critics and teachers of the world—as in- these quaint delights of antiquity, half simudeed, to a certain extent, they were- and lated, half real to see through the distrimmed his pinions to a loftier flight. As guise, and recognize the real poet? Such, he had taken in the wiseacres at home, no no doubt, was the poor lad's dream - and doubt he could take in the others outside such a dream has aroused, one time or the little world of Bristol, and make a step- another, every poetical youthful imaginaping-stone of them, and dash forth upon a tion. A sudden exhilaration seems to have universe where surely grand final hope filled his mind when this project dawned which represents some faith still in an ideal upon him. He could not, would not, doubt human nature - somebody was to be found its success. "He would often speak in who would know what all those hieroglyphics great raptures of the undoubted success of meant, and decipher the strange language his plan for future life," says his sister. and hail the new poet. There is the strang- "His ambition increased daily. His spirits est mixture of simplicity and cunning, be- were rather uneven, sometimes so gloomed lief in the credulity of others, and pathetic that for days together he would say but very credulity on his own part, in Chatterton's little, and apparently by constraint; at first attempt upon the larger world. He other times exceedingly cheerful. When wrote to Dodsley the publisher, offering in spirits he would enjoy his rising fame: "several ancient poems, and an interlude, confident of advancement, he would promise perhaps the oldest dramatic work extant, my mother and me that we should be parwrote by one Rowley, a priest in Bristol, takers of his success." who lived in the reigns of Henry VI. and Strangely enough, however, this pure imEdward IV." Receiving no answer to this pulse to seek a higher sphere and a patron letter, after an interval of two months he more likely to comprehend him, was carried wrote again, a pitiful epistle, giving an out by another of those amazing fictions to account of the tragedy of "Ella," and ask- which his mind had grown familiar. He ing for "one guinea to enable him to pro- approached Walpole not as a young poet cure permission to copy it." Poor boy! seeking to make himself known, nor even The extreme poverty to which one guinea as the discoverer of a poet, but with a long, is a matter of importance has something quaint, very absurd, and, to our eyes, very pathetic in it, which drops a merciful veil transparent account of a multitude of medieover those little meannesses, by none more val painters, immortalized by Rowley, which bitterly felt than by those compelled to do might be used (he suggests) in a future them, which need produces. Whether he edition of Walpole's "Anecdotes of Paintreceived any answer at all to this painful ing"! Nothing more daring than this application there is no way of knowing. sudden creation of a Bristol school of paintBut shortly after, he made another and more ers, as numerous as the Umbrian or Venedignified effort. Horace Walpole, who is tian, and to all appearance quite as disso well known to us all a man of much tinguished, could be conceived; and it greater calibre than the Catcotts and Bar- shows the wonderful simplicity of the poor rett, yet who probably in the same circum- boy, and his unconsciousness of the fact stances would have been as easily deceived, that history did exist independent of Rowand as little conscious of Chatterton's real ley, and that his wonderful statement could qualities as they was, at the distance be put to its test. In the note which from which alone the Bristol boy could accompanied this extraordinary production regard such a potentate, as a god among he introduced himself to Walpole as a men. Distance, alas! has an immense deal brother dilettante. "Being versed a little to do with many reputations. A vague in antiquities, I have met with several dilated idea of the noble gentleman, who, though already in the highest place which fortune could bestow, yet condescended to write, to take an interest in art, and to bestow a glorious patronage upon its professors, was the young poet's conception of the dilettante of Strawberry Hill. He was a patron worth having a man whose notice would open an entire world of honour and gladness to the ardent boy. He too, even, had sinned, if it could be called sin, in the same splendid way. Chatterton was Rowley; but was not Walpole the Baron of Otranto, able to understand all

curious MSS.," he says. No doubt this mode of approaching the great man seemed to the youth the perfection of craft and prudence; and when he received in return a courtly letter, complimenting him upon his learning, his urbanity, and politeness, and couched in the terms due from one stately student to another, it is not wonderful if he felt his hopes almost realized. The poor boy wrote again, not abandoning his grandiloquent pretence as to Rowley, but bursting into a little personal history as well. He told his splendid correspondent that he was "the son of a poor widow who supported

him with great difficulty; that he was still an apprentice to an attorney, but had a taste or turn for more elegant studies; and hinted a wish," says Walpole, who is our only authority as to the words of this letter, "that I would assist him with my interest in emerging out of so dull a profession by procuring him some place in which he could pursue his natural bent." With this letter Chatterton enclosed no more nonsense about painters, but several of the Rowley poems, and awaited the result with, it is too easy to imagine, a beating heart.

