Five Poems Wrongly Attributed to Thomas Chatterton

Abstract

FIVE poems in Donald Taylor's landmark edition of The Complete Works of Thomas Chatterton (1971) are wrongly attributed to the poet.1 Taylor himself describes four of these pieces as ‘Works of Doubtful Authenticity’. These can now be removed from the canon, along with one piece about which Taylor was more certain: ‘Where woodbines hang their dewy Heads’. ‘Where woodbines hang their dewy Heads’ is allegedly one of Chatterton's earliest extant verses (dated to early 1768). It supposedly appears in the Perceval notebook (missing the first six lines), although the Perceval notebook itself, which also claimed to contain lines 1–168 of ‘Bristowe Tragedie’, has not been traced since it was used as the source for publication of ‘Where woodbines hang their dewy Heads’ in the Bristol Times and Mirror.2 In fact, the Perceval text is the song ‘The Midsummer Wish’, which Samuel Croxall claimed to have written while at Eton School (1701–7). ‘The Midsummer Wish’ was first published as a supplement to the second edition of The Fair Circassian (1721), and it appears in later editions of the play.3 This version differs slightly from that in the Perceval notebook (e.g. ‘Lucinda’ for ‘Clarinda’, l. 25), and is headed with the famous lines from Virgil's Georgics as an epigraph, ‘—Quis me gelidis in vallibus Hæmi Sistat, & ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ!’ ‘The Midsummer Wish’ begins: WAFT me, some soft and cooling Breeze, To Windsor's shady kind Retreat, Where Silvan Scenes, widespreading Trees, Repel the Dogstar's raging Heat. Where tufted Grass and mossy Beds Afford a rural calm Repose; Where Woodbinds hang their dewy Heads, And fragrant Sweets around disclose.