cliffe Church, of Bristol, several chests had been anciently deposited, among which was one called the "Cofre" of Mr. Canynge, an eminent merchant of Bristol, who had rebuilt the church in the reign of Edward IV. About the year 1727, those chests had been broken open by an order from proper authority; some ancient deeds had been taken out, and the remaining manuscripts left exposed, as of no value. Chatterton's father, whose uncle was sexton of the church, had carried off great numbers of the parchments, and had used them as covers for books in his school. Amidst the residue of his father's ravages, Chatterton gave out that he had found many writings of Mr. Canynge, and of Thomas Rowley (the friend of Canynge), a priest of the fifteenth century. The rumour of his discoveries occasioned his acquaintance to be sought by a few individuals of Bristol, to whom he made presents of vellum manuscripts of professed antiquity. The first who applied to him was a Mr. Calcot, who obtained from him the Bristowe Tragedy, and Rowley's Epitaph on Canynge's ancestor. Mr. Barret, a surgeon, who was writing a History of Bristol, was also presented with some of the poetry of Rowley; and Mr. Burgum, a pewterer, was favoured with the 'Romaunt of the Knyghte,' a poem, said by Chatterton to have been written by the pewterer's ancestor, John de Berghum, about four hundred and fifty years before. The believing presentees, in return, supplied him with small sums of money, lent him books, and introduced him into society. Mr. Barret even gave him a few slight instructions in his own profession. Chatterton's spirit and ambition perceptibly increased, and he used to talk to his mother and sisters of his prospects of fame and fortune, always promising that they should be partakers in his success.

Having deceived several incompetent judges with regard to his manuscripts, he next ventured to adress himself to Horace Walpole, to whom he sent a letter, offering to supply him with an account of a series of eminent painters, who had flourished at Bristol. Walpole returned a polite answer, desiring farther information, on which Chatterton transmitted to him some of his Rowleian poetry, described his own servile situation, and requested the patronage of his correspondent. The virtuoso, however, having shown the poetical specimens to Gray and Mason, who pronounced them to be forgeries, sent the youth a cold reply, advising him to apply to the business of his profession. Walpole set out soon after for Paris, and neglected to return the manuscripts till they had been twice demanded back by Chatterton; the second time in a very indignant letter. On these circumstances was founded the whole charge that was brought against Walpole, of blighting the prospects and eventually contributing to the ruin of the youthful genius. Whatever may be thought of some expressions respecting Chatterton, which Walpole employed in the explanation of the affair which he afterwards published, the idea of taxing him with criminality in neglecting him was manifestly unjust. But, in all cases of misfortune, the first consolation to which human nature resorts is, right or wrong, to find somebody to blame, and an evil seems to be half cured when it is traced to an object of indignation.

In the meantime Chatterton had commenced a correspondence with the Town and Country Magazine, in London, to which he transmitted several communications on subjects relating to English antiquities, besides his specimens of Rowley's poetry, and fragments, purporting to be translations of Saxon poems, written in the measured prose of Macpherson's style. His poetical talent also continued to develope itself in several pieces of verse, avowedly original, though in a manner less pleasing than in his feigned relics of the Gothic Muse. When we conceive the inspired boy transporting himself in imagination back to the days of his fictitious Rowley, embodying his ideal character, and giving to airy nothing a "local habitation and a name," we may forget the impostor in the enthusiast and forgive the falsehood of his

reverie for its beauty and ingenuity. One of his companions has described the air of rapture and inspiration with which he used to repeat his passages from Rowley, and the delight which he took to contemplate the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, while it awoke the associations of antiquity in his romantic mind. There was one spot in particular, full in view of 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 imagination. The romance of his character is somewhat disenchanted, when we find him, in his satire of 'Kew Gardens,' which he wrote before leaving Bristol, indulging in the vulgar scandal of the day upon the characters of the Princess Dowager of Wales and Lord Bute, whatever proofs such a production may afford of the quickness and versatility of his talents.

As he had not exactly followed Horace Walpole's advice with regard to moulding his inclinations to business, he felt the irksomeness of his situation in Mr. Lambert's office at last intolerable, and he vehemently solicited and obtained the attorney's consent to release him from his apprenticeship. His master is said to have been alarmed into this concession by the hints which Chatterton gave of his intention to destroy himself; but even without this fear, Mr. Lambert could have no great motive to detain so reluctant an apprentice from the hopes of his future services. In the month of April, 1770, Chatterton arrived in London, aged seventeen years and five months. He immediately received from the booksellers, with whom he had already corresponded, several important literary engagements. He projected a History of England, and a History of London, wrote for the magazines and newspapers, and contributed songs for the public gardens. But party politics soon became his favourite object, as they flattered his self importance, and were likely to give the most lucrative employment to his pen. His introduction to one or two individuals, who noticed him on this account, seems to have filled his ardent and sanguine fancy with unbounded prospects of success. Among these acquaintances was the Lord Mayor, Beckford, and it is not unlikely, if that magistrate had not died soon after, that Chatterton might have found a patron. His death, however, and a little experience, put an end to the young adventurer's hopes of making his fortune by writing in hostility to government; and with great accommodation of principle he addressed a letter to Lord North, in praise of his administration. There was perhaps more levity than profligacy in this tergiversation, though it must be owned that it was not the levity of an ingenuous boy.

