Abstract
‘I weep’, writes Coleridge in his monody for Chatterton, ‘that heaven-born Genius so should fall’.3 The phrasing is slippery. Does Coleridge mean to suggest that the fall of genius is, even over a differing period of time, inevitable? Or does he wish to imply that Chatterton’s case entailed the most emphatic collapse of all? Is genius salvageable, redeemable, or is it by nature doomed to fail? Clearly Coleridge’s categorization of ‘heaven-born Genius’ recalls Edward Young’s assertion that virtue must attend ingenium. Was that the biggest sin of hubristic genius: a rejection of its own divinity?
No marble now proclaims to Fame Thy Chattertons neglected name. (Robert Southey)1
Ye gen’rous minds, if sure there are, Who make neglected worth your case, Where dwelt you when he gazed around, And not one gleam of comfort found? (Edward Rushton)2
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Robert Southey, ‘Redclift Church’, Later Poetical Works, 1811–38, gen. eds Tim Fulford and Lynda Pratt, 4 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012)
Edward Rushton, ‘To the Memory of the Unfortunate Chatterton’, Poems, by Edward Rushton (London: T. Ostell, 1806), pp. 152–63
Jonathan Brody Kramnick, Making the English Canon: Print-Capitalism and the Cultural Past, 1700–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 54.
William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 122–39
John Guillory Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 85–133.
David Higgins, Romantic Genius and the Literary Magazine: Biography, Celebrity and Politics (London: Routledge, 2005)
Lucy Newlyn, Reading, Writing, and Romanticism: The Anxiety of Reception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Mark Parker, Literary Magazines and British Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Julian North, The Domestication of Genius: Biography and the Romantic Poet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
GM 53.1 (1783), p. 123, and 59.1 (1789), pp. 98–9. ‘Athenæus’ outlined the plight of Chatterton’ s surviving family in GM 60.2 (1790), p. 988. See ‘Climax’, GM 60.2 (1790), pp. 691–2, and ‘Jack Prancer’, pp. 1,073-4; ‘Verax’, GM 61.1 (1791), p. 41, and ‘R.P.’, p. 131. A notable if largely ignored pro-Rowleian at this time was Walter Whiter, A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakspeare (London: T Cadell, 1794), p. 226.
William Barrett, The History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol (Bristol: William Pine, 1789).
For example, George Heath, The New History, Survey and Description of the City and Suburbs of Bristol (Bristol: W. Matthews, 1794), pp. 95–7.
See Jonathan Barry ‘The History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol: Chatterton in Bristol’, Angelaki 1.2 (1993/4), pp. 55–81.
I. A. Gordon, ‘The Case-History of Coleridge’s Monody on the Death of Chatterton’, RES 18 (1942), pp. 49–71
Arthur Freeman and Theodore Hofmann, ‘The Ghost of Coleridge’s First Effort: “A Monody on the Death of Chatterton”’, The Library, 6th series, 11.4 (1989), pp. 328–35
A. D. Harvey, ‘The Cult of Chatterton amongst English Poets C.1770-C.1820’, Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 39 (1991), pp. 124–33.
See Joseph Cottle, Early Recollections; chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, during his long residence in Bristol, 2 vols (London: Longman, Rees & Co, 1837), vol. 1, pp. 34–6.
Thomas De Quincey, De Quincey’s Posthumous Works. Great Forgers: Chatterton, Walpole, and Junius (London: William Heinemann, 1890).
John Axcelson, ‘Saving Chatterton: Imagining Historical Transmission in Coleridge’, Wordsworth Circle 36.3 (2005), pp. 126–33.
Hannah Cowley, ‘Poem on Chatterton’, quoted in George Gregory, The Life of Thomas Chatterton (London: G. Kearsley 1789), pp. 124–6.
John Thomas Smith described it as ‘an ugly goggle-ey’d portrait... destitute of any resemblance whatever’: Remarks on Rural Scenery (London: Nathaniel Smith, 1797), pp. 24–5.
Robert Anderson (ed.), The Works of the British Poets, 13 vols (London: John & Arthur Arch; Edinburgh: Bell & Bradfute and J. Mundell & Co, 1792–5), vol. 11, pp. 295–405.
Thomas F. Bonnell, The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry, 1765–1810 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 199–226.
Joseph Ritson (ed.), The English Anthology, 3 vols (London: T and J. Egerton, 1793–4), vol. 2, pp. 217–39.
