n a visit to Bristol and were induced by Catcott to climb the
steep flight of stairs which led to the muniment room in order to
see the famous 'Rowley's Cofre'. 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