February
Begin, my muse, the imitative lay,
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string;
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay,
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing.
If in the trammels of the doleful line
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend;
Come, brooding Melancholy, pow'r divine,
And ev'ry unform'd mass of words amend.
Now the rough goat withdraws his curling horns,
And the cold wat'rer twirls his circling mop:
Swift sudden anguish darts thro' alt'ring corns,
And the spruce mercer trembles in his shop.
Now infant authors, madd'ning for renown,
Extend the plume, and him about the stage,
Procure a benefit, amuse the town,
And proudly glitter in a title page.
Now, wrapt in ninefold fur, his squeamish grace
Defies the fury of the howling storm;
And whilst the tempest whistles round his face,
Exults to find his mantled carcase warm.
Now rumbling coaches furious drive along,
Full of the majesty of city dames,
Whose jewels sparkling in the gaudy throng,
Raise strange emotions and invidious flames.
Now Merit, happy in the calm of place,
To mortals as a highlander appears,
And conscious of the excellence of lace,
With spreading frogs and gleaming spangles glares.
Whilst Envy, on a tripod seated nigh,
In form a shoe-boy, daubs the valu'd fruit,
And darting lightnings from his vengeful eye,
Raves about Wilkes, and politics, and Bute.
Now Barry, taller than a grenadier,
Dwindles into a stripling of eighteen;
Or sabled in Othello breaks the ear,
Exerts his voice, and totters to the scene.
Now Foote, a looking-glass for all mankind,
Applies his wax to personal defects;
But leaves untouch'd the image of the mind,
His art no mental quality reflects.
Now Drury's potent kind extorts applause,
And pit, box, gallery, echo, "how divine!"
Whilst vers'd in all the drama's mystic laws,
His graceful action saves the wooden line.
Now-- but what further can the muses sing?
Now dropping particles of water fall;
Now vapours riding on the north wind's wing,
With transitory darkness shadow all.
Alas! how joyless the descriptive theme,
When sorrow on the writer's quiet preys
And like a mouse in Cheshire cheese supreme,
Devours the substance of the less'ning bays.
Come, February, lend thy darkest sky.
There teach the winter'd muse with clouds to soar;
Come, February, lift the number high;
Let the sharp strain like wind thro' alleys roar.
Ye channels, wand'ring thro' the spacious street,
In hollow murmurs roll the dirt along,
With inundations wet the sabled feet,
Whilst gouts responsive, join th'elegiac song.
Ye damsels fair, whose silver voices shrill,
Sound thro' meand'ring folds of Echo's horn;
Let the sweet cry of liberty be still,
No more let smoking cakes awake the morn.
O, Winter! Put away the snowy pride;
O, Spring! Neglect the cowslip and the bell;
O, Summer! Throw thy pears and plums aside;
O, Autumn! Bid the grape with poison swell.
The pension'd muse of Johnson is no more!
Drown'd in a butt of wine his genius lies;
Earth! Ocean! Heav'n! The wond'rous loss deplore,
The dregs of nature with her glory dies.
What iron Stoic can suppress the tear;
What sour reviewer read with vacant eye!
What bard but decks his literary bier!
Alas! I cannot sing-- I howl-- I cry--
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Thomas Chatterton's February takes the form of a comic, half-serious month poem that begins like an elevated ode and quickly turns into a crowded satire on winter life, London manners, and literary vanity. The opening calls on the muse in mock-heroic style, but the poem's energy comes from its refusal to stay lofty for long: hail, rain, muddy streets, fashion, politics, the stage, and critical opinion all jostle together as if the month itself were stirring up chaos.
The poem's progression is deliberately restless. Chatterton moves from weather to commerce, from public figures to theatre, from city coaches to literary ambition, and finally to a broader lament for the condition of poetry and taste. The final turn toward Johnson gives the piece a sharper edge, since the closing cry of grief also sounds like parody, with the poet insisting he cannot continue in calm descriptive mode and instead must "howl" and "cry." That tension between genuine feeling and playful exaggeration is central to the poem's effect: it mocks the pretensions of literary culture while also showing how hard it is to separate satire from real disappointment.
Theme
- Satire of literary fashion - Chatterton repeatedly targets poets, actors, critics, and would-be authors, making the literary world itself one of the poem's main objects of mockery.
