"Cath-Loda" in the notes on "The Vision," show that Burns knew his Ossian.

[32] From Goethe's "Goetz von Berlichingen."

[33] See "Poems by Saml. Egerton Brydges," 4th ed., London, 1807. pp.
87-96.

[34] See _ante_, p. 117.

[35] There were French translations by Letourneur in 1777 and 1810: by
Lacaussade in 1842; and an imitation by Baour-Lormian in 1801.

[36] See Perry's "Eighteenth Century Literature," p. 417.

[37] One suspects this translator to have been of Irish descent. He was
born at Schaerding, Bavaria, in 1729.

CHAPTER X.

Thomas Chatterton.

The history of English romanticism has its tragedy: the life and death of
Thomas Chatterton--

"The marvelous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride."[1]

The story has been often told, but it may be told again here; for, aside
from its dramatic interest, and leaving out of question the absolute
value of the Rowley poems, it is most instructive as to the conditions
which brought about the romantic revival. It shows by what process
antiquarianism became poetry.

The scene of the story was the ancient city of Bristol--old Saxon
_Bricgestowe_, "place of the bridge"--bridge, namely, over the Avon
stream, not far above its confluence with the Severn. Here Chatterton
was born in 1752, the posthumous son of a dissipated schoolmaster, whose
ancestors for a hundred and fifty years had been, in unbroken succession,
sextons to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe. Perhaps it may be more than
an idle fancy to attribute to heredity the bent which Chatterton's genius
took spontaneously and almost from infancy; to guess that some mysterious
ante-natal influence--"striking the electric chain wherewith we are
darkly bound"--may have set vibrating links of unconscious association
running back through the centuries. Be this as it may, Chatterton was
the child of Redcliffe Church. St. Mary stood by his cradle and rocked
it; and if he did not inherit with his blood, or draw in with his
mother's milk a veneration for her ancient pile; at least the waters of
her baptismal font[2] seemed to have signed him with the token of her
service. Just as truly as "The Castle of Otranto" was sprung from
Strawberry Hill, the Rowley poems were born of St. Mary's Church.

Chatterton's father had not succeeded to the sextonship, but he was a
sub-chanter in Bristol Cathedral, and his house and school in Pile Street
were only a few yards from Redcliff