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Chatterton's African Eclogues and the Deluge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Wylie Sypher
Wylie Sypher*
Affiliation:
Simmons College
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Extract

Some have credited Coleridge's Kuhla Khan with a “magic” lacking to almost every other poem in English. Though more finished in its artistry, Kuhla Khan is, however, no more “magic” than parts of Chatterton's African Eclogues; in fact, as E. H. W. Meyerstein in his excellent Life of Chatterton was apparently the first critic to point out, there are sundry arresting likenesses between these Eclogues and Kuhla Khan. Since the Rowley poet is in his strange “romantic” way similar to Coleridge, is it possible to penetrate the “shaping spirit of imagination” behind the African Eclogues, as Mr. Lowes has penetrated the imagination behind Kuhla Khan? The purpose of this discussion is to show the manifold effects of the Rev. Alexander Catcott's Treatise on the Deluge on three “magic” poems.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 1939 , pp. 246 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939

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References

1 After this paper was submitted for publication, I discussed its contents with Mr. Meyerstein. My comment on his use of the following material and other related subjects on which I was working, in his article on “Chatterton, Coleridge, and Bristol” in L. T. L. S. for August 21, 1937, page 606, appears, together with the answer of Mr. Meyerstein, in L. T. L. S. for August 28, 1937, page 624.

2 Meyerstein, E. H. W., A Life of Thomas Chatterton (London, 1930). The likenesses sketched by Meyerstein are mentioned presently.Google Scholar

3 Meyerstein has printed for the first time on pp. 358–359 of the Life “An African Song,” which appeared in the Court and City Magazine for July, 1770; though unsigned, it is certainly Chatterton's. The poem does not bear directly on the present discussion, but is closely allied to Narva and Mored.

4 Vide Meyerstein, pp. 318–319. On May 14, 1770, Chatterton wrote his mother to ask her to send him in London “Catcott's Hutchinsonian jargon on the Deluge.“—Ibid., p. 363.

5 See his brief comment in The English Poets, ed. T. H. Ward (New York, 1909), iii, 402.

6 Meyerstein, p. 356.

7 Ibid., p. 393.

8 Meyerstein (pp. 356, 393) gives a partial list of similar phrasings. Coleridge was, of course, much interested in Chatterton and his work—cp. his Monody on The Death of Chatterton.

9 Catcott was only one of the writers of a large “deluge” literature; cf. C. A. Moore, “The Return to Nature in English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century,” St P, xiv (1917), pp. 243–291, and Herbert Drennon, “James Thomson's Contact with Newtonianism and his Interest in Natural Philosophy,” PMLA, xlix (March, 1934), 71–81.

10 Catcott, George Symes, A Descriptive Account of a Descent Made into Penpark Hole . . . in the Year 1775 (Bristol, 1792). Coleridge, evidently, had a disagreement with G. Catcott over the length of time he was permitted to keep books out of the library; Catcott was also known to the Wedgwoods and other intimates of Coleridge. It is not improbable that Coleridge, during his reading for Hymns to the Elements, went through the Treatise of A. Catcott and the Account of G. Catcott; indeed, it would be strange had he not read one or both while he was in the vicinity of Bristol. See J. Cottle, Early Recollections (London, 1837), pp. 210–212.Google Scholar

11 Meyerstein, p. 306.

12 All my quotations from Catcott are from this second edition.

“More than sage Catcott does his storm of rain
Sprung from th' abyss of his eccentric brain.“

14 H and G was written Dec., 12. In the Epistle Chatterton criticizes one of the most difficult parts of Catcott's theory—the re-formation of the crust of the earth:

“How, when the earth acquired a solid state,
And rising mountains saw the waves abate,
Each particle of matter sought its kind,
All in a strata [sic] regular combined?“

This passage shows how carefully Chatterton read the Treatise.

15 Chatterton's copy of Catcott, now in the Bodleian (shelfmark MS Eng Poet e6), has two tracts bound in one: first, Remarks on the Second Part of the Lord Bishop of Clogher's Vindication of the Histories of the Old and New Testament. . ., by Alexander Catcott (London, 1756); and second, A Treatise on the Deluge . . . , The Second Edition, considerably enlarged (London, 1768). The Clogher tract is only 100 pages long, and briefly sketches the material Catcott later expanded in the Treatise. Catcott explains on page 11 of the Treatise the existence of the smaller tract, in which there are the same suggestive phrases as in the Treatise—the “Shell of stone,” the “Inward orb of water,” etc. The volume has 21 pages of writing in Chatterton's hand on blank leaves at beginning and end, Chatter-ton's name and coat of arms at page 17 of the Treatise, and notes at page 49 of the first tract and at page 404 of the second. Pages 417–418 are missing from the Treatise. The note at page 49 of the first tract shows that Chatterton read carefully: “any sub. [?] from [?] between those two Motions instead of being moved by them in a regr [?] revolution would by their equality been [?] maintained in a State of Inactivity or born along by the vapour [?].” On page 404 opposite the word “persons” occurs the following note: “no antedeluvian human bones have been found in the earth.“

16 Meyerstein, p. 393, n.

17 All italics in this article are mine. Catcott has italicized many words which it is impossible to italicize here if I wish to stress certain phrasings.

18 Hereafter I shall refer to quotations from Catcott in the text, by page number in the second or 1768 edition.

19 See footnote 14.

20 Cp. also: “The Croccaeus, or yellow river of China ... is so very rapid when the torrents from the mountains increase its stream, that it frequently bears away islands that lye in its channel” (p. 170).

21 There may be a parallel between the line “From Lorbar's cave to where the nations end” (NM) and the line “On the last limits of the land and main” (p. 47). Then too, the “loud bursting wave” in juxtaposition with “Zira's coast” in Narva and Mored may be explained by the passage in the Treatise describing the “horrible disorder” making the sea “rage and roar with a most hideous and amazing noise” along certain coasts (p. 237).

22 The lightning and rushing waters might also come from another passage (p. 353) in the Treatise: “. . . [two caverns in a German mountain] when it thunders and lightens, do emit water with an incredible force.“

23 See his Elegy Written at Stanton Drew, which mentions the “blasted oak,” etc.

24 Also worth mention are the following: “Rhadal Ynca's fleet” may come from the mentions of the Ingas (Incas) (pp. 118, 120, etc.); Nicou may be from Messou (p. 119); Tiber may not be Tiber at all, but Taberg (p. 308); Zinza may be a distorted form of Sing-hay (p. 231); and “Galea's plain” perhaps is from Calgistan (p. 229).

25 Meyerstein, pp. 19, 318.

26 Ibid., pp. 64–65. Meyerstein notes similar “Salvator-Rosa-like pictures” in the Battle of Hastings, Aella, etc.

27 Shiercliff, E., The Bristol and Hotwell Guide, Bristol, 1793, p. 66.Google Scholar

28 Cp. Battle of Hastings; “As when the hyger of the Severn roars.“

29 Chatterton must have been in close touch with rumors of Africa, since Bristol was a great slaving port. See Meyerstein, pp. 19 and 318 (footnote). For proof that the “Africa” of Chatterton is the “Africa” of other poets of the eighteenth century, see my (unpublished) Anti-Slavery Movement to 1800 in English Liter attire in the Harvard University Library.