a profession, by procuring some place, in which he might pursue the natural bias

of his genius.

Mr. Walpole immediately submitted the poems to Gray and Mason, who at first sight pronounced them forgeries; on which he returned Chatterton an answer, advising him to apply to the duties of his profession, as more certain means of attaining the independence and leisure of which he was desirous. This produced a peevish letter from Chatterton, desiring the manuscripts back, as they were the property of another; and after some delay, owing to Mr. Walpole's taking a trip to Paris, the poems were returned in a blank cover. This affront, as Chatterton considered it, he never forgave, and at this no man need wonder who reflects how difficult it must ever be for an impostor to forgive those who have attempted to detect him.

The only remarkable consequence of this correspondence was the censure Mr. Walpole incurred from the admirers of Chatterton, who, upon no other authority than the circumstances now related, persisted in accusing him of barbarous neglect of an extraordinary genius who solicited his protection, and finally of being the cause of his shocking end. Mr. Walpole, when he found this calumny transmitted from hand to hand, and probably believed by those who did not take the trouble to inquire into the facts, drew up a candid narrative of the whole correspondence, which, he proved, was broken off nearly two years before Chatterton died, during which two years the latter had resided, with every encouragement, in London, and according to his own account, was within the prospect of ease and independence without the aid of Mr. Walpole's patronage. Of this Mr. Walpole's accusers could not be ignorant, if they knew any thing of Chatterton's history. They must have known that Chatterton did not apply to Walpole, as a poet, but merely as a young man who was transmitting the property of another, and who had no claims of his own, except that he was tired of a dull profession, and wished for a place in which he might indulge his taste in what was more lively. A patron must have had many places in his gift, and few applicants, if he could spare one to a person who professed no other merit than an inclination to exchange labour for ease. Yet Walpole has been held forth to public indignation as the cause of Chatterton's death. "But is it not hard that a man on whom a forgery has been tried unsuccessfully, should for that single reason be held out to the world as the assassin of genius? If a banker to whom a forged note should be presented, should refuse to accept it, and the ingenious fabricator should afterwards fall a victim to his own slight of hand, would you accuse the poor banker to the public, and urge that his caution had deprived the world of some supposititious deed of settlement, that would have deceived the whole court of chancery, and deprived some great family of its

estate3?"

About this time (1769) we are told that Chatterton 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. Yet, although one of his advocates, the foremost to accuse Mr. Walpole of neglecting him, asserts that "his profligacy was at least as conspicuous as his abilities," it does not appear that he was more profligate in the indulgence of the grosser passions than other young

Orford's works, vol. iv. 212, 213, C.

1

While at Bristol he had' not mixed with improper company; his few associates of the female sex were persons of character. In London the case might have been otherwise, but of this we have no direct proof, and he practised at least one rule which is no inconsiderable preservative; he was remarkably temperate in his diet. In his writings, indeed, we find some passages that are more licentious than could have been expected from a young man unhacknied in the ways 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 we should have looked for in men of an advanced age, hardened by evil associations, and soured by disappointed pride or avarice.

men who venture on the gayeties of life at an early age.

One effect of his infidelity, we are told, was to render the idea of suicide familiar. This he had cherished before he left Bristol, and when he could not fairly complain of the world's neglect, as he had preferred no higher pretensions than those of a man who has by accident discovered a treasure which he knows not how to make current. Beside repeatedly intimating to Mr. Lambert's servants that he intended to put an end to his life, he left a paper in sight of some of the family, specifying the day on which he meant to carry this purpose into execution. The reason assigned for this appointment was the refusal of a gentleman whom he had occasionally complimented in his poems, to supply him with money. It has since been supposed to be merely an artifice to get rid of his apprenticeship, and this certainly was the consequence, as Mr. Lambert did not choose that his house should be honoured by such an act of heroism. He had now served this gentleman about two years and ten months, during which he learned so little of law as to be unable to draw up the necessary document respecting the dissolution of his apprenticeship. We have seen how differently his time was employed, and there is reason to think that he had fabricated the whole of his Rowleian poetry and antique manuscripts during his apprenticeship, and before he left Bristol.