have lived long enough to see that poverty attends literature. I am obliged to you, sir, for your advice, and will go a little beyond it, by destroying all my useless lumber of literature, and never using my pen again but in the law."

Poor hot-headed disappointed boy! no doubt there were bitter tears in his eyes as he wrote these words, so full of indignant meaning, so real in feeling, and yet so impossible. Twice after he had to apply to Walpole for the return of his MSS., Horace having gone to Paris to enjoy himself for The result was such as might have been six weeks in the mean time, and forgotten anticipated. The courteous reception of a all about his petitioner. They were finally doubtful antiquity from a brother virtuoso, returned without a word to apologize for which involved nothing more than civility the delay. And thus ended poor Chatterand a learned correspondence, was one ton's dream the only project with any thing; but to take bodily upon one's should-real foundation to it which had yet entered ers the charge of an uneducated and penni- his fertile brain.

less lad, with a fardel of very suspicious But yet it would be cruel to impute any MSS., was a totally different matter. Our serious blame to Walpole. Advice is an friend Horace was taken much aback. He unpalatable substitute for warm support and had no way of knowing that it was a matter championship; but there was no reason why of life and death to his correspondent; and he should accept the task of setting up this even had he done so, it is doubtful whether boy in the world, and making a career for he would have thought the despair of a him. No doubt he was sorry afterwards Bristol apprentice anything like so import- if it ever occurred to him that his repulse ant as his own comfort and equanimity. had anything to do with Chatterton's fate. But he was still courteous, even kind in But we cannot believe that it had actually his way. He submitted the poems to Gray anything to do with it. The boy's enerand Mason, whose opinion against their gies were quite fresh and unbroken, and the genuineness was stronger than his own, and sting of a great disappointment is quite as he wrote very civilly to the young unfortu- often a spur as a discouraging blow. Probnate. "I undeceived him," he says, "about ably the cutting off of his hopes had somemy being a person of interest, and urged thing to do with the sharp and angry satires him that in duty and gratitude to his mother, produced during his last year in Bristol, who had straitened herself to breed him up and which seem to have been chiefly dito a profession, he ought to labour in it rected against his friends. One of these, that in her old age he might absolve the Mr. Catcott the pewterer, received his casfilial debt. I told him that when he should tigation in such a Christian spirit, or rather have made a fortune, he might unbend him- with such unexampled vanity, as to annoself with the studies consonant to his incli- tate and preserve it, evidently with an idea nations." Pitiless words! yet not meant that fame is fame, and that to be celebrated badly by the fine gentleman, to whom, no in satiric verse is better than not to be celdoubt, it appeared quite possible that a bud-ebrated at all. But his brother the clergyding attorney might one day make some man, with whom Chatterton had become kind of dirty little fortune. Poor Chatter-intimate, received it in quite another fashton, stinging and tingling in every vein, yet ion, and broke off all intercourse with the keeping his temper with a miraculous effort, rash boy -a fact which would seem to replied in defence of his MSS., upon which have startled him the first punishment his correspondent had thrown a doubt. of his unsparing ridicule. By this time he "I am not able to dispute with a person of seems to have become very well known in your character," cries the poor boy, who, Bristol. He had a bowing acquaintance, even in this bitter moment cannot refrain his sister tells us, with almost all the young from some circumstantial fibbing about his men; and his strange ways, his fits of siRowley, whose productions he copied, he lence, his abstruse occupations, and no says, "from a transcript in the hands of a doubt in such an age his unusual temperance, gentleman who is assured of their authen- made him an object of some wonder to the ticity." But he concludes with a burst of common crowd. He was like nobody else indignant but not undignified feeling. in that little world. He was known to be "Though I am but sixteen years of age, I already a man of letters, contributing to the

for patience on the part of the troubled women, and wild complaints on his side, which are unfortunately so common. One knows the very arguments the poor mother would use, praying her impatient boy, with tears in her eyes, to put up with it a little longer. What was to become of him? — what was to become of them all if he threw away this only certain sustenance? There are few of us who have not seen such scenes; but not many discontented boys nowadays have such foundation as had poor Chatterton, thus beset on every side, and shut out from any possible consolation or even privacy in his life.

