vestigation, and the ardour of literary controverfy. Neverthelefs, the delay may be attended by its own advantages in aiding us to afcertain the real merits of the difputed question. The works of Chatterton, or the poems of Rowley, have furvived the controverfy which attended their appearance in 1770. Of the affailants and defenders of their originality, many have paid the debt to nature, and others will remember their ardour in the conteft as the emotions of an agitating dream. It may therefore be fuppofed that the public will colly and impartially determine the controverfy (if it yet remains a controverfy) upon the folid grounds of evidence; and it might alfo have been hoped, that circumstances of additional proof, fuppreffed or mifre prefented while the feelings of being duped were yet too acute, might now have been recovered. We will endeavour to fhew how far we have been gratified by the prefent edition, and in what refpects it has fallen fhort of our expectation.

The preface bears the well known and refpectable name of Mr Robert Southey; but we are informed that fo much of the bufinefs has devolved upon Mr Cottle, that it becomes neceffary to use the term Editors in the plural. Both poets, and both natives of Bristol, we may fuppofe that thefe gentlemen felt a deep and peculiar intereft in the talk they have undertaken, of rendering a juft homage to the genius of their wonderful fellowcitizen, and of contributing to the intereft of his furviving relation. The purpofes to which the profits of the publication are dedicated, are thus expreffed in the preface; and the circumftances, while they do honour to the liberality of the editors and publifhers, account for the delay of which we have complained, in a manner deeply difgraceful to the tafte and feelings of the public.

In the winter of 1799, a subscription edition of the works of Chatterton was publicly propofed for his fifter's benefit. Thefe works had hitherto been published only for the emolument of strangers, who procured them by gift or purchase from the author himself, or pilfered them from his family. From the intereft which thefe circumftances and the whole of Chatterton's history had excited, more fuccefs was expected than has been found. At the end of two years, the fubfcription would not have defrayed the cofts of publication.

An arrangement was then made with Meffrs Longman & Rees, who have published the work at their own expence, and allowed Mrs Newton a handfome number of copies, with a reverfionary interest in any future edition. '

The friends and patrons of Chatterton, as well as the former collectors of his poems, have been liberal in their communications to the prefent editors; and the book accordingly contains many of his productions which have been hitherto inedited. We do not aver that, in general, these additions to his works tend to auginent

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augment his fame; on the contrary, as fome of them have been written almost during infancy, as others are merely unfinished fragments, and as all feem incorrect and hafty productions, we cannot but confider them as far inferior to the poems afcribed to Rowley, and even to those which Chatterton was himself pleased to own during his life. But, in another point of view, thefe early and unfinished compofitions are very interefting. In Chatterton, above all other poets, we would with not merely to admire the works up-' on which he may safely rest his claim to immortal fame, but alfo to investigate the performances in which his exertions have been lefs fuccefsful; and, by comparing them together, to form, if it be poffible, fome idea of the strength and weakness of this prodigy of early talent. We therefore approve of publishing such pieces as Sly Dick' and Apoftate Will,' which difplay the early fatirical propenfities of young Chatterton; with the elegics, fongs, and burlettas, by which he endeavoured rather to fupply his neceffities, and poftpone the dreadful crifis of his fate, than to indulge his genius, or extend his poetical fame. One of his juvenile productions, now published for the first time, is a hymn for Chriftmas-day, which, if really written about the age of eleven, bears ample teftimony to the premature powers of the author. We extract a verse or two, which, when the harmony and ease of expreffion are contrafted with the author's boyhood, inexperience, and want of inftruction, appear almoft miraculous.

Almighty Framer of the fkies,

O let our pure devotion rife

Like incenfe in thy fight!
Wrapt in impenetrable shade,

The texture of our fouls were made,
Till thy command gave light.

The Sun of glory gleamed the ray,
Refined the darkness into day,
And bid the vapours fly :
Impelled by His eternal love,
He left his palaces above,

To cheer our gloomy sky.

How fhall we celebrate the day
When God appeared in mortal clay,
The mark of wordly fcorn,
When the Archangel's heavenly lays
Attempted the Redeemer's praife,

And hailed Salvation's morn?

A humble form the Godhead wore,
The pains of poverty he bore,

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To gaudy pomp unknown:

Tho' in a human walk he trod,

Still was the man Almighty God,

In glory all his own.

Defpifed, oppreffed, the Godhead beara
The torments of this vale of tears,
Nor bid his vengeance rife :

He faw the creatures he had made
Revile his power, his peace invade,

He faw with mercy's eyes.'

Such was the early command of language difplayed by a child, who, when a beardlefs youth, was to gull a whole fynod of grizzled deans and antiquaries.

The life of Chatterton, prefixt to thefe volumes, was written by Dr Gregory of London for the Biographia Britannica, and, by his permiffion, has been reprinted upon this occafion. Although it feems to be compiled with great fidelity, and proba bly contains all the material facts known upon the fubject; we cannot fupprefs our hearty with, that either of the present editors had himfelf undertaken the talk of Chatterton's biographer. Many obfervations must have occurred to them, while preparing these volumes for the prefs, which have efcaped Dr Gregory, writing many years ago, and for a more limited purpofe. This was the more incumbent upon the editors; becaufe, from perfons of poetical tafte, fo long employed in examining Chatterton's productions, the public must have expected fome light upon the Rowleian controverfy. Dr Gregory, unwilling, or unable to form a judgement upon this most important point of the life of the youthful poet, has arranged, with great impartiality, the arguments upon both fides, in battle array against each other, leaving his reader to draw fuch conclufions as his own taste or judgement may enable him to form. Now, this might be very excufeable, in the original circumstances in which Dr Gregory's life of Chatterton was published; for the Biographia Britannica is not a natural field for literary controverfy, though often occupied as fuch. But in publishing a formal edition of the whole works of Chatterton, in which thofe articles afcribed to Rowley are included, the public had a right to expect from the editors, their full fentiments upon the point of most effential intereft to their author's fame, efpecially as Mr Cottle, at least, has formed and expreffed a decided opinion upon the fubject. Befides, without depreciating the labours of Dr Gregory, who has produced a plain and fimple account of Chatterton's life, we muft exprefs ourselves difappointed, that we have not, from the hand of a poet like Southey, a memorial of his ill-fated brother bard. Few fubjects