- Winter as social pressure - February is not presented as a purely natural season but as a force that affects streets, clothing, bodies, travel, and mood, making public life feel strained and unsettled.
- Urban chaos - The poem lingers on coaches, channels, shopkeepers, theatre crowds, and fashionable display, turning the city into a noisy, slippery stage of competing vanity.
- Mock-heroic comedy - Elevated language is applied to trivial or ridiculous subjects, which creates humor while also exposing how easily ordinary life can be dressed up as epic.
- Melancholy and exhaustion - Beneath the wit runs a feeling of creative fatigue; the poem repeatedly circles back to sorrow, darkness, and inability to keep singing.
- Power and pretension - Figures of rank, merit, and celebrity are shown as theatrical performances, suggesting that status often depends more on costume and reputation than on substance.
- Politics as noise - References to public controversy and names like Wilkes and Bute place private mockery inside a larger culture of faction and agitation.
- Poetic ambition under strain - The poem keeps testing how far the muse can stretch, implying that artistic energy is both abundant and unstable in a world full of distraction and decay.
Literary Devices
- Mock-heroic style - Chatterton uses grand, inflated diction for ordinary and absurd subjects, creating a comic mismatch between style and matter.
- Apostrophe - The poet directly addresses the muse, February, Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and even abstract figures like Envy, which dramatizes his emotional and satirical shifts.
- Allusion - References to Gay, Collins, Johnson, Othello, and Drury Lane place the poem inside a broad literary and theatrical culture.
- Hyperbole - The poem exaggerates people, weather, fashion, and grief to the point of absurdity, which strengthens its satiric force.
- Personification - Melancholy, Envy, Merit, and the seasons are treated as acting presences, making abstract states into comic social characters.
- Juxtaposition - High literary language sits beside muddy streets, cold feet, shop goods, and bodily discomfort, heightening the poem's irony.
- Cataloguing - The rapid list of subjects and public figures creates a bustling, crowded texture that mirrors the restless city life being described.
- Metaphor - Poetry, criticism, and social life are repeatedly figured in physical terms, such as weather, motion, and decay, giving abstract ideas a vivid material shape.
Symbolism
- February - The month stands for gloom, disorder, and the abrasive side of urban life, but also for the poem's own darkly comic imagination.
- Rain and hail - These winter forces symbolize creative disturbance and emotional harshness, the conditions under which the poem's style becomes most active.
- The city street - The street suggests public life in motion, where weather, class, fashion, and gossip all collide.
- Fur and winter clothing - Heavy dress symbolizes social display as much as protection, since clothing becomes part of the poem's satire of status.
- Coach - The coach represents privileged urban movement and the spectacle of wealth moving through difficult weather.
- Title page - The title page stands for literary ambition, suggesting the desire for public recognition and the vanity of authorship.
- Tripod - Envy seated on a tripod evokes the posture of prophecy or judgment, but in a comic and degraded form.
- Johnson's "pension'd muse" - Johnson becomes a symbol of literary authority and its vulnerability to praise, satire, and loss.
Tone
Chatterton's tone is playfully satirical, learned, and sharply ironic, with moments of mock solemnity that keep slipping into comic excess. He sounds amused by literary pretension but also impatient with the messiness of urban life and cultural vanity. The mood for the reader is livelier and more unsettled: the poem feels crowded, wintry, and restless, yet it is also energetically funny, as if the poet were turning gloom itself into performance.
Historical Context
Chatterton belongs to the late eighteenth-century world of Augustan satire, where writers often used wit, classical allusion, and mock-epic techniques to comment on contemporary society. The poem's references to theatrical life, politics, criticism, and fashionable London culture fit that tradition, which delighted in exposing vanity and pretension through polished verbal play.
The poem also reflects a period in which literary reputation, public performance, and urban print culture were tightly connected. Poets, actors, reviewers, and political figures could all become targets of the same satiric eye, and the poem's movement from weather to culture shows how closely everyday experience and public life were linked in eighteenth-century writing.
Similar Poems
- The Seasons - James Thomson
- Winter - William Shakespeare
- To Winter - Charlotte Smith
- The Progress of Poesy - Thomas Gray
- The Vanity of Human Wishes - Samuel Johnson