newspapers and magazines; and that of itself was foundation enough upon which to attribute to him all manner of oddity. Wondering looks followed as he went on his dreamy way from Mr. Lambert's house to his office from the office to his mother's humble little dwelling. That was the utmost extent of his locomotion on week-days; but on Sunday he made expeditions into the country, and would bring home drawings of village churches which had taken his fancy; or beguiling a half-reluctant companion to the river-side, would throw himself down on the grass and read to him, probably to the great bewilderment of his faculties, one of Rowley's poems; or in a gayer mood would join the gay crowd in the public promenade, where the girls went to show their finery. He had many friends among those "girls," the pretty blossoms of their generation, who perhaps were less hard upon him than wiser folk and wrote verses to them, and promised to write them letters when he went away; but these friendships were such that he could send his messages to them through his mother-a harmless mode of corre-thetic sense of all the mysteries of lifespondence.

It is hard to say whether the accident which cut short his bondage was the result of careful arrangement on his part, or if it was simply chance; probably a little of both. There is a mixture of levity and reality in the strange document called his will, which seems to bring before us too clearly for any artifice the workings of the strange double mind-one all schoolboy insolence, the other deepening into a pa

which inspired the lad. This curious production begins with satirical addresses to his friends Burgum and Catcott in verse, and breaking off abruptly with a reference to the usual burial-place of suicides, continues thus:

surgeon. The soundness of my mind the Coroner and Jury are to be judges of, desiring them to take notice, that the most perfect masters of title of the Mad Genius; therefore if I do a mad human nature in Bristol distinguish me by the action, it is conformable to every action of my life, which all savoured of insanity.

These are the higher lights of Chatterton's life. But all this time it must be remembered that the lad who had been permitted to discuss theology with the clerical Catcott, and give information to the antiquarian Barrett - who had correspondence with Walpole, and seen himself in print in "This is the last Will and Testament of me, a London magazine- and who had formed Thomas Chatterton, of the City of Bristol; bea thousand dreams more splendid than anying sound in body, or it is the fault of my last reality was still the bedfellow of Mr. Lambert's footboy, eating his spare meals in Mr. Lambert's kitchen with the maids, and with no place of refuge from these companions except in the office, where sometimes Mr. Lambert himself would appear furious, seizing upon his cherished labours, and scattering the floor with the fragments of his lost poetry. He was boarded and clothed by this harsh employer, but had not a penny even to provide himself with paper, except the chance half-crowns which Barrett or Catcott bestowed upon him for his MSS. If he was "moody and uneven in spirits," what wonder? With such associates round him continually, it would have been strange if he had not been subject to “fits of absence." And as he grew and developed, the yoke became more and more irksome. He was apprenticed to Mr. Lambert for seven years, only two of which were gone, and to get free was the object of his constant longing. He would run away, he said, in despair, in the evening hours which he spent at home, and which were often spent, no doubt, in those anxious pleadings with him

to-morrow night before eight o'clock, being the "Item, If after my death, which will happen Feast of the Resurrection, the Coroner and Jury bring it in lunacy, I will and direct that Paul Farr, Esq., and Mr. John Flower, at their joint expense, cause my body to be interred in the tomb of my fathers, and raise the monument over my body to the height of four feet five inches, placing the present flat stone on the top, and adding six tablets.

"On the first, to be engraved in Old English characters —

"Vous qui par ici passez

Pur l'ame Guateroine Chatterton priez;
Le Cors di of ici gist,

L'ame receyve Thu Crist. — MCCX.

