sigh; and begged me, with tears in his eyes, never to mention the hated name again. He called on me on the 24th August about half-past eleven in the morning, and bought some arsenic, which he said was for an experiment. About the same time next day, Mrs. Wolfe ran in for me, saying deceased had killed himself. I went to his room, and found him quite dead. On his window was a bottle containing arsenic and water; some of the little bits of arsenic were between his teeth. I believe if he had not killed himself, he would soon have died of starvation; for he was too proud to ask of anyone. Witness always considered deceased as an astonishing genius.?CROSS, EDWIN, 1770, Testimony at Inquest, Aug. 27.

Unfortunate boy! poorly wast thou accommodated during thy short sojourning among us; rudely wast thou treated,sorely did thy feeling soul suffer from the scorn of the unworthy; and there are, at last, those who wish to rob thee of thy only meed, thy posthumous glory. Severe, too, are the censurers of thy morals.

In

the gloomy moments of despondency, I fear thou has uttered impious and blasphemous thoughts, which none can defend, and which neither thy youth, nor thy fiery spirit, nor thy situation, can extenuate. But let thy more rigid censors reflect, that thou wast literally and strictly but a boy. Let many of thy bitterest enemies reflect what were their own religious principles, and whether they had any, at the age of fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. . In return

for the pleasure I have received from thy poems, I pay thee, poor boy, the trifling Ι tribute of my praise. Thyself thou has emblazoned; thine own monument thou has erected. But they whom thou has delighted, feel a pleasure in vindicating thine honours from the rude attacks of detraction. KNOX,VICESIMUS, 1777-1824, Essays, Moral and Literary, No. 144.

I am always intending to draw up an account of my intercourse with Chatterton, which I take very kindly you remind me of, but some avocation or other has prevented it. My perfect innocence on having indirectly been an ingredient in his dismal fate, which happened two years after our correspondence, and after he had exhausted both his resources and his constitution, have made it more easy to prove

that I never saw him, knew nothing of his ever being in London, and was the first person, instead of the last, on whom he had practiced his impositions, and founded his chimeric hopes of promotion. My very first, or at least second letter, undeceived him in those views, and our correspondence was broken off before he quitted his master's business at Bristol; so that his disappointment with me was but his first ill success; and he resented my incredulity so much, that he never condescended to let me see him. Indeed, what I have said now to you, and which cannot be controverted by a shadow of a doubt, would be sufficient vindication. I could only add to the proofs, a vain regret of never having known his distresses, which his amazing genius would have tempted me to relieve, though I fear he had no other claim. to compassion.—WALPOLE, HORACE, 1778, Letter to Rev. William Cole, May 21; Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. VII, p. 70.

The activity of his mind is indeed almost unparalleled. But our surprise must decrease, when we consider that he slept but little; and that his whole attention was directed to literary pursuits; for he declares himself so ignorant of his profession, that he was unable to draw out a clearance from his apprenticeship, which Mr. Lambert demanded. He was also unfettered by the study of the dead languages, which usually absorb much of the time and attention of young persons; and though they may be useful to the attainment of correctness, perhaps they do not. much contribute to fluency in writing. Mr. Catcott declared, that when he first knew Chatterton, he was ignorant even of

Grammar.

The person of Chatterton, like his genius, was premature; he had a manliness and dignity beyond his years, and there was a something about him uncommonly prepossessing. His most remarkable feature was his eyes, which though grey, were uncommonly piercing; when he was warmed in argument, or otherwise, they sparkled with fire, and one eye, it is said, was still more remarkable than the other.-GREGORY, GEORGE, 1779-1803, Life of Thomas Chatterton, ed. Southey, vol. I, pp. lv, lxxi.

Oh, ill-starr'd Youth, whom Nature form'd in vain,

With powers on Pindus' splendid height to reign!

O dread example of what pangs await Young Genius struggling with malignant fate!

-HAYLEY, WILLIAM, 1782, An Essay on Epic Poetry.

Yet as with streaming eye the sorrowing

muse,

Pale Chatterton's untimely urn bedews;
Her accents shall arraign the partial care,
That shielded not her son from cold despair.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perish'd in his pride. -WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 1802, Resolution and Independence.

As to his person, his sister said that he was thin of body, but neatly made; that his features were by no means handsome, and yet, notwithstanding, the tout-ensemble was striking; which arose, she conceived,

With his expiring art,

Sings, midst the tempest of his mind,

The shipwreck of his heart.
If Hope still seem to linger nigh,
And hover o'er his head,

Her pinions are too weak to fly,

Or Hope ere now had fled.

