Whereupon, when the ascent had been accomplished, Catcott ’called out with a triumphant air of lively simplicity “I’ll make Dr. Johnson a convert” (to the view then still largely obtaining that Rowley’s poems were written in the fifteenth century) and he pointed to the “Wondrous chest".’ ’"There” said he ’with a bouncing confident credulity “There is the very chest itself"!’ After which ‘ocular demonstration’, Boswell remarks, ’there was no more to be said.’  It was to such men as these that Chatterton read his ‘Rouleie’s’ poems.  Another of his audience was Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, who collected materials for a history of Bristol, which, when published after the boy-poet’s death, was found to contain contributions (supplied by Chatterton) in the unmistakable and unique ‘Rowleian’ language—­valuable evidence about old Bristol miraculously preserved in Rowley’s chest.

We hear also of Michael Clayfield, a distiller, one of the very few men in Bristol whom Chatterton admired and respected; of Baker, the poet’s bedfellow at Colston’s, for whom Chatterton wrote love poems, as Cyrano de Bergerac did for Christian de Neuvillette, to the address of a certain Miss Hoyland—­thin, conventional silly stuff, but Roxane was probably not very critical; of Catcott’s brother, the Rev. A. Catcott, who had a fine library and was the author of a treatise on the Deluge; of Smith, a schoolfellow; of Palmer an engraver, and a number of others—­mere names for the most part.  Baker, Thistlethwaite and a few more were contemporaries of the poet, but the rest of the circle consisted mainly of men who had reached middle age—­dullards, perhaps, who condescended to clever adolescence, whom Chatterton certainly mocked bitterly enough in satires which he wrote apparently for his own private satisfaction, but whom he nevertheless took considerable pains to conciliate as being men of substance who could lend books and now and then reward the Muse with five shillings.  For Burgum the poet invented, and pretended to derive from numerous authorities (some of which are wholly imaginary), a magnificent pedigree showing him descended from a Simon de Seyncte Lyse alias Senliz Earl of Northampton who had come over with the Conqueror.  To this he appended a portion of a poem not included in this edition, entitled the ‘Romaunte of the Cnyghte’, composed by John de Bergham about A.D. 1320.  It was some years before Mr. Burgum applied to the College of Heralds to have his pedigree ratified, but when he did so he was informed that there had never been a de Bergham entitled to bear arms.

With a second instalment of the genealogical table were copies of the poems called The Tournament and The Gouler’s (i.e.  Usurer’s) Requiem, which are printed in this volume.  Mr. Burgum was completely taken in, and, exulting in his new-found dignity, acknowledged the announcement of his splendid birth with a present of five shillings.  It is worthy of notice that the pedigree made mention of a certain Radcliffe Chatterton de Chatterton, but Burgum’s suspicions were not aroused by the circumstance.