[Essay on Chatterton] Art. VIII.컴Conjectures and Researches concerning the Love Madness and Imprisonment of Torquato Tasso. By Richard Henry Wilde. 2 vols. New York. 1842. Upon the minuteness and obscurity of our attainable evidences with regard to a single important portion of a great poet's history컴the Love and Madness of Tasso컴great light is thrown by these clever volumes. And further additions to a very meagre stock are not, it seems, to be absolutely despaired of. The Medicean Records may be laid under more liberal contributions, and the Archives of Este cease to remain impenetrable. What even if a ray of light should straggle over the unsunned hoards of sumless wealth in the Vatican? "If windows were in heaven, might this thing be." But in our days the poorest loophole will have to be broken, we suspect, with far different instruments from those it is the fashion to employ just now in Italy. It is enough at present if the oily instances of this or the other Minister-Residentiary operate so happily upon the ruffled apprehensiveness of this or the other Chamberlain-Omnipotentiary, as to allow a minute's glimpse of the Fortunate Isles through the incessant breakers that girdle them. The rude sea now and then grows civil, indeed; but a positive current setting landwards is the thing wanted, and likely to remain so. Ever and anon we seem on the point of a discovery. A scrap of letter turns up, or a bundle of notices drop out, and the Head Librarian for the time being considers the curiosity of some Dilettante Ambassador for the place being, and, provided the interest of the whole civilized world is kept out of sight with sufficient adroitness, becomes communicative. "The anger of the Grand Duke arises from his being informed that I had revealed to the Duke of Ferrara ......! I cannot write all freely, but this is the gospel." So writes Tasso to "the one friend he now believes in, Scipio Gonzaga." And "this blank," sorrowfully subjoins Mr. Wilde, "is found in the first copy of the letter furnished for publication by the learned and candid Muratori, then librarian to the Duke of Modena." It contained an expression, says he, which it would be indecorous to repeat! Thus at every step, where there is the slightest prospect of a clue to the truth, are we mortified by its destruction through reserve or timidity. And if things were so in the green-tree time of the Muratoris, what shall be done in the dry stump of modern Lombardy or Tuscany? Of certain important manuscripts recently discovered at Rome, and now in the course of publication, we regret to learn that the authenticity is considered too questionable to allow of their being brought forward to any useful purpose: so that, for the present, this result of Mr. Wilde's labour, now before us, must be regarded as conclusive: and fortunately our last, proves also our best, news. It is pleasant to find that the popular notion (we might say instinct) concerning this particular point of Tasso's career, grown up, uncertain how, from biographical gleanings here and gatherings there,컴somewhat shaken, as it was sure to be, by subsequent representations,컴seems again confirmed by these latest discoveries. A couplet in a canzone, a paragraph in an epistle, had thus been sufficient to begin with. "Tasso was punished in a living hell by angels, because he unburthened his bosom to his lyre." "He would fain be released from this prison of Saint Anna without being troubled for those things which from frenzy he has done and written in matters of love." After these, and a few other like notices, Professors might search, and Abbates research; the single Leonora become "three lady-loves at once;" and the dim torture at Ferrara a merciful effect of Duke Alfonso's consideration for "Signor Tasso, the noted poet's, deplorable madness;"컴but the world, satisfied with its own suspicion, remained deaf to it all. "If we suppose," sums up Mr. Wilde, "that his imprisonment was occasioned by the accidental or treacherous disclosure of amatory poetry suspected to be addressed to the princess, every thing becomes intelligible컴his mistress's early injunctions of silence컴his directions to Rondinelli컴the dearer mysteries of his heart half-hinted to Gonzaga컴the reference to her who corresponded so little to his love컴his heavy sin of temerity컴Madalo's more important treasons컴the attempt to extort confession컴the bitter rigour and unwonted arts컴the words and acts that might increase Alfonso's ire컴the order to feign insanity컴the sacrifice of Abraham컴the command that he must aspire to no fame of letters컴the prohibition to write컴the anger of the princesses컴the allusions to his fond faults컴to his Proserpine컴to Ixion, and to the angels that punished him. By this supposition, also, Leonora's voluntary celibacy, notwithstanding the most advantageous offers of marriage, and Tasso's constant devotion to the duke, in spite of the rigour of his chastisement, are sufficiently accounted for." How much that establishes old convictions, and how little that is even supplementary to them, have we here! Such as it is, however, in what Mr. Wilde has done, he has gone the right way to work and done it well. He has steadily restricted himself to the single point in question. It is that point in the poet's history, indeed, from which those to whom sonnets and madrigals, the Rinaldo and Aminta, are all but unknown, will take warrant for some belief in their reported truth and beauty. It is undoubtedly that to which every student of Italian verse must refer the touching glimmer, as an outbreak through prison-bars, that colours every page of the Giurusalemme. Still it is but a