Shorter Notices
Thomas Chatterton. By John Cranstoun Neva]. (Muller. 10s. 6d.)
THERE would be, perhaps, two justifications for writing another book on Chatterton—already the theme of so much biography, fiction drama, poetry, literary criticism and painting. The discovery of new facts would justify it or the interpretation of the old facts in a modern way. This book has neither justification. It collates, but gives nothing fresh. Nor does it finish the story, for it ends with extraordinary abruptness after Chatterton's death but before the full controversy on the Rowley Poems sets in. It keeps, too, the romantic-hero point of view. Phrases like " his still aspiring and unconquerable spirit " abound, and the literary criticism is effusive. All the same the Chatterton story remains astounding for its evidence of extreme precocity. The boy who committed suicide before he was eighteen had not only invented a whole series of fifteenth-century incidents, characters and poems in such detail as to cause a major literary controversy but had among other things written for the papers in the style of Junius, had produced satire (so - coarse as to be unprintable) and had written a dramatic interlude (accepted for performance at the Marylebone Gardens) on the amours of Jove. And though there is no particular reason for the facts to be recorded again with rather jejune hero-worship, this biography has its interest, telling as it does, more about something we half- knew already. It is the sort of book that might well be enjoyed by adolescents.
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