His object now was to go to London, where he had full confidence that his talents would be duly honoured. He had written letters to several booksellers of that city, who encouraged him to reside among them. Some literary adventurers would have entered on such a plan with diffidence; and of many who have become authors by profession, the greater part may plead the excuse that they neither foresaw nor understood the many mortifications and difficulties that are to be surmounted. Chatterton, on the contrary, set out with the confidence of a man who has laid his plans in such deep wisdom that he thinks it impossible they should fail. He boasted to his correspondents of three distinct resources, one at least of which was unfortunately in his own power. He first meant to employ his pen; then to turn methodist preacher; and if both should fail, to shoot himself. As his friends do not appear to have taken any steps to rectify his notions on these schemes, it is probable that they either did not consider him as serious, or had given him up, as one above all advice, and curable only by a little experience, which they were not sorry he should acquire in his own way, and at his own expense.

His first literary attempts by which he was to realize the dreams of presumption, were of the political kind, chiefly satires against the members and friends of administration.

In March 1770 he wrote a poem called Kew Gardens, part of which

only has been published, but enough to show that he had been supplied by some patriotic preceptor with the floating scandal of the day against the Princess dow ager of Wales, lord Bute, and other statesmen. It is highly improbable that a boy who had spent the greater part of his time since he left school, in fabricating, or deciphering the poetry, heraldry, and topography of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, should on a sudden become intimatelely acquainted with the intrigues of political men and their families. In all this, his materials must have been supplied by some persons who lived by propagating the calumnies of personal and political history, and who would rejoice in the dauntless spirit of their new associate. Another poem of the same description was intitled the Whore of Babylon. Of both these the reader may find specimens in the present collection: it does not appear that the whole of them were printed.

On his arrival in London, near the end of April, he received, according to his own account, the most flattering encouragement, and various employment was recom. mended: Among other schemes was a history of London, which if he had lived to complete it, must have been a suitable companion to Mr. Barrett's history of Bristol. In the mean time he wrote for many of the magazines and newspapers; his principal contributions appeared in the Freeholder's Magazine, the Town and Country, the Court and City, the Political Register, and the Gospel Magazine'. He wrote songs also for the public gardens, and for some time got se much money that he thought himself comparatively affluent, and able to provide for his mother and sister, whose hearts he gladdened by frequent intimations of his

progress.

During this career he became acquainted with Wilkes, and with Beckford who was then lord mayor. These patriots, however, he soon discovered were not so ready with their money as with their praise; and as the former appears to have been his only object, he had some thoughts of writing for the ministerial party. After Beck ford's death, which he affected to lament as his ruin, he addressed a letter to lord North, signed Moderator, complimenting administration for rejecting thecity remon strance, and one of the same date signed Probus, abusing administration for the same measure. While this unprincipled young man was thus demonstrating how unsafe it would be for any party to trust him, his letters to all his friends continued to be full of the brightest prospects of honours and wealth. But about the month of July some revolution appears to have taken place in his mind or his affairs which speedily put an end to all his hopes.

Of what nature this was remains yet a secret. About the time mentioned, he removed from a house in Shoreditch, where he had hitherto lived, to the house of a Mrs. Angel, a sack-maker in Brook-street, Holborn, where he became poor and unhappy, abandoning his literary pursuits, and projecting to go out to Africa as a naval surgeon's mate: he had picked up some knowledge of surgery from Mr. Barret, and now requested that gentleman's recommendation, which Mr. Barret, who knew his versatile turn, and how unfit in other respects he was for the situa

"They print the Gospel Magazine here. For a whim I write in it. I believe there are not any sent to Bristol they are hardly worth the carriage, methodistical and unmeaning." Letter to his sister, May 30, 1770: I have not been able to discover a magazine of this title earlier than 1774; but there was one in Chatterton's time called The Christian Magazine, which may probably be meant. C

tion, thought proper to refuse. If this was the immediate cause of his catastrophe, what are we to think of his lofty spirit? It is certain, however, that he no longer employed his pen, and that the short remainder of his days was spent in a conflict between pride and poverty. On the day preceding his death, he refused, with indignation a kind offer from Mrs. Angel to partake of her dinner, assuring her that he was not hungry, although he had not eaten any thing for two or three days. On the 25th of August, 1770, he was found dead, in consequence, as is supposed, of having swallowed arsenic in water, or some preparation of opium. He was buried in a shell in the burying ground belonging to Shoe-lane workhouse. Previous to this rash act he appears to have destroyed all his manuscripts, as the room, when broken open, was found covered with little scraps of paper.

