Yours, T. C." fee-house, I shall be able to serve you the more | ance. I have a deal of business now, and by it; but it will necessitate me to go to Oxford, must therefore bid you adieu. You will Cambridge, Lincoln, Coventry, and every col- have a longer letter from me soon, and more legiate church near; not at all disagreeable jourto the purpose. nies, and not to me expensive. The manuscript glossary I mentioned in my last, must not be omitted. If money flowed as fast upon me as honors, I would give you a portion of £5,000. You have, doubtless, heard of the Lord Mayor's remonstrating and addressing the King; but it will be a piece of news to inform you that I have been with the Lord Mayor on the occasion. Having addressed an essay to his lordship, it was very well received, perhaps better than it deserved; and I waited on his lordship to have his approbation to address a second letter to him, on the subject of the remonstrance and his reception. His lordship received me as politely as a citizen could; and warmly invited me to call on him again. The rest is a secret. But the devil of the matter is, there is no money to be got on this side of the question. Interest is on the other side. But he is a poor author who cannot write on both sides. I believe I may be introduced (and if I am not, I'll introduce myself) to a ruling power in the court party. If there was not gross invention in this account, in order to gull the people of Bristol and give them a most extravagant notion of his importance, there was a delusion bordering on the dreams of a madman. Most likely there was a mixture of the two elements, of deception and of the distortions to which a diseased imagination had so habitually lent itself, as that these became like a second nature to him. That at the very time he thus wrote, his hands were full of work, there is no question. The ascertained fact is that he contributed to most newspapers and magazines of the day; and fearlessly, without any apparent diffidence, not only writing on both sides of party questions, but composing, with unexampled rapidity, tales in prose, and pieces of poetry in all its styles and departments, the sentimental, the satirical, and the lyrical. He even essayed the drama, and had a burlesque burletta, which was set to music and performed at Marylebone Gardens. For this production, "The Revenge," he is said to have received five guineas. He This last letter also says that "I might have a recommendation to Sir George Colebrook, an East India Director, as qualified for an office no ways despicable; but I shall not take a step to the sea whilst I can continue on land." Now, not to speak of the sort of insane hopefulness and boastings in these letters, this last mentioned statement about the sea and land, looks very like desIt is unknown what were the receipts perate circumstances. The fact is, as is from his combined exertions. However, it proved by Chatterton's uniform asseverations is certain that they were not merely preabout the Rowley poems, his word was un-carious, but inadequate to his wants. worthy of reliance. Allowance may be was even so driven, that he contemplated made for his imaginary castles, and even for taking the situation of a surgeon's mate to his enthusiasm becoming the dupe of his the African coast, and which must have inown fabrications. But still, it must be from volved the relinquishment of his grand other sources that certainty is to be attain- literary dreams. Still, he appears to have ed relative to his condition and doings from used every endeavor to screen the extent the moment he arrived in London. Hear and even the existence of his privations. It how he writes about a month before commit. is believed that he had moved from one ting suicide, and after he had removed to lodging to Mrs. Angel's on this account; Mrs. Angel's, a dress-maker in Brook-street, Holborn : "20th July, 1770. and now starvation stared him in the face. An apothecary in Brook-street informed Mr. Warton, that while Chatterton lived in the neighborhood, he frequently called at the "I am now about an oratorio, which, shop, and was repeatedly pressed to dine or when finished, will purchase you a gown. sup with him in vain. One evening, howYou may be certain of seeing me before the ever, human frailty so far prevailed over his 1st Jan., 1771. The clearance is immaterial. dignity or pride, as to tempt him to parMy mother may expect more patterns. take of the regale of a barrel of oysters, Almost all the next Town and Country Maga- when he was observed to eat most vorazine is mine. I have a universal acquaint- ciously. A barber's wife in the same neighance; my company is courted everywhere, borhood afforded ample testimony, both and, could I humble myself to go into a as to his poverty and his pride. She recompter, could have had twenty places be- ported that "Mrs. Angel told her, after his fore now but I must