TO MRS. HEYWOOD, THE NOVELIST.*

1.

LET Sappho's name be heard no more,
Or Dido's fate by bards be sung,
When on the billow-beaten shore
The echo of Æneas rung.

II.

Love, the great ruler of the breast,
Proud and impatient to control,

In every novel stands confest,

Waking to nature's scenes the soul.

III.

Heywood! thy genius was divine;

The softer passions own'd thy sway;
Thy easy prose, the flowing line,

Accomplishments supreme display.

These lines are taken from a volume of Mrs. Heywood's Novels, formerly belonging to the circulating library of a Bristol stationer, and now in the possession of the Earl of Limerick. They appeared a few years since in one of the monthly magazines, but now for the first time make part of Chatterton's collected Works. The Authoress to whom they are addressed was not distinguished for the morality of her earlier works. She produced "The Court of Carimania," "The New Utopia," with others of a like kind. Pope branded her for them in the Dunciad: "See in the circle next, Eliza placed,

Two babes of love close clinging to her waist," &c. She afterwards appeared as a moralist, and produced "The Female Spectator," four vols., and numerous other works. She is represented as a woman of strict decorum and delicacy in her private character. She died in 1756. During the whole of Chatterton's life her works continued their great popularity. They are now entirely forgotten.-ED.

IV.

Pope, son of envy and of fame,

Penn'd the invidious line in vain ;

To blast thy literary name,

Exceeds the power of human strain.

V.

Ye gay, ye sensible, ye fair,

To what her genius wrote attend;
You'll find engaging morals there
To help the lover and the friend.

TO MISS C.

ON HEARING HER PLAY ON THE HARPSICHORD.*

HAD Israel's Monarch, when misfortune's dart
Pierced to its deepest core his heaving breast,
Heard but thy dulcet tones, his sorrowing heart
At such soft tones had soothed itself to rest.

Yes, sweeter far than Jesse's son's thy strains-
Yet what avail if sorrow they disarm?
Love's sharper sting within the soul remains,

The melting movements wound us as they charm.

* From a MS, of Chatterton's, in the British Museum.

TO MR. POWEL.*

WHAT language, Powel! can thy merits tell,
By nature form'd in every path t' excel;
To strike the feeling soul with magic skill,
When every passion bends beneath thy will?
Loud as the howlings of the northern wind,
Thy scenes of anger harrow up the mind;
But most thy softer tones our bosoms move,
When Juliet listens to her Romeo's love.
How sweet thy gentle movements then to see—
Each melting heart must sympathize with thee.

Yet, though design'd in every walk to shine, Thine is the furious, and the tender thine; Though thy strong feelings and thy native fire Still force the willing gazers to admire, Though great thy praises for thy scenic art, We love thee for the virtues of thy heart.

From a MS. of Chatterton's, in the British Museum.

THE RESIGNATION.*

O GOD, whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,

To thee, my only rock, I fly,

Thy mercy in thy justice praise.

The mystic mazes of thy will,

The shadows of celestial light, Are past the pow'r of human skill,

But what th' Eternal acts is right.

• James Montgomery, the author of The Wanderer of Switzerland,' in a letter to Mr. Dix, alluded to by that gentleman in his life of Chatterton, says with reference to these verses that they "show at least some light from heaven' breathing through the darkness of his soul, which affected me so deeply, when as a young man I read them, that I responded to them from the depth of my heart, with a sympathy which I endeavoured to express in one of my earlier poems.' The following are Mr. Montgomery's verses :

"A dying swan of Pindus sings

In wildly-mournful strains;

As Death's cold fingers snap the strings,

His suffering lyre complains.

Soft as the mist of evening wends

Along the shadowy vale;

Sad as in storms the moon ascends,

And turns the darkness pale;

So soft the melting numbers flow

From his harmonious lips;

So sad his woe-wan features show,

Just fading in eclipse.

The Bard to dark despair resign'd,

With his expiring art,

Sings 'midst the tempest of his mind
The shipwreck of his heart.

O teach me in the trying hour,
When anguish swells the dewy tear,
To still my sorrows, own thy pow'r,
Thy goodness love, thy justice fear.

If in this bosom aught but Thee
Encroaching sought a boundless sway,
Omniscience could the danger see,
And Mercy look the cause away.

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 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."

Within four months Chatterton's London career began and closed, yet it witnessed all the most fitful extremes of hope and despair. In the hectic gaiety with which he struggles to conceal the latter feeling from his poor friends, and in the buoyant certainty of greatness to which he shows himself lifted by the most trifling success, his letters are models of the profoundest pathos. The "seething brains and shaping fantasies, which apprehend more than cooler reason can,' were indeed Chatterton's; but these, we cannot help thinking, included also in his case qualities which redeem his short and unhappy life from he more ordinary class of literary miseries. His pride and his honour never deserted him. He did not die after descending to make his talents instruments of evil to others, or of disgrace to himself. Panting and jaded as he was, and pursued to the extremest verge of despair by the dogs of hunger and necessity, literature still remained a refreshment and a hope to him, when madness suddenly terminated all. His poison draught is not to be compared to Boyse's blanket, or to the prison of Savage, or even to the loaf of the starving Otway.-MRS. S. C. HALL.