point; and Mr. Wilde has not perhaps done less well in leaving the rest untouched, than in accomplishing so thoroughly the task he took in hand. He relies upon his subject; is sure of the service he can render by an efficacious treatment of thus much of it; nor entertains any fear lest the bringing in a Before and After, with which he has no immediate concern, should be thought necessary to give interest to the At Present on which he feels he can labour to advantage. We suspect that if we would make any material progress in knowledge of this description, such works must be so undertaken. If, for example, the materials for a complete biography of Tasso are far from exhausted, let some other traveller from the west be now busied in the land of Columbus and Vespucci with the investigation,컴say, of the circumstances of the wondrous youth of Tasso; the orations at Naples and the Theses at Padua,컴and in the end we should more than probably have two spots of sunshine to find our way by, instead of one such breadth of dubious twilight, as, in a hazy book written on the old principle of doing a little for every part of a subject, and more than a little for none, rarely fails to perplex the more. Thinking thus, and grieving over what must be admitted to be the scantiness of the piece of sunshine here, and the narrow and not very novel track it would alone serve to lead us into,컴a book was sent to us on a subject not very different from Mr. Wilde's, but on which the service he has sought to render to the memory of Tasso has not hitherto been attempted for a memory more foully outraged. We make no apology for a proposed effort to render some such service. It is no very abrupt desertion of the misfortunes of Tasso, to turn to the misfortunes of Chatterton. All these disputed questions in the lives of men of genius컴all these so-called calamities of authors컴have a common relationship, a connexion so close and inalienable, that they seldom fail to throw important light upon each other. To the precocity of genius in the Neapolitan boy at seven years old컴the verse and prose from the College of the Jesuits컴no parallel can be found in modern times, till we arrive at the verses of Chatterton, to whom Campbell has very properly said "Tasso alone may be compared as a juvenile prodigy." But the parallel will, in other respects, admit of application. The book before us, for example, on the love and madness of the Italian, is in itself a direct text from which to speak of what concerns us most in the disputed character of our own countryman. As the whole of Mr. Wilde's argument may be said to include itself in his commentary upon the opening couplet of the first Sonnet of the Collection of Rime, "True were the loves and transports which I sung," so let us say of the Englishman, that his were far from that untruth, that absence of reality, so constantly charged against them. In a word, poor Chatterton's life was not the Lie it is so universally supposed to have been; nor did he "perish in the pride" of refusing to surrender Falsehood and enter on the ways of Truth. We can show, we think, and by some such process as Mr. Wilde adopts in regard to Tasso, that he had already entered on those ways when he was left, without a helping hand, to sink and starve as he might. And to this single point we shall as far as possible restrict ourselves. Mr. Wilde remarks of the great Italian, that though there are indeed passages in Tasso's life and letters, scarcely reconcilable with the strict regard for truth which Manso, his friend and contemporary, ascribes to him, "yet that to whatever dissimulation he may have been driven, upon some memorable occasions컴by a hard and, if you will, a criminal, but still almost irresistible necessity컴there is no reason to believe him habitually insincere: and that, avoiding every subtle refinement, it cannot be too much to assume that he was like other men, who in the absence of all inducement, were not supposed deliberately to utter falsehood." It shall be our endeavour, by extending the application of this text from Tasso to Chatterton, to throw a new light upon a not dissimilar portion of the latter poet's career, and in some degree soften those imputations of habitual insincerity with which the most sympathizing of Chatterton's critics have found themselves compelled to replace the "great veracity" attributed to him by his earliest and most partial biographer. For Tasso, a few words will say how his first false step was an indiscretion; how, having published love-poetry under a false name and suffered himself to be suspected its author, he, to avoid the ill-consequences, feigned at the Duke's suggestion, Madness; and how his protracted agony at Saint Anna was but an unremitting attempt to free himself from the effect of this false step without being compelled to reveal the truth, and disavow his whole proceedings since the time of that sad starting-aside from the right way. But before we speak of the corresponding passage in Chatterton's story, something should be premised respecting the characteristic shape his first error took, as induced by the liabilities of that peculiar development of genius of which he was the subject. Genius almost invariably begins to develop itself by imitation. It has, in the short-sightedness of infancy, faith in the world: and its object is to compete with, or prove superior to, the world's already recognised idols, at their own performances and by their own methods. This done, there grows up a faith in itself: and, no longer taking the performance or method of another for granted, it supersedes these by processes of its own. It