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 anticipations. But suddenly all the flush of his gay hopes and busy projects terminated in despair. The particular causes which led to his catastrophe have not been distinctly traced. His own descriptions of his prospects were but little to be trusted; for, while apparently exchanging his shadowy visions of Rowley for the real adventures of life, he was still moving under the spell of an imagination that saw every thing in exaggerated colours. Out of this dream he was at length awakened, when he found that he had miscalculated the chances of patronage and the profits of literary labour. The abortive attempt which he made to obtain the situation of a surgeon's mate on board an African vessel, shows that he had abandoned the hopes of gaining a livelihood by working for the booksellers, though he was known to have shrewdly remarked that they were not the worst patrons of merit. After this disappointment his poverty became extreme, and though there is an account of a gentleman having sent him a guinea within the few last days of his life, yet there is too much reason to fear that the pangs of his voluntary death were preceded by the actual sufferings of want. Mrs. Angel, a sack-maker, in

Brook Street, Holborn, in whose house he lodged, offered him a dinner the day before his death, knowing that he had fasted a long time, but his pride made him refuse it with some indignation. On the 25th of August he was found dead in his bed, from the effects of poison, which he had swallowed. He was interred in a shell in the burial ground of Shoe Lane workhouse.

The heart which can peruse the fate of Chatterton without being moved is little to be envied for its tranquillity; but the intellects of those men must be as deficient as their hearts are uncharitable, who, confounding all shades of moral distinction, have ranked his literary fiction of Rowley in the same class of crimes with pecuniary forgery, and have calculated that if he had not died by his own hand, he would have probably ended his days upon a gallows. This disgusting sentence has been pronounced upon a youth who was exemplary for severe study, temperance, and natural affection. His Rowleian forgery must indeed be pronounced improper by the general law which condemns all falsifications of history; but it deprived no man of his fame, it had no sacrilegious interference with the memory 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.

Setting aside the opinion of those uncharitable biographers whose imaginations have conducted him to the gibbet, it may be owned that his unformed character exhibited strong and conflicting elements of good and evil. Even the momentary project of the infidel boy to become a methodist preacher, betrays an obliquity of design, and a contempt of human credulity, that is not very amiable. But, had he been spared, his pride and ambition would have come to flow in their proper channels; his understanding would have taught him the 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 attributed to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology which is thrown over them. If we look to the ballad of Sir Charles Bawdin, and translate it into modern English, we shall find its strength and interest to have no dependence on obsolete words. In the striking passage of the martyr Bawdin standing erect in his car to rebuke Edward, who beheld him from the window, when

"The tyrant's soul rushed to his face,"

and when he exclaimed,

"Behold the man! he speaks the truth,
He's greater than a king;"

in these, and in all the striking parts of the ballad, no effect is owing to mock antiquity, but to the simple and high conception of a great and just character, who "Summ'd the actions of the day,

Each night before he slept."

What a moral portraiture from the hand of a boy! The inequality of Chatterton's various productions may be compared to the disproportions of the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the definite neatness of that precocious talent which stops short in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay up materials for the exercise of great and undeveloped powers. Even in his favourite maxim, pushed it might be to hyperbole, that a man by abstinence and perseverance 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 compared to him as a juvenile prodigy. No English poet ever equalled him at the same ago,

282. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT LAW-SUIT BETWEEN THE PARISHES OF ST. DENNIS AND ST. GEORGE IN THE WATER.

FROM KNIGHT'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE.

THE parish of St. Dennis is one of the most pleasant parts of the county in which it is situated. It is fertile, well wooded, well watered, and of an excellent air. For many generations the manor had been holden in tail-male by a worshipful family, who have always taken precedence of their neighbours at the races and the sessions.

In ancient times the affairs of this parish were administered by a Court Baron, in which the freeholders were judges; and the rates levied by select vestries of the inhabitant householders. But at length these good customs fell into disuse. The lords of the manor indeed still held courts for form's sake, but they or their stewards had the whole management of affairs. They demanded services, duties, and customs to which they had no just title. Nay, they would often bring actions against their neighbours for their own private advantage, and then send in the bill to the parish. No objection was made, during many years to these proceedings, so that the rates became heavier and heavier; nor was any person exempted from these demands, except the footmen and gamekeepers of the squire and the rector of the parish. They indeed were never checked in any excess. They would come to an honest labourer's cottage, eat his pancakes, tuck his fowls into their pockets, and cane the poor man himself. If he went up to the great house to complain, it was hard to get the speech of Sir Lewis; and indeed his only chance of being righted was to coax the squire's pretty housekeeper, who could do what she pleased with her master. If he ventured to intrude upon the lord of the manor without this precaution, he gained nothing by his pains. Sir Lewis indeed would at first receive him with a civil face; for, to give him his due, he could be a fine gentleman when he pleased. "Good day, my friend," he would say, "what situation have you in my family?" "Bless your honour," says the poor fellow, "I am not one of your honour's servants; I rent a small piece of ground, your honour." "Then, you dog," quoth the squire, "what do you mean by coming here? Has a gentleman nothing to do but hear the complaints of clowns ? Here! Philip, James, Dick, toss this fellow in a blanket; or duck him, and set him in the stocks to dry."

