lication." The acquaintance had probably commenced before the end of May; and it is with the circumstance of his writing for this periodical that we are disposed to connect the story of his introduction to Beckford, as related by himself to his sister in his letter of the 30th of that month. The facts seem to be as follows: Anxious from the first to get as near the centre of affairs as he could, and disappointed, by Fell's mishap, of his expected introduction to Wilkes, he conceived the idea of making a bold stroke so as to bring himself into direct relations with the man who, for the time, was even more of a popular hero than Wilkes-the Lord Mayor Beckford. His plan was to write a letter to his Lordship on affairs in general, and more particularly in praise of his Lordship's conduct as the champion of the city in their struggle with the Government. Here is a specimen of what he said: "MY LORD,―The steps you have hitherto taken in the service of your country demand the warmest thanks the gratitude of an Englishman can give. That you will persevere in the glorious task, is the wish of every one who is a friend to the constitution of this country. Your integrity ensures you from falling into the infamy of apostacy; and your understanding is a sufficient guard against the secret measures of the ministry, who are vile enough to stick at no villany to complete their detestable purposes. Nor can your British heart stoop to fear the contemptible threatenings of a set of hireling wretches who have no power but what they derive from a person who engrosses every power and every vice. . . If the massacre of the Bostonians was not concerted by the ministry, they were to be enslaved in consequence of a settled plan; and as the one was the result of the other, our worthy ministers were the assassins. Alas! the unhappy town had not a Beckford! He would have checked the audacious insolence of the army, and dared, as an Englishman, to make use of his freedom. . . . . His Majesty's behaviour, when he received the complaints of his people (not to redress them indeed, but to get rid of them, an easier way) was something particular: it was set, formal, and studied. Should you address him again, my Lord, it would not be amiss to tell his Majesty that you expect his answer, and not the answer of his mother or ministers. Your Lordship has proved the goodness of your heart, the soundness of your principles, and the merit of the cause in which you are engaged, by the rectitude of your conduct. Scandal maddens at your name, because she finds nothing to reproach you with; and the venal hirelings of the ministry despair of meriting their pay by blackening your character. Illiberal abuse and gross inconsistencies and absurdities recoil upon their author; and only bear testimony of the weakness of his head or the badness of his heart. That man whose enemies can find nothing to lay to his charge, may well dispense with the incoherent Billingsgate of a ministerial writer." This paper, we say, he intended for the Political Register. But, either before getting it accepted there, or while it was still only in type, he sent a copy of it direct to Beckford. He gives his Lordship a day or so to read it; and then ventures on that personal call to which he makes allusion in his letter to his sister of May the 30th. His Lordship, according to his own account,—and we see no reason to doubt it,―receives him very politely; and not only expresses his approbation of what he had already written, but consents to have a second letter, on the subject of the City Remonstrance and its reception by the King, publicly addressed to him. This call on Beckford probably took place about the 26th of May, or three days after the great affair of the Remonstrance, and when the town was still ringing with it. At all events, a letter bearing that date, and addressed to the Lord Mayor, was found in manuscript among Chatterton's papers after his death. This letter, beginning "When the endeavours of a spirited people to free themselves from an unsupportable slavery," &c., was almost certainly the letter he asked leave to address to Beckford; and it shows how completely he had succeeded in his object that he was able to make arrangements for its appearing in no less important a periodical than the North Briton. This paper a continuation of Wilkes's celebrated periodical of the same name, which had been stopped in its 46th number-differed considerably from the ordinary newspapers of the day. It was of small folio size, and each number usually consisted of one careful essay, and no more, occupying about six pages of clear and elegant type, and sold for twopence -halfpenny. The editor and proprietor was a person named William Bingley, a printer, whose case was then much before the public. In 1768 he had, as a speculation, resumed the publication of the North Briton, after it had been discontinued for some years. In that year, however, having been summoned as a witness in one of the trials between Wilkes and the Government, he had given a singular proof of his obstinacy by making oath in Court that he would answer no interrogatories whatever unless he should be put to the torture. (See Junius, Letter VII.) Committed for contempt to the King's Bench, he remained there utterly immovable either by threats or by promises for a period of two years, publishing his North Briton all the same, and dating it from his prison; till, at last, in the first week of June 1770, Government thought it best to let him out. As soon as he was released, he started a second weekly newspaper, called Bingley's Journal, or the Universal Gazetteer, of the regular newspaper size and form; the first number of which appeared on the 9th of June. This paper was not to interfere with the North Briton; both were to be issued every Saturday, at the same price, from Bingley's new premises at the Britannia, No. 31, Newgate Street. A connexion with Bingley, therefore, must have