"On the second tablet, in Old English characters —

"Orate pro animabus Alanus Chatterton, et Alicia

Uxeris ejus, qui quidem Alanus obict X. die mensis

Novemb. MCCCCXV., quorum animabus propinetur

Deus. Amen.*

"On the third tablet, in Roman characters

"Sacred to the Memory of
THOMAS CHATTERTON,

Subchaunter of the Cathedral of this city, whose
ancestors were residents of St. Mary Redcliffe since
the year 1140. He died the 7th of August 1752.
"On the fourth tablet, in Roman characters-

"To the Memory of

THOMAS CHATTERTON.

Reader, judge not: if thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a superior Power;

to that lower alone is he now answerable."

This wonderful jumble of the imaginary and true, fictitious ancestors and but too real father and son, is not more remarkable than the sudden drop in a moment from the false levity of all that precedes it to the touching and pathetic words which have since been inscribed on Chatterton's monument — a momentary gleam of the better and truer soul. The will then relapses into satire, as the boy bequeaths his "vigour and fire of youth," his humility, his modesty, his spirit and disinterestedness, his powers of utterance and his free-thinking, to various of his friends, patrons, and enemies in Bristol. Then he pauses, with once more a recollection of something better, to make a kind of apology to the Catcotts for his sins against them. "I have an unlucky way of railing, and when the strong fit of satire is upon me I spare neither friend nor foe," says the poor fool of genius, divided between real regret for his cruelties, and a certain sense that it is a fine thing to have talents and impulses which are too strong to be resisted. I leave all my debts," he concludes, "the whole not five pounds, to the payment of the generous Chamber of Bristol. I leave my mother and sister to the protection of my friends, if I have any. Executed in the presence of Omniscience, the 14th of April 1770." This wonderful melange of flippancy and solemnity is endorsed as follows: All this

no rare occur

upon his desk; and by chance or by design it fell into Mr. Lambert's hands. The attorney had been already scared by another trick of the same kind, and was too much alarmed any longer to run the risk of finding a dead drudge in his office some day instead of a living one. His alarm was so great that we are told the indentures were immediately cancelled, and the dangerous apprentice dismissed. He was as glad to be rid of Lambert as Lambert must have been to get rid of him; and went back to his mother, carrying trouble and consternation into the dressmaker's humble household, but full of confidence himself. "Would asked, when the weeping women tried to you have me stay here and starve?" he dissuade him from his project of going to London; and then he chattered to them of the great future that was coming, and of all the grandeur he would surround them with. He talked away their fears, or at least talked them silentrence; for here again is no exceptional feature in a poet's life, but one of the perennial chances of humanity - the confident boy, fearing nothing, eager to dash into the fight and dare all its perils - the older, sadder souls that have themselves been wounded in the battle, weeping, doubting, deprecating, and yet not without a feeling in their hearts that for him an exception may be made which goes against all experience, and that such bright hope and courage and confidence cannot altogether fail. And in this moment of necessity bis friends stepped in to help. They made up a purse for him to pay his expenses to London and give him a start in his new career. The amount is not known, and probably was not very great; but it was enough to send the boy away in the highest spirits, in the basket and afterwards on the top of the coach, where he "rid easy," as he writes to his mother. He wrote the first morning after his arrival a long letter with a comurday, in the utmost distress of mind." plete itinerary of his journey. He had got into London at five in the evening on the Poor boy! wearing his charlatan habit with 25th of April, and had at once proceeded such a tragic truthfulness! He meant it to visit the booksellers with whom he had every word, and yet he meant it not. He already some kind of connection, through was playing with that cold-gleaming re- his contributions to the Town and Country morseless weapon of death; touching the and other magazines. He had, he says, axe with his finger, jesting over it, shooting great encouragement from them all; all sharp shafts under cover of its presence, approved of my design." He had seen vaand laughing at the twinges of his victims; rious relations in London and had received yet wondering, wondering all the time when a kindly welcome; and altogether was in the moment came how it would feel. high hope and excitement, feeling himself on the verge of a brilliant fate.

wrote between eleven and two o'clock, Sat

He left this composition, written, as most of his productions were, in a copy-book

The French and Latin are given as Chatterton wrote them.