Rash Minstrel! who can hear thy songs,
Nor long to share thy fire?

Who read thine errors and thine 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. -MONTGOMERY, JAMES, 1802, Chatterton.

and more particularly of the left eye, which, to use her own words, seemed at times, from its brilliancy, "to flash fire." She then proceeded to acquaint me that some malevolent aspersions had been thrown out as to his moral character, and particularly his being partial to the society of abandoned women, which she positively denied, with tears in her eyes; stating that he was the best and most tender of brothers, never enjoying so much satisfaction as when he could present them some little token of his affection; that he always kept good hours at night, to her certain knowledge; and that by day he was by far too much taken up with books and his occupations to be a loose character.-As to his having a predilection for some female, she told me she believed that to have been the case; but, to the best of her knowledge, and from her soul (she assured me) she spoke it, no stain whatsoever could attach itself to his moral conduct. IRELAND, WILLIAM-HENRY, 1805, Confessions, p. 15.

This boy [a nephew of Mr. Walmsley] who was the bedfellow of Chatterton, informed Mr. Croft that Chatterton used to sit up all night reading and writing; that he never came to bed till very late, often three or four o'clock, but that he was always awake when he waked, and got up at the same time. He lived chiefly upon a half-penny roll, or a tart and some water. He did not, however, wholly abstain from meat, for he was once or twice known to take a sheep's tongue out of his pocket. Early in July Chatterton left his lodgings in Shoreditch, and went to lodge with Mrs. Angel, a sock-maker, in Brook Street, Holborn. It were an injury not to mention historically the lodgings of Chatterton, for every spot he made his residence has become poetical ground. . Of his extreme indigence there is positive testimony. Mrs. Ängel remembers that for two days, when

he did not absent himself from his room, he went without food. . . . Pressed hard by indigence and its companions, gloom and despondency, the mind of Chatterton became disordered, and on the night of the 24th of August, 1770, he swallowed a large dose of opium, which caused his death. The inquest of the jury

was brought in insanity, and the body of Chatterton was put into a shell, and carried unwept, unheeded, and unowned to the burying-ground of the workhouse in Shoe Lane. DAVIS, JOHN, 1806, Life of Chatterton.

He became an infidel, but whether this was in consequence of any course of reading into which he had fallen, or that he found it convenient to get rid of the obligations which stood in the way of his past or future schemes, it is not very material to inquire. . . . In his writings we find some passages that are more licentious than could have been expected from a young man unhackneyed in the way of vice, but not more so than might be expected in one who was premature in every thing, and had exhausted the stock of human folly at an age when it is usually found unbroken. All his deceptions, his prevarications, his political tergiversation, &c., were such as should have been looked for in men of an advanced age, hardened by evil associations, and soured by disappointed pride or avarice. -CHALMERS, ALEXANDER, 1814, The Works of the English Poets.

When we conceive the inspired boy transporting himself in imagination back to the days of his fictitious Rowley, embodying his ideal character, and giving to airy nothing a "local habitation and a name," we may forget the impostor in the enthusiast, and forgive the falsehood of his reverie for its beauty and ingenuity. -CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

Marvellous boy, whose antique songs and unhappy story

Shall, by gentle hearts, be in mournful memory cherished

Long as thy ancient towers endure, and the rocks of St. Vincent,

Bristol! my birthplace dear.

How soon the film of death obscur'd that eye, Whence Genius mildly flash'd, and high debate.

How soon that voice, majestic and elate, Melting in dying numbers! Oh! how nigh Was night to thy fair morning. Thou didst die

A half-blown flow'ret which cold blasts amate.

But this is past: thou art among the stars
Of highest Heaven: to the rolling spheres
Thou sweetly singest: nought thy hymning

mars,

Above the ingrate world and human fears. On earth the good man base detraction bars From thy fair name, and waters it with tears. KEATS, JOHN, 1821? To Chatterton.

He would sometimes, for days together, go in and out of the house without speaking to any one, and seemingly absorbed in thought. After such occasions he frequently called some of his associates into his room, and read them some portions of Rowley. -DIX, JOHN, 1837-51, Life of

Chatterton.

