appeared, by no means so likely to recommend him to their favour, or to the favour of such other influential persons in the community as might have been disposed to patronise modesty in combination with youth and literature.

In a town of 70,000 inhabitants (which was about the population of Bristol eighty years ago) it must be remembered that all the public characters are marked men-the mayor, the various aldermen and common-councilmen, the city clergymen, the chief grocers, bankers, and tradesmen, the teachers of the public schools, &c., are all recognised as they pass along the streets; and their peculiarities, physical and moral, such as the red nose of Alderman Such-an-one, the wheezy voice of the Rev. Such-another, and the blustering self-importance of citizen Such-athird, are perfectly familiar to the collective civic imagination. Now, it is the most natural of all things for a young man in such a town, just arrived at a tolerable conceit of himself, and determined to have a place some day in Mr. Craik's "Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties," to be seized with a tremendous disrespect for everything locally sacred, and to delight in promulgating it. What nonsense they do talk in the town-council; what a miserable set of mercantile rogues are the wealthy citizens; what an absence of liberality and high general intelligence there is in the whole procedure of the community-these are the commonplaces (often, it must be confessed, true enough) through which the highspirited young native of a middle-class British town must almost necessarily pass, on his way to a broader appreciation of men and things. Through the sorrows of Lichfield, the Lichfield youth realises how it is that all creation groaneth and travaileth; and, pinched by the inconveniences of Dundee, the aspirant who is there nursed into manhood turns down his shirt-collar at all things, and takes a Byronic view of the entire universe.

Chatterton was specially liable to this discontent with everything around him. Of a dogged, sullen, and passionate disposition, not without a considerable spice of malice; treated as a boy, yet with a brain consciously the most powerful in Bristol; sadly in want of pocket-money for purposes more or less questionable, and having hardly any means of procuring it-he took his

revenge out in satire against all that was respectable in Bristol. If Mr. Thomas Harris, then the Right Worshipful Mayor of the city, passed him on the pavement, either ignorant what a youth of genius he was pushing aside, or looking down somewhat askance, as a Mayor will do at an attorney's apprentice that will not take off his hat when he is expected, the thought that probably arose in his breast was, "You are a purse-proud fool, Mr. Mayor, and I have more sense in my little finger than you have in your whole body." If there was a civic dinner, and Chatterton was told of it, the remark would be, what feeding there would be among the aldermen and city brothers; what guzzling of claret; and what after-dinner speeches by fellows that could not pronounce their H's, and hardly knew how to read. If he chanced to sit in church, hearing the Rev. Dr. Cutts Barton, then Dean of Bristol, preach, what would pass in his mind would be, "you are a drowsy old rogue, Cutts, and have no more religion in you than a sausage." And even when Newton, the Bishop of the diocese, distinguished prelate as he was, made his appearance in the pulpit, he would not be safe from the excoriations of this young critic in the distant pew. Chatterton's own friends and acquaintances, too, came in for their share of his sarcasms. Lambert, we believe, he hated; and we have seen how he could wreak a personal grudge on an old teacher. The Rev. Mr. Catcott, not a bad fellow in the main, he soon set down, in his own private opinion, as a narrow-minded parson, with no force or philosophy, conceited with his reputation at teaparties, and a dreadful bore with his fossils and his theory of the deluge. His brother, the unclerical Catcott, again, had probably more wit and vigour, but dogmatised insufferably over his beer; Burgum was a vain, stingy, ungrammatical goose; and Mr. Barrett, with all his good intentions, was too fond of giving common-place advices. In short, Bristol was a vile place, where originality or genius, or even ordinary culture and intelligence had no chance of being appreciated; and to spend one's existence there would be but a life-long attempt to teach a certain class of animals the value and the beauty of pearls.

Poor, unhappy youth! how, through the mist and din of eighty years past

and gone since then, I recognise thee walking in the winter evenings of 176970, through the dark streets of Bristol, or out into its dark environs, ruminating such evil thoughts as these! And what, constituting myself for the moment the mouthpiece of all that society has since pronounced on thy case, should I, leaping back over long years to place myself at thy side, whisper thee by way of counsel or reproach?