One of these precious lords of the manor inclosed a deer park; and, in order to stock it, he seized all the pretty pet fawns that his tenants had brought up, without paying them a farthing, or asking their leave. It was a sad day for the parish of St. Dennis. Indeed, I do not believe that all his oppressive exactions and long bills enraged the poor tenants so much as this cruel measure.

Yet for a long time, in spite of all these inconveniences, St. Dennis was a very pleasant place. The people could not refrain from capering if they heard the sound of a fiddle. And, if they were inclined to be riotous, Sir Lewis had only to send for Punch, or the dancing-dogs, and all was quiet again. But this could not last for ever; they began to think more and more of their condition; and, at last, a club of foul-mouthed good-for-nothing rascals was held at the sign of the Devil, for the purpose of abusing the squire and the parson. The doctor, to own the truth, was old and indolent, extremely fat and greedy. He had not preached a tolerable sermon for a long time. The squire was still worse; so that, partly by truth and partly by falsehood, the club set the whole parish against their superiors. The boys scrawled caricatures of the clergyman upon the church door, and shot at the landlord with pop-guns as he rode a hunting. It was even whispered about that the lord of the manor had no right to his estate, and that, if he were

compelled to produce the original title deeds, it would be found that he only held the estate in trust for the inhabitants of the parish.

In the meantime the squire was pressed more and more for money. The parish would pay no more. The rector refused to lend a farthing. The Jews were clamorous for their money; and the landlord had no other resource than to call together the inhabitants of the parish, and to request their assistance. They now attacked him furiously about their grievances, and insisted that he should relinquish his oppressive powers. They insisted that his footmen should be kept in order, that the parson should pay his share of the rates, that the children of the parish should be allowed to fish in the trout streams, and to gather blackberries in the hedges. They at last went so far as to demand that he should acknowledge that he held his estate only in trust for them. His distress compelled him to submit. They, in return, agreed to set him free from his pecuniary difficulties, and to suffer him to inhabit the manor-house, and only annoyed him from time to time by singing impudent ballads under his window.

The neighbouring gentlefolks did not look on these proceedings with much complacency. It is true that Sir Lewis and his ancestors had plagued them with lawsuits, and affronted them at county-meetings. Still they preferred the insolence of a gentleman to that of the rabble, and felt some uneasiness lest the example should infect their own tenants.

A large party of them met at the house of Lord Cæsar Germain. Lord Cæsar was the proudest man in the county. His family was very ancient and illustrious, though not particularly opulent. He had invited most of his wealthy neighbours. There was Mrs. Kitty North, the relict of poor Squire Peter, respecting whom the coroner's jury had found a verdict of accidental death, but whose fate had nevertheless excited strange whispers in the neighbourhood. There was Squire Don, the owner of the great West Indian property, who was not so rich as he had formerly been, but still retained his pride, and kept up his customary pomp; so that he had plenty of plate but no breeches. There was Squire Von Blunderbussen, who had succeeded to the estates of his uncle, old Colonel Frederic Von Blunderbussen of the Hussars. The colonel was a very singular old fellow; he used to learn a page of Chambaud's Grammar, and to translate Télémaque every morning, and he kept six French masters to teach him to parley-voo. Nevertheless he was a shrewd clever man, and improved his estate with so much care, sometimes by honest and sometimes by dishonest means, that he left a very pretty property to his nephew.

Lord Cæsar poured out a glass of Tokay for Mrs. Kitty. "Your health, my dear madam, I never saw you look more charming. Pray what think you of these doings at St. Dennis's ?"

"Fine doings! indeed!" interrupted Von Blunderbussen, "I wish that we had my old uncle alive, he would have had some of them up to the halberts. He knew how to use a cat-o'-nine-tails. If things go on in this way, a gentleman will not be able to horsewhip an impudent farmer, or to say a civil word to a milkmaid."

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Indeed, it's very true, sir;" said Mrs. Kitty, "their insolence is intolerable. Look at me, for instance-a poor lone woman!-my dear Peter dead! I loved him so I did; and when he died, I was so hysterical, you cannot think. And now I cannot lean on the arm of a decent footman, or take a walk with a tall grenadier behind me, just to protect me from audacious vagabonds, but they must have their nauseous suspicions ;--odious creatures !"

"This must be stopped," replied Lord Cæsar. "We ought to contribute to support my poor brother-in-law against these rascals. I will write to Squire Guelf