be among the great; death, that on the 24th of August, as she state matters suit me better than commer-knew he had not eaten any thing for two or cial. The ladies are not out of my acquaint- three days, she begged he would take some dinner with her ; but he was offended at her | say were never the diction of any one age expressions, which seemed to hint he was of English literature, but are culled from in want, and assured her he was not glossaries. hungry." In these desperate circumstances, his mind, uncorrected it is to be feared by religious principles, reverted to what he had accustomed himself to regard as a last resource. As appears by the coroner's inquest, he swallowed arsenic in water, on the 24th of August, 1770, and died in consequence thereof the next day. He was buried in a shell, in the burying-ground of Shoe-lane workhouse. Whatever unfinished pieces he might have, he had cautiously destroyed; and his room, when broken open, was found covered with little scraps of paper. Thus perished the poetic prodigy of Bristol, when three months short of eighteen years of age. He was a miracle in sundry respects. Not only was his precocity marvellous; but his confidence, ambition, and pride knew no bounds. "It is my pride, my damned, native, unconquerable pride," he says on one occasion, "that plunges me into distraction. You must know that 19-20ths of my composition is pride." And then his industry, the number and variety of his productions, would have been accounted sufficient for a writer and poet who had reached a good old age; not to speak of the circumstances under which they grew into bulk and beauty, but allow ing the advantages of time, ease, education, and support to have attended the author. The Works and the Life of Chatterton have given rise to more of speculation and controversy, than almost any other literary subject of a purely English nature. It is now, however, admitted by all competent judges, that the most wonderful of his productions were pertinaciously attributed by him to a purely fictitious character, placed in the fifteenth century. The internal evidence alone sets the question at rest. But we must go farther into it. Rowley's poems consist of pieces of all the principal classes of poetical composition, tragedies, lyric and heroic poems, pastorals, epistles, ballads, &c. Many of them abound in sublimity and beauty, and display wonderful powers of imagination and facility of composition: yet there is also much of the common-place flatness and extravagance, that might be expected from a juvenile writer, whose fertility was greater than his judgment, and who had fed his mind upon stores collected with more avidity than choice. The spelling is designedly uncouth; and strange words are copiously besprinkled, which good judges There is no doubt that these peculiarities have thrown a veil over the defects of the poems, and have aggrandized their beauties, by referring the imagination, even of those who were disbelievers of their genuineness, to a remote age, when they would have been really wonders. That an unknown writer of the 15th century should, in productions never heard of, but made to be locked in a chest, so far surpass the taste and attainments of his age, as to unite pieces of uniform correctness, free from all vulgarity, requiring nothing but a change of spelling to become harmonious to a modern ear, and even containing measures peculiar to the present age of English poetry, has been pronounced a moral impossibility; while, that such could be produced by a boy of fifteen, is marvellous, and must perpetuate the name of Chatterton among those of the most remarkable examples of premature genius. Whether, had Chatterton lived to the maturity of his faculties, he would have risen to, so as to maintain, the very first rank of English poetry, has been a point for speculation. The high promise of youth is not always fulfilled in riper years. Besides, the fabricator of Rowley's poems appears to have been of a too volatile disposition to have allowed him steadily to cultivate his imagination, or to pursue perfection in any one walk; even had his mental powers never have been perverted or exhausted by disease. The poems of Chatterton may be divided into two great classes, those ascribed to Rowley, and those which he avowed to be his own. But here an extraordinary difference appears; for the former are vastly superior to the latter in poetical power and dic ion. And yet this difference may be accounted for, and has been done, in the following way:-he produced the antiquated poems by throwing the whole powers and energies of his extraordinary talents towards the acquisition of an obsolete language and peculiar style, necessary to support a deep-laid deception. Having acquired the due skill in ancient lore for the execution of his project, he had to create the character and history of one who could properly make