"Persist; be content; be more modest; think less of forbidden indulgences; give up telling lies; attend to your master's business; and, if you will cherish the fire of genius and become a poet and a man of name, like the Johnsons, the Goldsmiths, the Churchills, and others whom you think yourself born to equal or surpass, at least study patience, have faith in honourable courses, and realise, above all, that wealth and fame are vanity, and that, whether you succeed or fail, it will be all the same a hundred years after this." 66 Easily said," thou wouldst answer; "cheaply advised!-I also could speak as you do; if your soul were in my soul's stead I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you. That the present will pass, and that a hundred years hence all the tragedy or all the farce will have been done and over-true; I know it. Nevertheless I know also that, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, the present must be moved through and exhausted! A hundred years after this!'-did not Manlius the Roman know it; and yet was there not a moment in the history of the world, a moment to be fully felt and gone through by Manlius, when, flung from the Tarpeian Rock, he, yet living, hung halfway between his gaping executioners above and his ruddy death among the stones below? A hundred years A hundred years after this!' Pompeius the Roman knew it; and yet was there not a moment in the history of the world, a moment fully to be endured by Pompeius, when, reading in the treacherous boat, he sat halfway between the ship that bore his destinies, and his funeral pile on the Libyan shore? Centuries back in the past these moments now lie engulphed, but what is that to me? It is my turn now: here I am, wretched in this beastly Bristol, where Savage was allowed to starve in prison; and by the very fact that I live, I have a right to my solicitude!"

Obstinate boy! is there then aught that can still with some show of sense, be advised you? Yes, there is! Seek a friend. Leave the Catcotts, lay and clerical, the Burgums, the Barretts, the Matthew Meases, and the rest of them, and seek some one true friend, such as surely even Bristol can supply, of about the same age as yourself, or, what were better, somewhat older; see him daily, walk with him, smoke with him, laugh with him, discuss religion with him, hear his experiences, show your poetry to him, and, above all, make a clean breast to him of your delinquencies in the Rowley business. Or, more efficient perhaps still, fall really in love. Eschew the Miss Rumseys and other such questionable fair ones, and find out some beauty of a better kind, to whom, with or without hope, you can vow the future of your noblest heart. Find her; walk beneath her window; catch glimpes of her; dream of her; if fortune favours, woo her, and (true you are but seventeen !) win her. Bristol will then be a paradise; its sky will be lightsome, its streets beautiful, its mayor tolerable, its clergy respectable, and all its warehouses palaces! Is this nonsense? Well, then, I will give up the Mentor. with you and act the Mephistopheles. My acquaintance with general biography enables me to tell you of one particular family at this moment living in Bristol, that it might be well for you to get acquainted with. Mr. Barrett might be able to introduce you. The family I mean is that of the Mores-five sisters-who keep a boarding-school for young ladies in Park-street, "the most flourishing establishment of its kind in the west of England." The Miss Mores, as you know, are praised by all the mammas in Bristol as extremely clever and accomplished young women-almost blue-stockings in fact -and one of them, Miss Hannah, is, like yourself, a writer of verses, and, like yourself, destined to literary celebrity. Now I do not wish to be mischievous, but seeing that posterity will wish that you two, living as you did in the same town, should at least have met and spoken with each other, might I suggest a notion to you? Could you not elope with Hannah More? True, she is seven years your senior, extremely sedate, and the very last person in the world to be guilty of any nonsense with an attorney's apprentice

Nevertheless try. Just think of the train of consequences: the whole boarding-school in a flutter-all Bristol scandalised-paragraphs in Felix Farley's Journal and posterity effectually cheated of two things, the tragic termination of your own life, and the admirable old maidenhood of her's!

*

Chatterton did not conceal his contempt from the very persons it was most likely to offend. Known not only as a transcriber of ancient English poetry, but also as a poet in his own person, he began to support his reputation in the latter character by producing from time to time, along with his Rowley poems, certain lengthy compositions of his own in a modern satirical vein. In these compositions, which were written after the manner of Churchill, there was the strangest possible jumble of crude Whig politics and personal scurrility against local notabilities. What effect they were likely to have on Chatterton's position in his native town, may be inferred from a specimen or two. How would Broderip the organist like this?—

"While Broderip's humdrum symphonies of flats Rival the harmony of midnight cats."

Or the lay Catcott this allusion to a professional feat of his in laying the topstone of a spire?—

"Catcott is very fond of talk and fame-
His wish a perpetuity of name;
Which to procure, a pewter altar's made
To bear his name and signify his trade;
In pomp burlesqued the rising spire to head,
To tell futurity a pewterer's dead."

And how could the clerical Catcott like this reference to his orthodoxy ?

"Might we not, Catcott, then infer from hence,

Your zeal for Scripture hath devoured your sense?"

Or what would the Mayor say to this?

"Let Harris wear his self-sufficient air,
Nor dare remark, for Harris is a mayor."

Or the civic dignity of Bristol to this?

"'Tis doubtful if her aldermen can read: This of a certainty the muse may tell, None of her common-councilmen can spell."

