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Thomas Chatterton Quotes

Thomas Chatterton was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Although fatherless and raised in poverty, he was an exceptionally studious child, publishing mature work by the age of 11. He was able to pass off his work as that of an imaginary 15th-century poet called Thomas Rowley, chiefly because few people at the time were familiar with medieval poetry, though he was denounced by Horace Walpole.

At 17, he sought outlets for his political writings in London, having impressed the Lord Mayor, William Beckford, and the radical leader John Wilkes, but his earnings were not enough to keep him, and he poisoned himself in despair. His unusual life and death attracted much interest among the romantic poets, and Alfred de Vigny wrote a play about him that is still performed today. The oil painting The Death of Chatterton by Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Wallis has enjoyed lasting fame. Wikipedia  

✵ 20. November 1752 – 24. August 1770
Thomas Chatterton photo
Thomas Chatterton: 14   quotes 3   likes

Famous Thomas Chatterton Quotes

“O Chatterton! that thou wert yet alive!
Sure thou would'st spread the canvass to the gale,
And love, with us, the tinkling team to drive
O'er peaceful Freedom's undivided dale;
And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng,
Hanging, enraptur'd, on thy stately song!
And greet with smiles the young-eyed Poesy
All deftly mask'd, as hoar Antiquity.”

Thomas Chatterton

Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Monody on the Death of Chatterton" (1794) line 126.
Criticism

“The finest of the Rowley poems – Eclogues, Ballad of Charity &c rank absolutely with the finest poetry in the language…He was an absolute and untarnished hero.”

Thomas Chatterton

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, letter to Hall Caine dated June 13, 1880; published in Vivien Allen (ed.) Dear Mr. Rossetti (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) p. 122.
Criticism

“Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride.”

Thomas Chatterton

William Wordsworth, "Resolution and Independence" (1802) line 43.
Criticism

“Happy (if mortals can be) is the man,
Who, not by priest but Reason, rules his span:
Reason, to its possessor a sure guide,
Reason, a thorn in Revelation’s side.”

Thomas Chatterton

"The Defence", line 23.

“Haste to thie kiste, thie onlie dortoure bedde.
Cale, as the claie whiche will gre on thie hedde,
Is Charitie and Love aminge highe elves;
Knightis and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.”

Thomas Chatterton

Stanza 4.
An Excelente Balade of Charitie

“Liste! now the thunder's rattling clymmynge sound
Cheves slowlie on, and then embollen clangs,
Shakes the hie spyre, and losst, dispended, drown'd,
Still on the gallard eare of terroure hanges;
The windes are up; the lofty elmen swanges;
Again the levynne and the thunder poures,
And the full cloudes are braste attenes in stonen showers.”

Thomas Chatterton

Stanza 6.
An Excelente Balade of Charitie

Thomas Chatterton Quotes

“The gatherd storme is rype; the bigge drops falle;
The forswat meadowes smethe, and drenche the raine;
The comyng ghastness do the cattle pall,
And the full flockes are drivynge ore the plaine;
Dashde from the cloudes the waters flott againe;
The welkin opes; the yellow levynne flies;
And the hot fierie smothe in the wide lowings dies.”

Thomas Chatterton

Stanza 5.
An Excelente Balade of Charitie

Water

“Mie love ys dedde,
Gon to hys death-bedde,
Al under the wyllowe tree. Waterre wytches, crownede wythe reytes,
Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde.
I die; I comme; mie true love waytes.
Thos the damselle spake, and dyed.”

Thomas Chatterton

Ælla; a Tragycal Enterlude, "Mynstrelles Songe", line 54.

Love , Death , Tree

“This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things.”

Thomas Chatterton

Samuel Johnson, April 29, 1776; reported by James Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) p. 752.
Criticism

Knowledge

“He was an instance that a complete genius and a complete rogue can be formed before a man is of age.”

Thomas Chatterton

Horace Walpole, letter to William Mason dated July 24, 1778; published in Horace Walpole (ed. William Hadley) Selected Letters (London: Everyman's Library, 1963) p. 191.
Criticism

Age

“I cannot find in Chatterton's works any thing so extraordinary as the age at which they were written. They have a facility, vigour, and knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, but which would not have been so in a boy of twenty. He did not show extraordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity. Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill themselves.”

Thomas Chatterton

William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Poets (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1818) p. 243.
Criticism

Age , Boy , Knowledge , Thinking

“How shall we celebrate the day,
When God appeared in mortal clay,
The mark of worldly scorn;
When the Archangel's heavenly Lays,
Attempted the Redeemer's Praise,
And hail'd Salvation's Morn!”

Thomas Chatterton

"A Hymn for Christmas Day", line 13.

God , Appearance

“Almighty Framer of the Skies!
O let our pure devotion rise,
Like Incense in thy Sight!
Wrapt in impenetrable Shade,
The Texture of our Souls were made,
Till thy Command gave Light.”

Thomas Chatterton

"A Hymn for Christmas Day", line 1.

Soul , Light

“Here take this silver, it maie eathe thie care;
We are Goddes stewards all, nete of oure owne we bare.”

Thomas Chatterton

Stanza 12.
An Excelente Balade of Charitie

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