use of the language and style so acquired. And now, relying on the strength of his own genius, and in a direction of his own choice, he went like a giant, conscious of his potency, to work; stimulated by his favorite ambition of imposing upon the literary world. On the other hand, in his modern poems, which are chiefly satirical, or amatory, he engaged in a style of composition to which he had not prepared himself by a due course of time, or a fond partiality. As Rowley, he had put forth his whole strength, and exerted himself to the utmost to describe scenes of antique splendor which had captivated his imagination; but when he wrote in his own character he was cramped by being under the necessity of avoiding every thought, subject, and mode of expression, however dear to him, which could tend to identify the style of Chatterton with that of Rowley. Besides, and even with all his energies and imagination, he appears, from the habit of writing as a fictitious personage, and in a strangely obsolete dialect, to have in some degree formed a character for his supposed Rowley, superior to what he was capable of maintaining in his own person, and when the real took the place of the ideal. It has also been justly remarked that nothing can be more extraordinary than the delight which Chatterton appears to have experienced, in executing his numberless. and multifarious impositions. Indeed, it may be said, that the art and avidity with which the stripling poet seized every opportunity to deceive the credulous, was the predominant quality which elucidates his character. And how skilful was he at literary and even artistic deception; being alike an imitator of style, of MSS., and of drawings! His ruling passion was not the vanity of a poet, but the stoical pride of talent, which took its nourishment in the contemplation of superiority over the dupes who were gulled by him. With regard to the precise order of genius which characterized Chatterton, or the peculiar merit of his works, it is not easy, it would not be safe, to speak in any positive or particular terms. That he was a poet, many of whose productions vie in original merit with pieces long acknowledged to be sterling and standard, no one can deny. He is often like a master, both in the beautiful and the sublime. His satire was less happy, and was personal and abusive, rather than essential. But even his earliest productions, and such as were acknowledged to be his own, are extraordinary things. One of these which is said to have been written about the age of eleven, bears ample testimony to the premature powers of the author. The piece which we refer to is a hymn for Christmas-day; a few of its verses must convince any reader that the boy's premature powers were al most miraculous. Almighty Father of the skies, Like incense in thy sight! The sun of glory gleamed the ray, To cheer our gloomy sky. How shall we celebrate the day. When God appeared in mortal clay, The mark of worldly scorn,— When the Archangel's heavenly lays Attempted the Redeemer's praise, And hailed Salvation's morn? A humble form the Godhead wore; The pains of poverty he bore, To gaudy pomp unknown: Though in a human walk he trod, Still was the man Almighty God, In glory all his own. Despised, oppressed, the Godhead bears It is true that Chatterton has been exalted by his admirers beyond measure, and made to be a precocious Shakspeare. On the other hand he has been degraded to the capacity of a mere puerile imitator. But surely this latter judgment is greatly more that of a person who is steeled to every charitable and generous sentiment, than of him who is alive to the inspirations, although frequently the erratic lights, of an untaught boy. We admit that there was much that was crude, unshapen, and trifling, in Thomas's effusions, real as well as fabricatory; but not to speak of the wonder of his forgeries, in the circumstances under which they were produced, there ought to be great allowance made in respect of a dreadful disease, which does not seem to have been altogether invoked by his own wilful and perverse course; seeing that there was constitutional madness in the family, which rendered it necessary to submit even his sister to restraint, and which also re-appeared in her son. To this dreadful disease it has been remarked, much that seemed vicious, and much that was irreconcilable in his character, is to be attributed. To what other indeed, but disease, can we point for a solution of his alternate fits of melancholy and bursts of high spirits, of which the strange paper, entitled his will, gave strong manifestations; presenting a mixture of levity, of bitter satire, and natu ral despair? Indeed, the extravagant hopes that of a young man, disgusted with his which marked his arrival in London, and proper profession, and attempting to obtain the circumstance of the suicide which sud- his notice by passing a