Whatever may have been the faults of Chatterton, let it be remembered that he was but a boy. Where is there one who has died so young, whose fame has survived so long? And it is but a fair presumption, that had he received half the patronage enjoyed by many far less deserving, he would have lived to have realized those ardent expectations excited by the perusal of his works-he would have lived to have merged the foibles of his early years in the splendour of enlightened manhood; they say, "best men are moulded out of faults;" he would have lived to have nobly earned, and proudly claimed, a most conspicuous elevation on the poetic mount. His career was indeed eventful, and can scarcely be better described than it is in the following beautiful stanza :

"Mid others of less note came one frail form,

A phantom among men; companionless

As the last cloud of an expiring storm,
Whose thunder is its knell: he, as I guess,
Had gazed on nature's naked loveliness,
Actæon like, and now he fled astray

With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts along that rugged way
Pursued like raging hounds, their father and their prey."

SHELLEY.

APPENDIX. A.

COMMUNICATED BY G. CUMBERLAND, ESQ.

It was Sir Robert Wilmot who first informed me, that, at a basket maker's in Bristol, whose name he had forgotten, he had heard it positively asserted that Chatterton lay buried in Redcliff Churchyard, and that he believed it was a fact, from the manner in which it had been communicated to him.

This report I stated to several natives of this city; but found no one who gave the smallest credit to the statement. After, however, some inquiry, I found that Mrs. Stockwell, of Peter Street, wife of Mr. Stockwell, a basket maker, was the person who had communicated to Sir R. Wilmot her grounds for believing Chatterton to have been so interred; and on my requesting her to repeat to me what she knew of that affair, she commenced by informing me, that at ten years of age she was a scholar of Mrs. Chatterton, his mother, where she was taught plain work, and remained with her until she was near twenty years of age; that she slept with her, and found her kind and motherly; insomuch, that there were many things which, in moments of affliction, she communicated to her, that she

would not have wished to have been generally known; and among others, she often repeated, how happy she was that her unfortunate son lay buried in Redcliff, through the kind attention of a relation or friend in London, who, after the body had been cased in a parish shell, had it properly secured and sent to her by the waggon; that when it arrived it was opened, and the corpse found to be black and half putrid, (having been burst with the motion of the carriage, or from some other cause) so that it became necessary to inter it speedily; and that it was early interred by Phillips, the sexton, who was of her family. That the effect of the loss of her son was a nervous disorder, which never quitted her, and she was often seen weeping at the bitter remembrance of her misfortune. She described him as having been sharp tempered, but that it was soon over; and often said he had cost her many uneasy hours, from the apprehension she entertained of his going mad; as he was accustomed to remain fixed for above an hour at a time quite motionless, and then he would snatch up a pen and write incessantly; but he was always, she added, affectionate!

While Mrs. Stockwell, whose maiden name was Day, lived with Mrs. Chatterton, she remembers her forming a great intimacy with a Mrs. Kirkland, the widow of a naval officer, who subsisted on a pension. This lady was a native of Scotland; and such was the confidence between her and Mrs. Chatterton, that she knew all the affairs of the family, being well acquainted with the spot where her son was deposited, and also the manner of his burial.

This person I engaged Mrs. Stockwell to inquire after, and found that she had been deceased about three months past, (this was, I think, on the 21st of October, 1808) and that she had left a daughter in London, who, when Mrs.

Chatterton took in plain work, worked for her, beside assisting in her school, and drawing patterns on muslin with a pen and indigo for many ladies in Bristol, being, as Mrs. Stockwell says, very clever at that employment.

Miss Hannah More also was sometimes, she says, taking tea with Mrs. Chatterton, to whom she, Mrs. C., looked up with respect, and appointed her trustee with Mrs. Newton, her daughter.

Mrs. Newton left also a daughter, to whom Miss H. More was trustee. This daughter died in 1807, in the house where Chatterton was born; I believe in the arch at Cathay. She remembers Mrs. Chatterton having an oval box full of her son's writings, which she shewed to inquiring friends; but what became of the contents she does not know, and has often heard her complain, that Mr. Catcott only gave her five guineas for all the papers her son had left with her when he went to London; and she believed that Mr. Catcott was the person who sold (for him) Chatterton's early manuscripts to the booksellers. She also recollects a gentleman, a stranger, calling on Mrs. Chatterton to inquire as to her son's place of interment, and that she would give him no satisfaction, being unwilling to have the subject canvassed by any one, not only on account of its being a clandestine interment, but from the pain the recollection gave her.

In addition to this, Mrs. Stockwell told the writer, that the grave was on the right hand side of the lime tree, middle paved walk, in Redcliff Churchyard, about twenty feet from the father's grave, which is, she says, in the paved walk, and were now Mrs. Chatterton and Mrs. Newton, her daughter, also lie. Also, that Mrs. Chatterton

gave a person, a Mr. Hutchinson, or Taylor, she forgets