66

Chatterton established himself in lodgings in Shoreditch - a curious locality, considering all the fine company which he imme

64

diately declared himself to be keeping. So found that " essays on the patriotic side far as personal comfort went he would fetch no more than what the copy is sold not seem to have much improved by the for," and that on the other side they fetch change, for again we find he shared his room nothing at all. You must pay to have with a nephew of his landlady's, a young them printed," he says with curious shrewdplasterer, whose peace must have been ness, but then you seldom lose by it." strangely disturbed by his new bedfellow. If money flowed as fast on me as honours," "He used to sit up almost all night in writ- he adds, "I would give you a portion of ing and reading," says the plasterer's sis- £5000." There does not seem to have been ter; and her brother said he was afraid to any foundation for all these boasts; yet the lie with him, for to be sure he was a spirit brag which was made to keep up the spirits and never slept; for he never came to bed of his mother and sister, and conceal from till it was morning, and then, for what he them his privations, surely deserves to be saw, never closed his eyes." And, how- called at least a pious fraud, and must not ever late he had been, he invariably got up be too sharply criticised. He kept up the when the young workman did, between five farce almost to the end, describing himself and six. The same feverish restlessness on the 20th July, only a month before his seems to have distinguished him through all death, as having "a universal acquaintance: the remainder of his brief life. His letters my company is courted everywhere; and are like the utterance of a man in a breath- could I humble myself to go into a compter, less hurry. He is writing this and that could have had twenty places before now; he is sought for here and there. Wilkes is but I must be among the great: State matanxious to see him; Beckford the mayor is ters suit me better than commercial," says going to make his fortune. He knows all the boy, in what must have been the halfthe wits at the coffee-houses; he meant to delirious self-assertion of a spirit approachhave called on the Duke of Bedford, but ing the final margin of despair. A little could not, as he was ill. All these startling later he tries to obtain a recommendation intimations of exalted fortune hurry from from Mr. Barrett for a situation as surgeon his pen as if he had no time to take breath. in a ship going to Africa, a wonderful pracAnd he must indeed, during the first month tical contradiction to his boasts which must he spent in London, have been busy enough, have confused the minds of his friends. though not to much profit. He had papers Barrett refused to give it, as was natural. in the 66 Middlesex Journal," the "Free- And then the darkness seems to have closed holders' Magazine," the "Town and Coun- in around the unhappy lad. The last visible try Magazine," the "Annual Register;" sign we have of him in this world is a letter and even the "Gospel Magazine" received to Catcott, mostly about the architecture of contributions from him, "for a whim" as Redcliffe Church, and the improvement of he tells the anxious watchers at home. "I the Bristol streets. "Heaven send you get four guineas a-month by one magazine,' "the comforts of Christianity; I request them he wrote a fortnight after his arrival, "and shall engage to write a History of England and other pieces, which will more than double that sum. Occasional essays for the papers will more than support me. What a glorious prospect! He promises his sister" two silks during the summer," she has only to choose the colours; and does manage somehow or other to send his mother a box containing a half-dozen cups and saucers, two fans, and some British herb snuff for his grandmother a touching proof of the boy's tender thought of his own people, the humble, simple, anxious family, who were rejoicing with trembling in the little Bristol house.

"

Amid all this big talk, however, he allows himself to complain, in a letter to his sister, that the political essays or letters which he had begun to write did not pay. It was the age of Junius, and the ambitious boy had set himself up as a kind of rival to Junius under the title of Decimus. But he

not, for I am no Christian," he says. These are almost his last words out of the gathering shadows. They are dated the 12th August, but twelve days before his death; but not a word is in them to lead to the inference that the writer's heart and hopes were failing, that he was nearly at the end of all his devices, beginning to starve among strangers. Shortly before this he had changed his lodging, for no reason that is told to us, but probably that he might hide his growing poverty, the beginning of utter want and destitution, from people who knew him. A relative of his own lived in the house in Shoreditch, and must have found out his privations - and the poor proud boy preferred to hide his misery and suffer alone.

There is but little to be learned about his last days. He had stolen away like a wounded animal to hide what he had to bear. For the first time in his life he had his poor room to himself. It was in the