intellectual precocity in the whole history of letters ; nor is it the least among all the notable features which distinguish the boy s writings, that, from first to last, he consistently maintained his romance of Canynge and Kowley through all the diverse scenes of verse and prose in which those imaginary characters are made to figure. The age at which he died, before he had even reached manhood, adds to the tender pity which his fate awakens even now, upwards of a century after his death. Collins, Burns, Keats, Shelley, and Byron all awaken Borrow over the premature arrestment of their genius ; but the youngest of them survived to his twenty-fifth year, while Chatterton was only seventeen when he perished despairingly in his miserable garret.
The death of Chatterton attracted little notice at the time ; for the few who then entertained any appreciative estimate of the Rowley poems regarded him as their mere transcriber. He was interred in a burying ground attached to Shoe Lane Workhouse, in the parish of St Andrew s, Holborn, which has since been con verted into a site for Farringdon Market. But a story has been current from an early date, and credited by some trustworthy in vestigators, that the body of the poet was recovered through the intervention of one of his London relatives, and secretly interred by his uncle, Richard Phillips, in Redcliffe Churchyard. There a monument has since been erected to his memory, with the appro priate inscription, borrowed from his "Will," and so supplied by the poet s own pen "To the memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader ! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a Superior Power. To that Power only is he now answerable."
CHAUCER, Geoffrey (c. 1340-1400). There are few fields of research in which antiquarians, from Speght to Furni- vall, have laboured so zealously and successfully as the life of Chaucer. The secret of their success has been that Chaucer was more actively engaged in public affairs than any poet of celebrity since his time, and has consequently left many traces in official records. The chief biographical fact known to Speght was that Chaucer gave evidence in a case tried at Westminster in 1386 touching the right of Lord Scrope to bear certain arms, and then deposed that he was " forty years old and upward," and had borne arms for twenty-seven years. A casual fact of this sort offered no clue tu further investigation; but the fact that Chaucer received from Edward III. a pension of twenty marks was more suggestive. This clue was first energetically followed up by Godwin, the author of Caleb Williams and Political Justice, who searched diligently through several records, chiefly the Patent, Close, and French Rolls, for other notices of Chaucer s name, and succeeded in enriching his bio graphy of Chaucer, published in 1804, with various im portant particulars. He was followed by Sir Harris Nicolas, who made an exhaustive examination of the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer, and published the results in 1843. Another determined search through records which Godwin and Nicolas had shrunk from was made in 1873 by Mr Furnivall, and this also resulted in several important finds.
It is to Mr Furnivall that we are indebted for finally settling the parentage of Chaucer. Speght in the course of his researches had hit upon the name of one Richard Chaucer, a vintner, who died in 1 348, and made a bequest to the church of St Mary Aldermary. Merely on the ground of the name, Speght supposed this to be the father of Chaucer; but Urry and Tyrwhitt, in the 18th century, disputed this, and wished to give the poet a higher lineage, because in the grant of a pension made to him in 41 Edward III. he was described as " valettus noster." Mr Furnivall settled the question by bringing to light a deed dated 1380, in which Chaucer, relinquishing his right in a house belonging to his father, described himself as " the son of John Chaucer, vintner." By other documents this John Chaucer is shown to be the son of Speght s Richard. It is thus established that both the poet s father and his grandfather were London vintners. The precise date of his birth has not been ascertained. The accepted date till lately was 1328 The difficulty with this date was his being described as. " forty years and upwards" in 1386, and of late opinion has inclined to 1340 as a more probable year. This is favoured by the discovery that the poet was Richard Chaucer s grandson and not his son, and fits in better with the facts than 1328.
the name which he assumes in the Court of Love, he was " of Cambridge clerk," and how he was introduced to the notice of the court, is left to conjecture. His name occurs in the household book of the wife of Prince Lionel, second son of Edward III., in 1357, probably, Mr Furnivall con jectures, as a page. He bore arms in Edward II I. s invasion of France in 1359, John Chaucer being also in the expedition, probably in connection with the commis sariat. There was little fighting in that expedition, the ravages of the English for several years before having left little to fight for ; but in the course of a disastrous retreat, compelled rather by hunger than by martial force, Chaucer was taken prisoner. In 1360 the king paid 16 for his ransom. From 1360 to 1366 there is a gap in the record of his life ; but in the latter year his name occurs in a list of the members of the royal household as one of thirty- seven " esquires " of the king, who were to receive a gift of clothes at Christmas. By this time also he would seem to have been married, if the Philippa Chaucer, one of the demoiselles of Queen Philippa, who in 1366 was granted a yearly pension of ten marks, was, as is most probable, his wife (see the discussion of the question in Sir H. Nicolas s memoir). In 1367 Chaucer himself received a pension of twenty marks from the king, being described as " dilectus valettus noster." To show that in being courtier and scholar he had not ceased to be soldier, he took part in
another inglorious expedition against France in 1369, in
