marked for dullness in acquiring, or capricious unwillingness to learn, and at an age when most boys can read, he could not be prevailed on to tell the letters of his alphabet, till they were displayed before his eyes in the ornamented pages of an illuminated manuscript on vellum. This circumstance, when we become acquainted with his future conduct, is well authenticated, and may be considered as a remarkable fact. After this period, making the customary progress, he was educated in a charity-school at Bristol, and at the age of fourteen, placed as a writer in the office of an attorney in that city. In this place he devoted every moment he could snatch from business to general reading, antient poetry, and old romances. His paternal uncle having been sexton to the fine old - church of St. Mary Redcliffe, had with gross impropriety, not to say dishonesty, taken a number of old deeds, written on parchment, from a chest, which had for time immemorial been in a loft over a chapel adjoining to that church. Ignorantly conceiving them to be of no use, although they were in fact, deeds, conveyances, leases, and charters, connected with the endowment of the school and other charitable foundations, he had given them to Chatterton's father, who converted many of them to covers of copy and other books for the children who attended his school; those which remained, were carelessly thrown into the bottom of a large box, when Mrs. Chatterton, on the death of her husband, was under the necessity of removing to a cheap lodging. and These parchments at an early period had engaged the attention of Thomas, and as collaterally connected with his business of engrossing, he selected copied those letters which differed from the modern form of writing: having acquired a taste for heraldry and emblazoning, he also made fac similes of many of the signatures, at the same time copying the devices and arms on the old seals. Pleased with his new pursuit, and seeming already to have an idea floating in his mind that it might in some way be applied to purposes of fame or profit, he diligently practised it, and at length attained the art of copying such documents on parchment, to which, and the ink with which they were written, he found means of communicating that peculiar discoloured appearance, mouldiness and smell, which with a common superF 2 ficial ficial observer might make them pass for writings executed many centuries past. This was a singular employment and turn of mind in a youth scarcely sixteen, with a mind absorbed in literary pursuits, and as it afterwards proved overflowing with poetical imagination: although although slightly acquainted with the learned languages, he was observed not to be deficient in classic imagery, for which he must have been indebted to the translations and other books he occasionally borrowed, or to the magic storehouse of sterling genius. and He had also commenced a correspondence with the proprietors of several periodical publications, in which were printed many poems and tales in verse, imitating the spelling words of former times. Finding the confinement of an office unfavourable to his literary pursuits, he hinted a wish to his London patrons, that they would procure for him employment in his favourite pursuits in the metropolis, and they promised to engage him. But previously to this fatal journey, which threw him loose on society, destroyed his peace, and shortened his life, he made trial of his skill, and produced an old parchment, on which was written in antique spelling and obsolete words and letters, an account of certain ceremonies made use of on opening a bridge at Bristol, also several fragments of black letter poetry; but being closely questioned as to when and where he found them, and perhaps fearful of its interfering with his future projects, he confessed they were of his own fabrication, and laughed at the persons on whom he had thus imposed. Meditating greater exploits, and impatient to realize his visions of aggrandizement, he flew on the wings of ardent hope and eager expectations to the fountain head of literature, science, wealth, and information. He was immediately employed by the publishers of several magazines, but finding his receipt utterly inadequate to the necessary expences and superfluous dissipation of London, his flattering prospects were soon clouded, and pecuniary embarrassment awoke him from his infatuating dream. In the urgency of want he applied to Mr. Horace Walpole, who, in an age like the present, teeming with imposture and false pretence, received his applications with doubt, distrust, and glect; although much has has been said and written on the subject, I see nothing in the transaction uncreditable to that pleasant writer and worthy man; that Chatterton was to be pitied cannot be denied, but is Mr. Walpole to be blamed for making use of his eyes, and exerting common sense? Hopeless and forlorn, dejected and cast down, precisely in the same proportion that his hopes had before been unreasonably elevated, lost and forgotten in the unceasing bustle and confusion of an immense metropolis, despairing of God and detesting man, this miserable youth, who might have been the ornament and comfort of his family, swallowed a dose of poison, scarcely at the dreadful moment eighteen years old, and less than three months after his arrival in the English capital! The poems produced by this young man, as written by Thomas Rowlie, a secular priest of the fifteenth century, and published with an engraved specimen (London, Payne, 1777) produced a long controversy. Doctor Mills, dean of Exeter, and many respectable characters, insisted on their authenticity, and although it has been long decided by the scrupulous precision of modern criticism, that these effusions of fancy were fabricated by Chatterton himself, individuals are not wanting, who are still of a different opinion. At a moment when the public mind was wavering, and the press hourly groaning with publications on the subject, the question was introduced as collaterally connected with his subject, into the voluminous work of a gentleman, possessing in a high degree that intuitive rapid perception, superior to study, surer than reasoning, and cor recter than reflection, called taste; and uniting with it a large portion of minute information as an antiquary. "The whole," says this acute investigator of antient literature, "the whole is evidently a forgery, and not skilfully managed: the letters, although of antiquated form, differ essentially from the alphabet in use at the period to which they are attributed; I have compared them with several authentie manuscripts written in the reign of king Edward the fourth, and they are wholly unlike. "The characters in the same piece are not uniform; some shaped like the modern roundhand, others, like the antient text and court hands; it is true, that the parchment has an old appearance, but it has been evi dently dently stained with some colouring substance, which comes off on rubbing; the ink of the manuscript has also undergone a similar process. "As to the internal evidence, and the impossibility of a boy of sixteen so educated, being able to produce such poems, I reply in the first place, that the forgery is performed by a workman only superficially acquainted with the nature of the task he had undertaken, the obsolete words and mode of expression which he has adopted were not in use in that early unpolished state of the English language; the structure of the sentences and diction, though interwoven with a patchwork of old spelling, and uncouth words, are palpably and precisely the phraseology of modern times. "I appeal to my readers if the following compositions in which I have slightly modernized a few expressions, could possibly have been written in the fifteenth century; at a period, when without a single exception, the style and language of the English verse-makers, I will not call them poets, was harsh, prosaic, obscure, and frequently unintelligible. SONG TO ELLA, LORD OF THE CASTLE OF BRISTOL. O thou, or what remains of thee, Ella, the darling of futurity, Let this my song bold as thy courage be, As everlasting to posterity. Or spirit bold delighteth best; Upon thy cole-black fav'rite steed; Or fiery round the Minster glare, Be Bristol still thy constant care; Like Avon's stream encircle it around, From force and fraud protect thy native ground, Guard it from foes and all con suming fire, 'Till in one general blaze, the universe expire. CHORUS, IN THE TRAGEDY OF ELLA. ROBIN. Alice, gentle Alice, stay, ALICE. No, deceiver, I will go, trees. ROBIN. See the grassy daisied ground, And the streamlet gurgling round, See |