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‘Too proud for pity’: The Sentimental Reader

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Thomas Chatterton and Neglected Genius, 1760–1830

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Abstract

In many of the early treatments of Chatterton a strong source of contention concerned authorship. Even though leading scholars, principally Tyrwhitt the philologist and Warton the literary historian, had quickly realized that the texts were modern concoctions, a small band of antiquaries had stubbornly refused to relinquish the fictitious fifteenth-century priest Rowley. More than anything else, authorial decorum was at stake: the works exhibited marks of ‘classical’ genius and so demanded an appropriate figurehead. Such commentators could not bear to see them attributed to an unreliable and dissolute charity-schoolboy. Paradoxically, then, the pro-Rowleians devoted reams of print to Chatterton’s life and character in the very act of excising him from the corpus. They belittled his mock-scholarship, corrected his own glosses and brought forth his private correspondence as proof of his inadequacies of character. To put it another way: far from ignoring Chatterton the antiquaries savaged him. Yet, as we have seen, they belonged to a minority. Warton, Malone, Steevens and a whole host of critics and literary pasticheurs praised the boy-poet as a unique genius, a doyen of modern antiques and a master of a new brand of Rowleyese Englishness.

Alone, unknown, the Muses darling dies, And with the vulgar dead, unnoted lies. Bright star of genius! — torn from life and fame, My tears, my verse, shall consecrate thy name!

(Hannah Cowley)1

Too proud for pity, and too poor for praise, No voice to cherish, and no hand to raise; Torn, stung, and sated, with this ‘mortal coil,’ This weary, anxious scene of fruitless toil; Not all the graces that to youth belong, Nor all the energies of sacred song; Nor all that FANCY, all that GENIUS gave, Could snatch thy wounded spirit from the grave.

(Mary Robinson)2

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Dundee, UK

    Daniel Cook (Lecturer in English)

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© 2013 Daniel Cook

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Cook, D. (2013). ‘Too proud for pity’: The Sentimental Reader. In: Thomas Chatterton and Neglected Genius, 1760–1830. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137332493_6

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