forgery on him. denly closed his feverish career, all an- Whatever was the merit of the pieces, as nounce, as says a writer in the Edinburgh he himself imputed them to another, they Review, that irregular, ambition and impa- implied no singular abilities in him. tience of the natural progress of society, which indicate an inflamed imagination and a precarious judgment. Again, with regard to the moral character of Chatterton, we do not find any thing conclusive to impugn him for profligate debauchery. On the contrary, he seems to have been exemplary as a son, also for temperance, and a sense of dignity, worthy of himself. It is admitted even by his eulogists, and also by his extenuators, that his literary fabrications were departures from virtue, and which at best must be set down to the internal satisfaction of imposing upon the world, or the obstinacy of maintaining an assertion which had been hastily made. Still, all this was done at the sacrifice not only of a poetical reputation, justly due, but at the yet more important dereliction of truth and rectitude. At the same time, we do not see that it is just to visit upon him the sentence of guilt, as if the forgery had been of a pecuniary nature by bill or bond. He derived no money-advantage from his fraud, he cannot be said to have injured the fame of any one, unless we except the fabrication of facts connected with the antiquities of Bristol, so as to vitiate the historical value and veracity of Barrett's book. There was something of ingratitude in this, as well as of deliberate and injurious falsification. In a word, when on this branch of the subject, we may pronounce the prodigy of Bristol to have cherished no high or even ordinary standard of morality. Once more, the person and manners of the poet-boy of Bristol are said to have been as precocious as his genius; being stately and manly beyond his years. He had "a proud air ;" and while both his gray eyes were piercingly bright, one was more remarkable than the other: it was "a kind of hawk's eye," so that a person "could see his soul through it." His manners were exceedingly prepossessing when he pleased; but he seems ever to have borne himself as a conscious and acknowledged superior; and could not only be haughty, but must have been repulsive to tamer and more judicious persons. It remains only that we speak of the editions of Chatterton's works. In 1777, were published in one volume 8vo., "Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and others, in the fifteenth century; the greatest part now first published from the most authentic copies, with an engraved specimen of one of the MSS., to which are added, a Preface, an Introductory Account of the several pieces, and a Glossary." And in 1778, were published in one volume, 8vo., "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, by Thomas Chatterton, the supposed author of the Poems published under the names of Rowley, &c." The Bristol prodigy and his works gave rise to a protracted controversy among critics and antiquaries. The Poems published in 1777 were republished in 1778, with an "Appendix, containing some observations upon the language of the poems attributed to Three particulars remain to be noticed in Rowley; tending to prove that they were our rather desultory remarks. First, with written not by any ancient author, but enregard to Chatterton's prose pieces, it has tirely by Thomas Chatterton." Mr. Warto be said, that they never would have de- ton, in the third volume of the History of servedly brought him into notice. When English Poetry, espoused the same side of satirical, they were coarse and poor; when the question. On the other hand, there pretended translations from Saxon, they have appeared "Observations" upon these were ungenial imitations of Ossian, and ut- poems, in which their antiquity is ascerterly incongruous with the style of the lan-tained," by Jacob Bryant, Esq., 1781, 8vo. ; guage which they affected to represent. and another edition of the "Poems, with a Again, as regards his hardships and the neglect that has been thought to have blighted him, especially Walpole's conduct, there was not more to be said for the youth than belongs to his inexperience, extravagant notions, and impatience. The author of the "Anecdotes of Painting" has very properly replied, that Chatterton could Lot appear to him in any other light than Commentary, in which their antiquity is considered and defended," by Jeremiah Milles, D. D., Dean of Exeter, 1782, 4to. A subscription edition, for the benefit of Mrs. Newton, Chatterton's sister, was announced in 1799; but for want of encouragement the publication was postponed till 1803, when it came forth under the joint editorship of Messrs. Southey and Cottle, with the Life of the Poet prefixed, by G. | "The heart which can peruse the fate of Gregory, D. D., which had appeared in Kip- Chatterton without being moved, is