A native aptitude to self-sufficiency, pertinacity, and scorn of interference or censure, gave a ready admission into the formation of his character of the unmit

igated effect of every thing that, in the circumstances of his situation, tended to create a predominance of the qualities we are describing. Growing up separate and alien, in a great degree, from the social

interests and sentiments which bind men

together, he was habitually ready and watchful for occasions to practise on their weakness and folly, and to indulge a propensity to annoyance by satire. He would play off the witty malice, no matter who was the object. He was a very Ishmael with this weapon. It is somewhere his own confession that, when the mood was on him, he spared neither foe nor friend. Very greatly amusing as it may well be believed that his company was when he chose to give it, nobody was safe against having his name, with his peculiarities, his hobby, his vanity, hitched into some sarcastic stanza. Men must not be expected to sympathize very kindly with the mortifications of a person, who, whatever be his talents, demands that such temper and habits shall be no obstruction to

Judgment, xi.

O Chatterton! how very sad thy fate! Dear child of sorrow-son of misery!

1838-56, Critical Essays, ed. Ryland, vol. II, p. 520.

The house in which Chatterton was born

was behind a shop nearly opposite the northwest corner of the church; and the monument to the young poet, lately erected by subscription, has been very appropriately placed in a line between this house and the north porch of the church in which he professed to have found the Rowley MSS. This monument is a Gothic erection, much resembling an ancient cross, and on the top stands Chatterton, in the dress of Colston's school, and with an unfolded roll of parchment in his hand. This monument was erected under the care and from the design of John Britton, the antiquary, who, so much to his honor, long zealously exerted himself to rescue Chatterton's memory from apparent neglect in his native city. The man who can gaze on this monument; can contemplate the boyish figure and face of the juvenile poet; can glance from this quarter, where he was born in poverty, to that old porch, where he planned the scheme of his fame; and can call to mind what he was and what he did without the profoundest sensations of wonder and regret, may safely pass through life without fear of an astonishment. It is, in my opinion one of the most affecting objects in Great Britain. How much, then, is that feeling of sympathy and regret augmented when you approach, and, upon the monument, read the very words written by the inspired boy himself for his supposed monument, and inserted in his "will."

"To the Memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader, judge not: if thou art a Christianbelieve that he shall be judged by a Superior Power; to that Power alone is he now answerable."

-HOWITT, WILLIAM, 1846, Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, vol. I, p. 299.

A little beyond Snow Hill is Shoe Lane, running from Holborn into Fleet Street. In the burial ground of Shoe Lane workhouse was interred the ill-fated poet, Thomas Chatterton. The ground in which he lies buried now forms a part of Farringdon Market, immediately adjoining Shoe Lane, but the exact site of his resting place is unfortunately unknown.JESSE, J. HENEAGE, 1850, London and Its Celebrities, vol. 1, p. 438.

The first place that I visited was connected with a far deeper tragedy, the beautiful church of St. Mary Redcliffe. I

climbed up to the muniment room over the porch, now and forever famous, and sitting down on the stone chest then empty, where poor Chatterton pretended to have found the various writings he attributed to Rowley, and from whence he probably did obtain most of the ancient parchment that served as his material, I could understand the effect that the mere habit of haunting such a chamber might produce upon a sensitive and imaginative boy. A most painful irreligious paper, called his will, written, let us hope, under the influence of the same phrensy that prompted his suicide, is shown in a glass case in the museum at Bristol.MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL, 1851, Recollections of a Literary Life, pp. 387, 389.

Although Walpole was very indignant at Chatterton's attempt to impose upon him, in the course of his own career he affords several instances of having indulged in similar deceptions. Walpole quite forgot his own offences in the greatness of his anger at the offence of the Bristol apprentice-possibly imagining, that what was the most natural thing in the world, when done by a gentleman of family, was altogether unpardonable when attempted by a boy just emancipated from a charity school.-WARBURTON, ELIOT, 1852, Memoirs of Horace Walpole, vol. II, p. 346.

Besides being an antiquarian, and a creative genius in the element of the English antique, Chatterton was also, in the year 1769-70, a complete and very characteristic specimen of that long-extinct phenomenon, a thinking young Englishman of the early part of the reign of George III. In other words, reader, besides being, by the special charter of his genius, a poet in the Rowley vein, he was also, by the more general right of his life at that time, very much such a young fellow as your own unmarried great-great-grandfather was.-MASSON, DAVID, 1856-74, Chatterton, A Story of the Year 1770, p. 53.

That he was, in one sense of the word, profligate-that is, that he was a habitual and gross liar, and not restrained by any religious or moral principle from saying or writing that which he knew to be false, for the sake of gain,-is too clear; but that he was profligate as the word is used with reference to sensual immorality, at least in such way as should account for