1856. Chatterton:  a biography by Professor Masson—­published originally in a volume of collected essays; re-published and in part re-written as an independent volume in 1899.  The Professor reconstructs scenes in which Chatterton played a part; but it is suggested (with diffidence) that his treatment is too sentimental, and the boy-poet is Georgy-porgied in a way that would have driven him out of his senses, if he could have foreseen it.  The picture is fundamentally false.

1857. An Essay on Chatterton by S.R.  Maitland, D.D., F.R.S., and F.S.A.  A very monument of ignorant perversity.  The writer shamelessly distorts facts to show that Chatterton was an utterly profligate blackguard and declares finally that neither Rowley nor Chatterton wrote the poems.

1869.  Professor D. Wilson’s Chatterton:  a Biographical Study, and

1871.  Professor W.W.  Skeat’s Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (in modernized English) of which mention has been made above.

1898.  A beautifully printed edition of the Rowley poems with decorated borders, edited by Robert Steele. (Ballantyne Press.)

1905 and 1909.  The works of Chatterton, with the Rowley poems in modernized English, edited with a brief introduction by Sidney Lee.

1910. The True Chatterton—­a new study from original documents by John H. Ingram. (Fisher Unwin.)

Besides all these serious presentations of Chatterton there are a number of burlesques—­such as Rowley and Chatterton in the Shades (1782) and An Archaeological Epistle to Jeremiah Milles (1782), which are clever and amusing, and three plays, two in English, and one in French by Alfred de Vigny, which represents the love affair of Chatterton and an apocryphal Mme. Kitty Bell.

The whole of Chatterton’s writings—­Rowley, acknowledged poems, and private letters, have been translated into French prose. Oeuvres completes de Thomas Chatterton traduites par Javelin Pagnon, precedees d’une Vie de Chatterton par A. Callet (1839).  Callet’s treatment of Chatterton is very sympathetic and interesting.

Finally for further works on Chatterton the reader is referred to Bohn’s Edition of Lowndes’ Bibliographer’s Manual—­but the most important have been enumerated above.

IV.  NOTE ON THE TEXT.

This edition is a reprint of Tyrwhitt’s third (1778) edition, which it follows page for page (except the glossary; see note on p. 291).  The reference numbers in text and glossary, which are often wrong in 1778, have been corrected; line-numbers have been corrected when wrong, and added to one or two poems which are without them in 1778, and the text has been collated throughout with that of 1777 and corrected from it in many places where the 1778 printer was at fault.  These corrections have been made silently; all other corrections and additions are indicated by footnotes enclosed in square brackets.