It has been regretted that we know very little of the life of this extraordinary young man, whose writings have since become an object of so much curiosity; and great surprise has been expressed that, from the many with whom he appears to have been acquainted, suchs canty information has been obtained. For this, however, various reasons may be assigned which will lessen the wonder. In the first place his fame, using that word in its most common application, was confined principally to his native city, and there it appears that his friends undervalued his talents, because they considered him in no better light than that of an unprincipled young man, who had accidentally become possessed of certain ancient manuscripts, some of which he had given up, some he had mutilated, and the rest he had destroyed. He was with them an illiterate charity-boy, the runaway apprentice or hackneywriter of an attorney; and after he came to London, they appear to have made very few inquiries after him, congratulating themselves that they had got rid of a rash, impetuous, headstrong boy, who would do some mischief, and disgrace himself and his relations. Again, in London, notwithstanding of his boasting letters to his mother and sister, he rose to no high rank among the reputable writers of the day, his productions being confined to publications of the lower order, all of which are now forgotten. But there cannot be a more decisive proof of the little regard he attracted in London, than the secrecy and silence which accompanied his death. This event, although so extraordinary, for young suicides are surely not common, is not even mentioned in any shape in the Gentleman's Magazine, the London Magazine, the Annual Register, the St. James's or London Chronicles, nor in any of the respectable publications of the day. He died, a coroner's jury sat upon the body, and he was buried among paupers, so long before his acquaintance heard of these circumstances, that it was with some difficulty they could be traced with any degree of authenticity. And, lastly, it does not appear that any inquiries were made into his early history for nearly seven years after his death, when the Poems of Rowley were first published3, and led the way to a very acute and long-protracted discussion on their merits. It may be added, too, that they who contended for the authenticity of the poems were for sinking every cir cumstance that could prove the genius of Chatterton, until Mr. Thomas Warton, and someothers, took the opposite side of the question, brought the poems to the

5 "The Execution of Sir Charles Bawdin" preceded this by some years, but does not appear to have attracted much notice. Mr. Cole, a very acute antiquary, suspected this poem to be a forgery, from the hero's name being Charles, a name unknown in the times of Henry V1. and Edward IV. Cole's MSS. in Brit, Mus.-C.

internal evidence, and discovered, that however extraordinary it was for Chatterton to produce them in the eighteenth century, it was impossible that Rowley could have written them in the fifteenth.

When public attention was at length called to Chatterton's history, his admirers took every step to excite compassion in his favour. It became the fashion to report that he was starved by an insensible age, or suffered by the neglect of patrons to perish in want of the common necessaries of life. But of this there is no satisfactory evidence. On the contrary he appears to have been fully employed by his literary friends almost up to the day of his death, and from one of them he solicited money a very little before that catastrophe, and received it with an assurance that he should have more if he wanted it. This benefactor was the late Mr. Hamilton, senior, the proprietor of the Critical Review, a man of wellknown liberality both of mind and purse. One who knew him well, when in London, and who wrote under the inspection of Mr. Hamilton, gives it as a probable con jecture, that he wished to seal his secret with his death. He knew that he and Rowley were suspected to be the same; his London friends spoke of it with little scruple, and he neither confessed nor denied it. He might fear somewhat from himself; might dread the effects of increasing obligations, and be struck with hor rour at the thought of a public detection, He sometimes seemed wild, abstracted, and incoherent: at others he had a settled gloominess in his countenance, the sure presage of his fatal resolution. In short this was the very temperament and constitution from which we should, in similar circumstances, expect the same event, He was one of those irregular meteors which astonish the universe for a moment, and then disappear for ever." This is at least plausible, but the immediate cause of his death must perhaps yet remain a mystery. He had written so recently to his Bristol friends (about a month before) without a syllable indicating discontent or despair, that it was wholly unexpected on their part; but suicide, at one time or other, his biographers have proved, was his fixed purpose, and the execution of it was probably to depend on his disappointment in whatever wild or impracticable scheme he might meditate. He got enough in London, by his literary labours, to supply the decent necessaries of life, but his dreams of affluence were over, and had probably left that frightful void in his mind at which despair and disappointed pride entered.

The person of Chatterton is said to have been, like his genius," 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 warmed in argument, or otherwise, they sparkled with fire; and one eye, it is said, was still more remarkable than the others."

As to his genius, it must ever be the subject of admiration, whether he was or was not the author of the poems ascribed to Rowley. If we look at the poems avowedly his own, together with his productions in prose, where shall

6 Sir Herbert Croft, in a miscellaneous publication, intitled Love and Madness, was among the first who brought the particulars of Chatterton's Life into notice. See his Letters on this subject in the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LXX. pp. 99, &c.-C.

7 Critical Review, Vol. LIII. p. 424.-C.