1737.  Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary. (8th Enlarged Edition.) Bailey is largely copied from Kersey, but Chatterton certainly used both dictionaries in making his antique language.

1777.  Tyrwhitt’s edition of the Rowley poems.  Tyrwhitt was Chatterton’s first editor and in his edition many of the poems were printed for the first time.  ’The only really good edition is Tyrwhitt’s.’  ’This exhibits a careful and, I believe, extremely accurate text ... an excellent account of the MSS. and transcripts from which it was derived.  It is a fortunate circumstance that the first editor was so thoroughly competent.’ (Professor Skeat, Introd. to Vol.  II of his 1871 edition.)

1778.  Tyrwhitt’s third edition, from which the present edition is printed.  With this was printed for the first time ’An appendix ... tending to prove that the Rowley poems were written not by any ancient author but entirely by Thomas Chatterton.’  This edition follows the first nearly page for page; but was reset.

1780. Love and Madness by Sir Herbert Croft.  This strange book deserves a brief description as it is the source of almost all our knowledge of Chatterton.

A certain Captain Hackman, violently in love with a Miss Reay, mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, and stung to madness by his jealousy and the hopelessness of his position, had in 1779 shot her in the Covent Garden Opera House and afterwards unsuccessfully attempted to shoot himself.  Enormous public interest was excited, and Croft—­baronet, parson, and literary adventurer—­got hold of copies which Hackman had kept of some letters he had sent to the charming Miss Reay.  These he published as a sensational topical novel in epistolary form, calling it Love and Madness.  This is quite worth reading for its own sake, but much more so for its 49th letter, which purports to have been written by Hackman to satisfy Miss Reay’s curiosity about Chatterton.  As a matter of fact Croft, who had been very interested in the boy-poet and had collected from his relations and those with whom he had lodged in London all they could possibly tell him, wrote the letter himself and included it rather inartistically among the genuine Hackman-Reay correspondence.  Amongst other valuable matter, this letter 49 contains a long account of her brother by Mary Chatterton.—­(See Love letters of Mr. Hackman and Miss Reay, 1775-79, introduction by Gilbert Burgess:  Heinemann, 1895.) 1774-81.  Warton’s History of English Poetry, in Volume II of which there is an account of Chatterton.

1781.  Jacob Bryant’s Observations upon the Poems of T. Rowley in which the authenticity of those poems is ascertained.  Bryant was a strong Pro-Rowleian and argues cleverly against the possibility of Chatterton’s having written the poems.  He shows that Chatterton in his notes often misses Rowley’s meaning and insists that he neglected to explain obvious difficulties because he could not understand them.  Bryant is the least absurd of the Pro-Rowleians.