little to pin's edition of the Biographia Britannica. be envied for its tranquillity: but the intelOver this last-mentioned and respectable lects of those men must be as deficient as edition, which is in three vols. octavo, the their hearts are uncharitable, who, conpresent appears to us to have no other founding all shades of moral distinction, claim, than that of being in a more compact have ranked his literary fiction of Rowley shape, and at a more accessible price. It in the same class of crimes with pecuniary contains, we are bound also to state, a read- forgery; and have calculated that if he had able and sensible Life of the Poet, a His-not died by his own hand, he would have tory of the Rowley Controversy, a Selec- probably ended his days upon a gallows. tion of his Letters, and Notes Critical and This disgusting sentence has been proExplanatory. We have not, however, con- nounced upon a youth who was exemplary fined ourselves to the Cambridge edition, for sincere, strong temperance, and natural but wandered at will; and accordingly affection. His Rowley forgery must indeed close with Campbell's elegant, amiable, and be pronounced improper by the general law discriminating account of Chatterton. in the which condemns all falsification of history; Specimens of the British Poets." We but it deprives no man of his fame; it had throw the extract, as it deserves, into our no sacrilegious interference with the melarger type. mory of departed genius; it had not, like Lauder's imposture, any malignant motive, to rob a party or a country, of a name, which was its pride and ornament. แ "When we conceive," says Mr. C., "the inspired boy transporting himself in imagination, back to the days of his fictitious Rowley, embodying his ideal character, Setting aside the opinion of those unand giving to airy nothing a 'local habi- charitable biographers, whose imaginations tation and a name, we may forget the im- have conducted him to the gibbet, it may postor in the enthusiast, and forgive the be owned that his unformed character exfalsehood of his reverie for its beauty and hibited strong and conflicting elements of ingenuity. One of his companions has de- good and evil. Even the momentary proscribed the air of rapture and inspiration ject of the infidel boy to become a Methodwith which he used to repeat his passages ist preacher, betrays an obliquity of design, of Rowley, and the delight which he took and a contempt of human credulity, that to contemplate the Church of St. Mary Red- is not very creditable. But had he been cliffe, while it awoke the associations of spared, his pride and ambition would have antiquity in his romantic mind. There was come to flow in their proper channels; his one spot in particular, full in view of the understanding would have taught him the church, where he would often lay himself down, and fix his eyes, as it were, in a trance. On Sundays, as long as daylight lasted, he would walk alone in the country around Bristol, taking drawings of churches, or other objects that struck his imagina tion. practical value of truth and the dignity of virtue, and he would have despised artifice, when he had felt the strength and security of wisdom. In estimating the promises of his genius, I would rather lean to the utmost enthusiasm of his admirers, than to the cold opinion of those who are afraid of being blinded to the defects of the poems attri buted to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology which is thrown over them. "During the few months of his existence in London, his letters to his mother and sister, which were always accompanied with presents, expressed the most joyous antici- "The inequality of Chatterton's various pations. But suddenly all the flush of his productions may be compared to the disgay hopes and busy projects terminated in proportions of the ungrown giant. His despair. The particular causes which led works had nothing of the definite neatness to his catastrophe, have not been distinctly of that precocious talent, which stops short traced. His own descriptions of his pros- in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge pects were but little to be trusted; for while was that of a being taught by instinct, to apparently exchanging but shadowy vi- lay up materials for the exercise of great sions of Rowley, for the real adventures of and undeveloped powers. Even in his falife, he was still moving under the spell of vorite maxim, pushed it might be to a hy an imagination that saw every thing in ex-perbole, that a man, by abstinence and peraggerated colors. Out of this dream he was at length awakened, when he found that he had miscalculated the chances of patronage or the profits of literary labors. severance, might accomplish whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications of a genius, which nature had meant to achieve works of immortality. Tasso alone can be |