Ludwig Theoboul Kosegarten (ed.), Brittisches Odeon: Denkwürdigkeiten aus den Leben und den Schriften der neuesten Brittischen Dichter, 2 vols (Berlin: G. A. Lange, 1800), vol. 1, pp. 1–103.
Karl S. Guthke, ‘The Rowley Myth in Eighteenth-Century Germany’, Bibliographical Society of America 51 (1957), pp. 238–41.
Vicesimus Knox (ed.), Elegant Extracts (London: Charles Dilly, 1789), pp. 155–61.
R G. Waldron (ed.), The Literary Museum (London: Printed for the editor, 1792)
The Revenge, a burletta; acted at Marybone Gardens, MDCCLXX, with additional songs (London: T King and J. Egerton, 1795). See Eric W. White, ‘Chatterton and the English Burletta’, RES, new series, 9 (1958), pp. 43–8.
Edward Gardner, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 2 vols (Bristol: Biggs and Cottle, 1798), vol. 2, pp. 141–70.
Horace Walpole, The Works of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford, 5 vols (London: G. G. and J. Robinson and J. Edwards, 1798).
John Pinkerton (ed.), Walpoliana (London: R. Phillips, 1799).
Quoted in Nick Groom, ‘Love and Madness: Southey Editing Chatterton’, in Lynda Pratt (ed.), Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 19–35
Nick Groom, ‘With certain grand Cottleisms’: Joseph Cottle, Robert Southey and the 1803 Works of Thomas Chatterton’, Romanticism 15.3 (2009), pp. 225–38.
Lynda Pratt, ‘What Robert Southey Did Not Write Next’, Romanticism 17.1 (2011), pp. 1–9.
Thomas Chatterton, Chatterton’s Ella, and Other Pieces, Interpreted, ed. James Glassford (Edinburgh: Printed for the author, 1837).
See Brian Goldberg, ‘Romantic Professionalism in 1800: Robert Southey, Hebert Croft, and the Letters and Legacy of Thomas Chatterton’, ELH 63.3 (1996), pp. 681–706.
Henry Kirke White, The Remains of Henry Kirke White, ed. Robert Southey, 2 vols (London: Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe et al., 1807), vol. 1, p. 1.
ER 4 (1804), pp. 214–30. Collected in Walter Scott, The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, 30 vols (Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1834–6), vol. 17, pp. 215–41.
See Susan Manning, ‘Walter Scott, Antiquarianism and the Political Discourse of The Edinburgh Review, 1802–11’, in Massimiliano Demata and Duncan Wu (eds), British Romanticism and the Edinburgh Review: Bicentenary Essays (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 102–23.
John Sherwen, Introduction to an Examination of Some Part of the Internal Evidence, Respecting the Antiquity and Authenticity of Certain Publications (London and Bath: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1809).
So it was assumed in GM 80.2 (1810), p. 245. See also Joseph Cottle, ‘On Chatterton, and the Rowleian Controversy’, Malvern Hills, 4th edn, 2 vols (London: T. Cadell, 1829), vol. 2, pp. 382–432.
The anecdote about Chatterton weeping over Shakespeare resurfaces in, among others, The City jester (London: A. Hamilton, 1795?), pp. 16–17; Ann Radcliffe, The Ladies Elegant Jester (London: Crosby & Letterman, 1800), p. 15
Perseval Adams, Elegant Anecdotes, Original & Selected (Glasgow: R. Scott, 1799), p. 48
See G. E. Bentley, Blake Records (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 546.
Robert Folkenflik, ‘Macpherson, Chatterton, Blake and the Great Age of Literary Forgery’, Centennial Review 18.4 (1974), pp. 378–91.
James Boaden, A Letter to George Steevens, Esq. (London: Martin and Bain, 1796), pp. 13–14
Edmond Malone, An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1796)
See Robert Miles, ‘Trouble in the Republic of Letters: The Reception of the Shakespeare Forgeries’, Studies in Romanticism 44.3 (2005), pp. 317–40.
William Henry Ireland, The Confessions of William-Henry Ireland (London: T Goddard, 1805), pp. 11
Linda Kelly The Marvellous Boy: The Life and Myth of Thomas Chatterton (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), pp. 70–9.
Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 26–7.
Royall Tyler, The Yankey in London (New York: Isaac Riley, 1809), pp. 111–32.
William Henry Ireland, Neglected Genius. A Poem (London: George Cowie and Co, 1812), p. 70.
Gregory’s Life was still used as the base-text in, e.g., E. Shiercliff’s The Bristol and Hotwell Guide, 3rd edn (Bristol: M. Shiercliff, 1805), pp. 76–87.