of compofition, equally affecting or elevating, can ever occur; for when we confider the ftrange ambiguity of Chatterton's character, his attainments under circumftances incalculably disadvantageous, and his wifh to difguise them under the name of another; his high fpirit of independence, and the ready verfatility with which he stooped to the meanest political or literary drudgery; the amiable and interefting affection which he difplays towards his family, with a certain loofenets of morality which approaches to profligacy, we cannot but regret that a subject, uniting fo ftrong an alternation of light and fhade, had not been sketched by the hand of a master. We will not fuppofe that Mr Southey, or his brother editor, retreated from the task of becoming Chatterton's biographer through mere indolence; for, the liberality of their purpofe towards his fifter, is a pledge to us, that they would not readily wax weary in well-doing. We content ourselves with lamenting that any reafon fhould have occurred to deprive us of the fatisfaction which we would have reaped in seeing a new life of Chatterton, with a full view of the Rowley controverfy, upon which, in many particulars, the book before us, and the detached notes of the editors, throw fo much light. One general remark we cannot help deducing from the melancholy picture of the life before us. The inconfiftencies of Chatterton's conduct and character may be, in fome measure, afcribed to his fituation and extreme youth; yet we fear their original fource was in that inequality of fpirits with which Providence, as in mockery of the moft fplendid gifts of genius and fancy, has often conjoined them. This ftrange diforder of the mind, often confounded by the vulgar with actual infanity, of which perhaps it is a remote fhade, is foftered by the workings of an ardent imagination as it is checked and fubdued by mathematical or philofophical research. It is reconcileable (as is actual infanity) with the exertion of the greatest addrefs in gaining a particular point, or in impofing upon the rest of mankind. In both cafes, the object to be attained, is ufually, in the eyes of the world, either altogether undesirable, or totally inadequate to the trouble and addrefs expended in attaining it. This disease (for fuch it is, and of a dreadful complexion) may alfo, like the extremity of mental derangement, be admitted to palliate the deviations from truth and moral rectitude, which it is peculiarly apt to occafion. Without confidering the forgery of Rowley's poems in fo heinous a light as if they had been a bill or bond, and pecuniary advantage the object of the fraud, we cannot regard the impolture as of an indifferent or harmlefs nature. Neither was the end propofed, being apparently the mere internal fatisfaction of impofing upon the world, or, at beft, the fullen obftinacy of maintaining an affertion which had been haftily

made, apparently adequate to the immenfe labour neceffary to fuftain the credit of Rowley. But the ardent mind of Chatterton, who had pitched the standard of his honour on this particular ground, urged him to maintain it at the facrifice of the poetical reputation he might have acquired by renouncing a phantom of his imagination, and at the yet more important dereliction of perfonal truth and moral rectitude.

The alternate fits of melancholy and bursts of high spirits which Chatterton manifefted; the ftrange paper entitled his will, in which, with a mixture of levity, of bitter fatire and actual defpair, he announces a purpose of self-deftruction; above all, the extravagant hopes which marked his arrival in London, and the fuicide which finally closed his fhort and eventful career,all announce to us that irregular ambition, and impatience of the natural progress of fociety, which indicate an inflamed imagination and a precarious judgement.

Before leaving the life of Chatterton, we must intimate, that we are fomewhat difpleased with the recommendatory and laudatory fcraps of verfe and profe which, in revival of a good old custom, are tacked to the works of the author. Dr Vicefimus Knox leads the van with a heavy and dolorous imitation of Sterne (which lumbers along like Mr Shandy's chaife when it was dragged into Lyons without the wheels), followed in forrowful proceffion by the Laureate, by Mrs Cowley, Mrs Robinfon, Mifs Helen Maria Williams, Mr Herbert Croft, and other perfons (as the newspapers have it) of talents and distinction. We confefs that we think Chatterton little honoured by their tribute of mawkish and affected fympathy. It is difgufting to hear blueftocking ladies jingle their rhymes, and pedantic schoolmasters pipe upon their fentimental whistles a dirge over the grave of departed genius. We except from this cenfure a monody of Mr Coleridge, which, though very unequal, and carelessly executed, exhibits in many paffages the feeling and poetical talent which that gentleman always poffeffes, and fometimes chufes to difplay. We alfo except fome verfes by Mr Hayley, the fubject having raifed him on this occafion confiderably above the cold, correct mediocrity of his ufual tone of poetry.

The poems of Chatterton may be divided into two grandclaffes-thofe afcribed to Rowley; for furely, to ufe Mr Cottle's. expreffion, it is time to pluck the borrowed plumes from the fictitious monk, and to place them on the brow of the real poet;and those which the bard of Bristol avowed to be his own compofition. Of these claffes, the former is incalculably superior to the latter in poetical powers and diction. This is a remarkable circumftance, and forms, we think, the only forcible argument

in