been thought of some importance by Chatterton; and it is another proof of his energy that, before Bingley was out of prison a fortnight, he had contrived to obtain such a connexion. Above all, to have his letter to Beckford brought out in large fine. type in the North Briton, forming by itself one entire number of that famous paper, must have seemed to Chatterton a decided step of literary promotion. The elation which Chatterton must naturally have felt at the idea of the publication simultaneously of two letters of his to the Lord Mayor in such important places as the Political Register and the North Briton, and at the prospects of farther recognition which would thus be opened up to him, was doomed to a bitter disappointment. After May he seems to have written next to nothing of a political character for the Middlesex, but to have waited for his letters and the éclat he anticipated from them. One of them did appear--that written first and sent to the Political Register. It was published in that periodical in the course of June, and bore the signature of "Probus." But before the other could appear, an event happened which made it impossible that it should appear at all. On the 21st of June, 1770, almost exactly a month after that crowning moment of his life, the presentation of the City Remonstrance, and when all London, Chatterton included, were expecting no end of similar manifestations of his spirit, Beckford died. His death was sudden-the consequence of a cold, which an imprudent journey of 100 miles, while it was upon him, had aggravated into a rheumatic fever. The town was thunderstruck; and for some days nothing else was talked of. Soon, however, the excitement died away; Beckford's only legitimate son, then a boy of nine years, afterwards to be known far and wide as the author of "Vathek," stepped into the inheritance of his father's vast fortune, the wife being amply provided for by her settlement, and several illegitimate children at the same time receiving 5,000l. each; and the City people began to think which of the popular aldermen they should elect for the vacant term of the Mayoralty. And what of poor Chatterton, to whom, with his two letters, and the hopes he had built upon them, an insurance on Beckford's life was more necessary than to all the City besides? "When Beckford died," Mrs. Ballance told Sir Herbert Croft, “he (Chatterton) was perfectly frantic and out of his mind, and said that he was ruined." This is probably correct; and yet there is an authentic little record, from which it would appear that, after his first frantic regret was over, he tried to console himself ironically in a rather singular fashion. On the back of the identical letter, alluded to above, as having been sent to the North Briton, but which, as it could not now appear there, Chatterton had recovered and sent in manuscript to his friend Cary, there is an endorsement in Chatterton's hand, evidently for Cary's information, as follows: - "Accepted by Bingley.—Set for, and thrown out of, the North Briton, 21st June, on account of the Lord Mayor's death £ 8. d. 5 5 0 £3 13 6" So far as we are aware, this is the first time that grief was estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence; but we need not say that the method has some merits, and might, without much injury to truth, come into general use! Beckford's death seems, however, to have had one not unimportant effect on Chatterton's literary exertions. Even before his interview with Beckford, as his letter to his sister of the 30th of May shows us, he had begun to have doubts as to the advantages of mere political writing at any rate, of political writing on the Opposition side and for the news papers. For essays of this kind, he says, one was certainly sure of pay; but the benefit ended there! The "patriots" being all in search of place for themselves, there was little chance of any farther remuneration for articles on their side than the publisher's payment for the copy! On the other hand, if one wrote for the Ministerial side, no publisher would take the articles, and one must pay to have them printed; but then if one could make a hit, the Ministerial men would be glad of such a recruit, and could easily make it worth his while to serve them! And then follows the maxim, so characteristic of the miserable boy, "He is a poor author who cannot write on both sides;" and the statement that, if necessary, he will put this maxim in practice, by transferring himself to the Court-party. There is evidence that he actually made an attempt to carry the intention into effect. On that very 26th of May, on which he penned the letter to the Lord Mayor, which was to appear in the North Briton, lauding him and the patriots for their opposition to Ministers, he penned also another letter—afterwards found among his papers-addressed to Lord North, and signed "Moderator," in which, according to Walpole, he passes "an encomium on Ministers for rejecting the City Remonstrance." It was probably, therefore, the consciousness of having written these two letters on the same day that caused him to write to his sister so coolly about taking either side; and what he says about the difficulty of getting Ministerial essays published may have been but the result of his own experience with regard to the "Moderator" letter. Evidently, however, after his introduction of himself to Beckford, he had resolved to wait the issue of that experiment before taking any farther steps towards the Ministerial side. But when Beckford died, and all his hopes from that acquaintance were over, his conviction of the uselessness of mere political writing in newspapers, especially if on the patriotic side, came back with fresh force. There was independent reason why it should do so. Since the end of May there had been a perfect panic among the newspaper-proprietors. As early as the beginning of that month, we have seen, Edmunds of the Middlesex Journal had been pro |