Thomas Chatterton's life

He is the posthumous son of his father and lives on his mother's instruction. When he was 0/2 years old, he wrote some poems. When he began to read, he developed his reading ability by relying on the Bible, and then he discovered Spencer's fairy tale queen. His family lived near the church and served as deacons for generations. There are many medieval documents printed on parchment in the church. My father used to take some home and write on them. Chatterton was very interested in the original text and took the initiative to copy and study its handwriting, spelling and wording, thus creating a set of old English quotations and learning to draw heraldic patterns.

At that time, people liked to collect information about ancient history and genealogy. He imitated the English vocabulary and spelling of15th century, pretending that it was written by Thomas Raleigh, a Bristol monk poet in15th century, and claimed that Raleigh's manuscript was found in St. Mary Radcliffe Church in Bristol, so it was made public and named "Raleigh Poetry".

Chatterton invented a character named William Canning, who was a businessman in Bristol and later became the mayor of Bristol. Rowley's Poems is a series of stories and legends with Canning as the central figure. Among them, the main poems are The Tragedy of Bristol (also known as The Death of Sir Charles Bodin) and an excellent charity ballad (1772). The best poem was written by chatterton in 1768, when he was less than 16 years old. For example, the singer's poetry is very powerful and has the charm of medieval poetry.

In addition, chatterton also wrote the satirical poem William the Apostate (1764) and the comedy opera Revenge (1770). 1769, chatterton sent several poems from the Collection of Raleigh Poems to horace Walpole, a famous British scholar and writer. Horace Walpole appreciates these poems very much, and really thinks that they are works of15th century. Later, horace Walpole showed these poems to the poet thomas gray, and Gray immediately decided that they were forged. Horace Walpole returned them to chatterton and stopped correspondence with chatterton.

Chatterton came to London in 1770, and tried to publish his Collection of Poems of Raleigh in a magazine. He was lonely and poor in London, but he didn't want to borrow money or beg, and finally committed suicide in despair.