Rash Minstrel! who can hear thy songs,

Nor long to share thy fire?

Who read thine errors and thy wrongs,

Nor execrate the lyre?

The lyre that sunk thee to the grave,

When bursting into bloom,

That lyre the power to genius gave

To blossom in the tomb.

Yes; till his memory fail with years,

Shall Time thy strains recite;
And while thy story swells his tears,
Thy song shall charm his flight."

Very different were the feelings of Mr. Alexander Chalmers, one of Chatterton's greatest libellers. "Mr. C.'s life of Chatterton," says a writer in the Quarterly Review,2" is written in the spirit of pharisaic morality, which blinds the understanding as much as it hardens the heart. He tells the history of the Rowley papers just as a pleader would have told it at the Old Bailey, if Chatterton had been upon trial for forging a bill of exchange! After saying that his general conduct during his apprenticeship was decent and regular; and that, on one occasion only, Mr. Lambert thought him

2 No. XXII. for July, 1814.

deserving of correction for writing an abusive letter in a feigned hand to his old schoolmaster;' he adds, in true Old Bailey logic, 'so soon did this young man learn the art of deceit which he was now preparing to practice on a more extensive scale.' When this letter was written Chatterton was hardly fifteen!-Upon publishing his first modern antique in Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, the subject excited inquiry, and the paper being traced to him, he was consequently interrogated, says Mr. Chalmers, probably without much ceremony, where he obtained it. And here his unhappy disposition showed itself in a manner highly affecting in one so young, for he had not yet reached his sixteenth year, and according to all that can be gathered, had not been corrupted either by precept or example.""

Mr. Chalmers was not contented with blackening the moral character of Chatterton. He says of his poems, with the most dignified composure, "they are only wonderful when considered as the production of a boy, and that the coldness with which the collected edition of his works was received by the public, is, perhaps, a proof that it will not perpetuate the fame of an author, who has concealed his best productions under the garb of a barbarous language, which few will be at the trouble of learning." That edition, however, fully answered the end the talented and benevolent editors (Mr. Robert Southey and Mr. Joseph Cottle) had in view; it rendered the sister

of Chatterton comfortable in the evening of her days; and the writer records the names of those gentlemen here, with unfeigned pleasure, as men, who, with high and honourable feeling, rendered an act of justice to the dear and only relative of a man of high and distinguished genius. As for the fame of Thomas Chatterton, which this biographer thinks it will not be possible to perpetuate, Mr. C.'s opinion will never be weighed in the scale against it. The history of the Bristol boy will always attract curiosity to his poems, and that curiosity will be amply gratified; and whilst Mr. Chalmers states that "his deceptions, his prevarications, his political tergiversations, &c. were such as should have been looked for in men of advanced age, hardened by evil associations, and soured by disappointed pride or avarice;" let it be remembered, that his "deceptions" and "prevarications" only relate to the poems and papers attributed to Rowley, which are things very unlike the effect of disappointed pride and avarice! and to call his essays on political controversy political tergiversation, is as preposterous an abuse of language, as it would be to call Mr. Chalmers a judicious critic or candid biographer.

Dr. Sherwin, of Bath, author of a pamphlet on the Rowleian Controversy, also vindicates the character of Chatterton in the following passage :3

3 From a MS. letter furnished me by Mr. Tyson.

"It is recorded in Dr. Johnson's celebrated Life of Savage, that that eccentric genius paid the debt of nature in Bristol. I think the fact worthy of notice; and I am the more induced to remind you of the circumstance, from my being in possession of a volume of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, at the conclusion of which I find the following marginal note written in a neat and very legible hand:

"It is impossible to read this most eloquent and interesting narrative without drawing comparisons, and recollecting the fate of poor Chatterton. A youth possessed of abilities fully equal, and, if we believe in his being the author of the poems attributed to Thomas Rowley, far superior to those of Savage. A youth who, notwithstanding all the obloquy and calumny heaped upon his memory, we have the strongest reasons for believing, was never once intoxicated with strong drink during the whole course of his life; who was never known to have borrowed a single shilling from any of his comrades4 or acquaintance ;4 who, in the

4" Should the acknowledgement, contained in the verses called his Will, seem to cast a doubt upon this assertion, it is only necessary to observe in reply, that whatever pecu.. niary obligations or favours he might have received from Mr. Catcott were repaid fifty fold, in the estimation even of Mr. Catcott himself, by his different communications.

"If ever obligated to thy purse,

Rowley discharges all; my first chief curse!
S

receipt of a slender weekly income, the produce of his pen, was in the habit of making presents to his nearest relatives; and who, during his most pressing necessities, died [in what manner is not certainly5 known] without leaving one debt behind him. It is impossible, I say, not to draw the comparison betwixt such a youth and the ungrateful, unprincipled, reprobate, spendthrift and drunkard, who has here obtained not only the extenuating apologies, but even the eulogies of the most celebrated moralist of the age; whilst the noble and high spirited youth had, on the contrary, every juvenile indiscretion aggravated, and even the very circumstances which have immortalised his name, and which ought to have embalmed his memory, shamefully traduced under the odious appellation of a forgery, in the worst and most disgraceful sense of the word; and that too by a combination of eminent literary characters, who have assumed and (with many) have acquired the honourable distinction of arbiters of taste, and masters of opinion.""

For had I never known the antique lore,

I ne'er had ventur'd from my peaceful shore;
But happy in my humble sphere, had mov'd
Untroubled, unsuspected, unbeloved."

5 "If ever a certain essay on the marks of literary imitation should be published, some doubt will be thrown on the truth of the generally received opinion, that he really put an end to his own life."