Clearly enough an attorney's apprentice that was in the habit of showing about such verses, was not in the way to procure patronage and good will. If, however, any of his friends remonstrated with him, his answer was ready :

"Damned narrow notions, tending to disgrace
The boasted reason of the human race!
Bristol may keep her prudent maxims still;
But know, my saving friends, I never will.
The composition of my soul is made
Too great for servile avaricious trade;
When, raving in the lunacy of ink,

I catch the pen and publish what I think."

Accordingly Chatterton continued to support, in the eyes of the portion of the community of Bristol that knew him, a two-fold character: that, on the one hand, of an enthusiastic youth of antiquarian knowledge, the possessor of many antique manuscripts, chiefly poetry of the fifteenth century; and that, on the other, of an ill-conditioned boy of spiteful temper, the writer of somewhat clever but very scurrilous verses. Nay, more, it was observable that the latter character was growing upon him, apparently at the expense of the former; for while, up to his seventeenth year (1768-9), his chief recreation seemed to be in his antiques and Rowley MSS., after that date he seemed to throw his antiques aside, and devote all his time to imitations of the satires of Churchill, under such names as The Consuliad, Kew Gardens, &c. And here the reader must permit me a little essay or disquisitional interleaf on the character and writings of Chatterton.

ALL thinking persons have now agreed to abandon that summary method of dealing with human character, according to which unusual and eccentric courses of action are attributed to mere caprices on the part of the individuals concerned-mere obstinate determinations to go out of the common route.

"The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man,"

is a maxim less in repute than it once was. In such cases as that of Chatterton, it is now believed, deeper causes are always operating than the mere wish to deceive people and make a figure.

Now, in the case of Chatterton, it appears to us, we must first of all take for granted an extraordinary natural precocity or prematurity of the facul

ties. We are aware that there is a prejudice against the use of this hypothesis. But why should it be so? How otherwise can we represent to ourselves the cause of that diversity which we see in men, than by going deeper than all that we know of pedigree, and conceiving the birth of every new soul to be, as it were, a distinct creative act of the Unseen Spirit? That now, in some Warwickshire village, the birth should be a Shakspeare; and that again, in the poor posthumous child of a dissipated Bristol choir-singer, the tiny body should be shaken by the surcharge of soul within it, are not miracles in themselves, but only variations in the great standing miracle of birth at all. Nor, with the idea of precocity, is it necessary to associate that either of disease or of insanity. There was nothing in Chatterton to argue disease in the ordinary sense, or to indicate that, had he lived, he might not, like Pope or Tasso, who were also precocious, have gone on steadily increasing in ability till the attainment of a sound old age. And, though it seems probable that there was a tendency to madness in the Chatterton blood, Chatterton's sister, Mrs. Newton, having afterwards had an attack of insanity, we think that the use of this fact by Southey and others to explain the tenor of Chatterton's life, has been by far too hasty and inconsiderate. We never yet knew a man of genius who had not some female relative that died, or was said to have died, in a lunatic asylum; and, so long as we can account for Chatterton's singularities in any other way, we see no reason, any more than in the similar instance of Charles Lamb, why we should attribute them to what was at the utmost only a probably dormant, or possibly about to be developed, taint of madness in his constitution.

Assuming, then, that Chatterton, without being either a mere lusus naturæ, or insane, was simply a child of very extraordinary endowments, we would point out, as the predominant feature in his character, his remarkable veneration for the antique. In the boyhood even of Sir Walter Scott, born as he was in the very midst of ballads and traditions, we see no manifestation of a love of the past and the historic nearly so strong as that which possessed Chatterton from his infancy. The earliest form in which this consti

tutional peculiarity appeared in him, seems to have been a fondness for the ecclesiastical antiquities of his native city, and, above all, an attachment to the old Gothic Church of St. Mary Redcliffe.

Some time ago we saw in a provincial Scottish newspaper an obituary notice of a poor idiot named John M'Bey, who had been for about sixty years a prominent character in the village of Huntly, Aberdeenshire. Where the poor creature had been born no one knew; he had been found, when apparently about ten years old, wandering among the Gartly Hills, and had been brought by some country people into the village. Here, " supported by the kindness of several families, at whose kitchen-tables he regularly took his place at one or other of the meals of the day," he continued to reside ever after, a conspicuous figure in the schoolboy recollections of all the inhabitants for more than half a century. The "shaggy carroty head, the vacant stare, the idle trots and aimless walks of Jock,' could yet," said the notice, "be recalled in a moment" by all that knew him. "At an early period of his history," proceeded the notice, "he had formed a strong affection for the bell in the old ruined church of Ruthven, in the parish of Cairnie; and many were the visits he paid to that object of, to him, surpassing interest. Having dubbed it with the name of "Wow," he embraced every opportunity at funerals to get a pull of the rope, interpreting the double peals, in his own significant language, to mean, "Come hame, come hame." Every funeral going to that church-yard was known to him; and, till his old age, he was generally the first person that appeared on the ground. The emblems of his favourite bell, in bright yellow, were sewed on his garments, and woe to the schoolboy that would utter a word in depreciation of his favourite. When near his end, he was asked how he felt. He said he was ga'in awa' to the wow, nae to come back again." After his death, he was laid in his favourite burying-place, within sound of his cherished bell."

