Chatterton

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

THOMAS, an English youth whose genius and melancholy fate have gained him much celebrity; born at Bristol in 1752, of poor parents, and educated at a charity school. He exhibited great precocity, became extremely devoted to reading, and was especially fond of old writings and documents. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to an attorney. In 1768, when the new bridge at Bristol was completed, he inserted a paper in the "Bristol Journal" entitled "A Description of the Friars' First Passing Over the Old Bridge," which he pretended he had found along with other old manuscripts in an old chest in St. Mary Redcliffe Church, Bristol. He also showed his friends several poems of similar spurious antiquity which he attributed to one Rowley. In 1769 he ventured to write to Horace Walpole, then engaged upon his "Anecdotes of Paint. ers," giving him an account of a number of old Bristol painters which was clever enough to deceive Walpole for a Dismissed from the attorney's time. office, he left with his manuscripts for London, where a favorable reception Lo from the booksellers gave him high hopes. For them he wrote numerous pamphlets, satires, letters, etc., but got no substantial return, and his situation became daily more desperate. At last, after having been several days without food, he poisoned himself, Aug. 25, 1770. The most remarkable of his poems are those published under the name of Rowley, spurious antiques, such as "The Tragedy of Ella," "The Battle of Hastings," "The Bristow Tragedy," etc.