_; which contains
some notes of the coroner's inquest on Chatterton's body, which would
have been most interesting if authentic, but were in fact forged by
one Gutch.

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 thi