Do not despise this little story, reader. To our mind it illustrates much. As this poor idiot, debarred from all the general concerns of life, and untaught in other people's tenets, had in

vented a religion for himself, setting up as a central object in his own narrow circle of images and fancies, an old ruined belfry, which had somehow (who knows through what horror of maternity?) caught his sense of mystery, clinging to this object with the whole tenacity of his affections, and even devising symbols by which it might be ever present to him; so, with more complex and less rude accompaniments, does the precocious Boy of Bristol seem to have related himself to the Gothic fabric near which he first saw the light. This church was his fetich, his "wow." It was through it, as through a metaphorical gateway, that his imagination worked itself back into the great field of the Past, so as to expatiate on the ancient condition of his native "Brystowe" and the whole olden time of England.

This is no fancy of ours. "Chatterton," says one of his earliest acquaintances, a Mr. Wm. Smith, "was particularly fond of walking in the fields, particularly in Redcliffe meadows, and of talking of his manuscripts, and sometimes reading them there. There was one spot in particular, full in view of the church, in which he seemed to take peculiar delight. He would frequently lay himself down, fix his eyes upon the church, and seem as if he were in a kind of trance; then, on a sudden, he would tell me, 'that steeple was burnt down by lightning; that was the place where they formerly acted plays." To the same effect, also, many allusions in the Rowley poems; thus

"Thou seest this maestrie of a human hand,

The pride of Brystowe and the western land."

And here we may remind the reader of a circumstance-namely, that the ancestors of Chatterton had, for at least a hundred and fifty years, been sextons of this same Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, and that the office had only passed out of the family on the death of his father's elder brother, John. Chatterton's father, too, it should be remembered, was a choirsinger in the church; and Chatterton himself, while a child, had, in virtue of old family right and proximity of residence, had the run of its aisles and galleries. Can it be, we would ask the physiological philosophers, that a veneration for the edifice of St. Mary Redcliffe, and for all connected with it, had thus come down in the Chat

terton blood; that, as it were, the defunct old Chattertons, Johns and Thomases in their series, who had, in times gone by, paced along the interior of the church, jangling its ponderous keys, brushing away its cobwebs, and talking with its stony effigies of knights and saints buried below, had thus laid in, in gradually increasing mass, a store of antique associations, to be transmitted, as a fatal heritage, to the unhappy youth in whom their line was to become extinct and immortal? Partly so, we may suppose!

But Chatterton's disposition towards the antique did not remain a mere fetichistic instinct of veneration for the relic his ancestors had guarded. From his very boyhood he entered with all the zeal of a reader and intelligent inquirer into the service of his hereditary feeling. It would not be long, for example, before passing from the edifice to its history, as recorded in the annals of Bristol, he would learn to pronounce, with indefinable reverence, the name of its founder-William Canynge, the Bristol merchant of the fifteenth century. Whatever particulars were to be gleaned from books regarding the life of this notable personage, must have been familiar to Chatterton long before he ceased to be a blue-coat scholar. How Canynge had been such a wealthy man, that, according to William of Worcester, he was owner of ten vessels, and gave employment to one hundred mariners, as well as to one hundred artificers on shore; how he had been as munificent as he was wealthy; how he had been mayor of Bristol in 1431, and four separate times afterwards; how he and the town had become involved in the Wars of the Roses, and how, on the accession of Edward IV., he had made the peace of the town by paying a fine to that monarch; and how, finally, he had become a priest in his old age, and devoted a large part of his fortune to the erection, or rather reconstruction, of the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe— all this knowledge, easily accessible to an inquiring Bristol boy, Chatterton would collect and ponder.

Chatterton, however, was not merely an inquisitive lad; he was a young poet, full of enthusiasm and constructive talent. Hence, not satisfied with a meagre outline of the story of Canynge, as it could be derived from the chronicles of Bristol, he set himself to