John Davis, The Life of Thomas Chatterton (London: Thomas Tegg, 1806), pp. 43–4
See Howard Weinbrot, ‘Samuel Johnson, Percival Stockdale, and Brick-Bats from Grubstreet: Some Later Response to the Lives of the Poets’, Huntington Library Quarterly 56 (1993), pp. 105–34.
Percival Stockdale, Lectures on the Truly Eminent English Poets, 2 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1807), vol. 2, p. 146.
William Wordsworth, Poems, in Two Volumes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1807), vol. 1, pp. 97–105.
John Britton, An Historical and Architectural Essay relating to Redcliffe Church, Bristol (London: Longman & Co, 1813), pp. 30–40.
For a discussion of the influence of Johnson’s model on Chalmers, Campbell and others see Annette Wheeler Cafarelli, Prose in the Age of Poets: Romanticism and Biographical Narrative from Johnson to De Quincey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), p. 86.
Alexander Chalmers (ed.), The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, 21 vols (London: J.Johnson, 1810), vol. 15, pp. 365–499.
William Hazlitt, ‘On Swift, Young, Gray Collins, &c.’, Lectures on the English Poets (London: Taylor and Hessey 1818), pp. 206–44.
Peter J. Manning discusses the cultural significance of the lectures: ‘Manufacturing the Romantic Image: Hazlitt and Coleridge Lecturing’, in James Chandler and Kevin Gilmartin (eds), Romantic Metropolis: The Urban Scene of British Culture, 1780–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 227–45.
John Watkins asserted that Chatterton, ‘if he had lived till now, would have sunk into obscurity’: The Peeper (London: Allen and West, 1796), p. 292.
Leigh Hunt, ‘On the Poetical Character’, The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men and Manners (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1817), pp. 172–90.
John Evans, ‘The Ponderer, no. 27: On the Claims of Chatterton to Fame, independently of the Poems attributed to Rowley’, The Ponderer, a Series of Essays (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees et al., 1812), pp. 152–7.
For Hazlitt’s complex views on posthumous fame see Claire Brock, ‘William Hazlitt, On Being Brilliant’, Studies in Romanticism 44.4 (2005), pp. 493–515.
Written in 1815; first published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, ed. Richard Monckton Milnes, 2 vols (London: Edward Moxon, 1848), vol. 1, pp. 12–13.
Paul Baines, ‘Chatterton and Johnson: Authority and Filiation in the 1770s’, Romantic Culture, pp. 172–87 (185). See Harold Bloom, Ringers in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 133.
Thomas Campbell (ed.), Specimens of the British Poets, 7 vols (London: John Murray, 1819), vol. 6, pp. 152–79.
Robert Walsh (ed.), The Works of the British Poets, 50 vols (Philadelphia: Carry and Davis, 1819–23 [1822]), vol. 29, pp. 117–33.
Samuel Pratt’s Cabinet of Poetry, 6 vols (London: Richard Phillips, 1808), vol. 5, pp. 434–40
William Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets (London: W C. Hall, 1824), p. i.
Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, p. xii. See Payson G. Gates, ‘Hazlitt’s “Select British Poets”: An American Publication’, KSJ 35 (1986), pp. 168–82.
Walter Scott (ed.), English Minstrelsy, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, 1810), vol. 2, pp. 96–9.
Chatterton’s ‘O! Synge untoe mie roundelaie’ is also listed under ODES, CLASS II: PATHETIC, though Chatterton himself is listed as a DRAMATIC poet, in Nathan Drake, Literary Hours or Sketches Critical and Narrative (Sudbury: T Cadell and W. Davies, 1798), pp. 389
LM 9 (1824), pp. 631–8. See also Henry Francis Cary Lives of English Poets, from Johnson to Kirke White (London: H. G. Bonn, 1846), p. 388.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Observations upon “Observations”, The Works of Lord Byron, ed. Thomas Moore (London: John Munay 1832–3), pp. 413–14.
John Clare, ‘Popularity in Authorship’, EM, new series, 1.3 (1825), pp. 300–3.
John Goodridge, John Clare and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 11–35
William Hazlitt, ‘Lord Byron’, The Spirit of the Age (London: Colburn, 1825), pp. 159–81
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Daniel Cook
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cook, D. (2013). ‘Neglected Genius’: The Romantic Canon. In: Thomas Chatterton and Neglected Genius, 1760–1830. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137332493_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137332493_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46176-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33249-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)