creates, and imitates no longer. Seeing cause for faith in something external and better, and having attained to a moral end and aim, it next discovers in itself the only remaining antagonist worthy of its ambition, and in the subduing what at first had seemed its most enviable powers, arrives at the more or less complete fulfilment of its earthly mission. This first instinct of Imitation, which with the mediocre takes the corresponding mediocre form of an implied rather than expressed appropriation of some other man's products, assumed perforce with Chatterton, whose capabilities were of the highest class, a proportionably bolder and broader shape in the direction his genius had chosen to take. And this consideration should have checked the too severe judgment of what followed. For, in simple truth, the startling character of Chatterton's presentment, with all its strange and elaborately got up accompaniments, was in no more than strict keeping with that of the thing he presented. For one whose boy's essay was "Rowley" (a Man, a Time, a Language, all at once) the simultaneous essay of inventing the details of the muniment-room treasures and yellow-roll discoveries, by no means exceeded in relative hardihood the mildest possible annexing컴whatever the modern author's name may be컴to the current poetry or prose of the time. But, alas! for the mere complacent forbearance of the world in the one case, must come sharp and importunate questionings in the other; and, at every advance in such a career, the impossibility of continuing in the spirit of the outset grows more and more apparent. To begin with the step of a giant is one thing, suddenly for another's satisfaction to increase to a colossal stride is a very different. To the falsehood of the mediocre, truth may easily be superinduced, and true works, with them, silently take the place of false works; but before one like Chatterton could extricate himself from the worse than St. Anna dungeon which every hour was building up more surely between him and the common earth and skies, so much was to be dared and done! That the attempt was courageously made in Chatterton's case, there are many reasons for believing. But to understand his true position, we must remove much of the colouring which subsequent occurrences imparted to the dim beginnings of his course of deception. He is to the present day viewed as a kind of Psalmanazar or Macpherson, producing deliberately his fabrications to the world and challenging its attention to them. A view far from the truth. Poor Chatterton never had that chance. Before the world could be appealed to, a few untoward circumstances seem to have effectually determined and given stability to what else had not impossibly proved a mere boy's fancy, destined to go as lightly as it came and leave no trace, save in a fresh exertion of the old means to a new and more commensurate end. In September, 1768, a New Bridge at Bristol was completed, and early in the next month the principal newspaper of the city contained a prose "description of the Fryar's (Mayor's) first passing over the Old Bridge, taken from an old manuscript." The attention of컴what are called in the accounts we have seen컴"the literati of Bristol," was excited. Application was made to the publisher for a sight of the surprising and interesting original. No such thing was forthcoming; but the curiosity of Literati must be appeased; and the bearer of the newspaper marvel, one Thomas Chatterton,컴a youth of sixteen, educated at Colston's Charity-school where reading, writing and arithmetic only were taught, and, since, a clerk to an attorney of the place,컴was recognised on his next appearance at the printing-office with another contribution, and questioned whence he obtained that first-named paper. He was questioned "with threatenings in the first instance, to which he refused any answer, and next with milder usage and promises of patronage,"컴which extorted from him at last the confession, that the manuscript was one of many his father (parish clerk, usher, or sexton) had taken from a coffer in the church of St. Mary, Redcliff. It was his own composition; and being the first of what are called the Rowleian forgeries, suggests a remark upon literary forgery in general, and that of Chatterton in particular. Is it worth while to mention, that the very notion of obtaining a free way for impulses that can find vent in no other channel (and consequently of a liberty conceded to an individual, and denied to the world at large), is implied in all literary production? By this fact is explained, not only the popular reverence for, and interest in even the personal history of, the acknowledged and indisputable possessors of this power컴as so many men who have leave to do what the rest of their fellows cannot컴but also the as popular jealousy of allowing this privilege to the first claimant. And so instinctively does the Young Poet feel that his desire for this kind of self-enfranchisement will be resisted as a matter of course, that we will venture to say, in nine cases out of ten his first assumption of the licence will be made in a borrowed name. The first communication, to even the family circle or the trusted associate, is sure to be "the work of a friend;" if not "Englished from the German." So is the way gracefully facilitated for Reader and Hearer finding themselves in a new position with respect to each other. Now unluckily, in Chatterton's case, this communication's whole value, in the eyes of the Bristolians, consisted in its antiquity. Apart from that, there was to them no picturesqueness in "Master Mayor, mounted on a white horse, dight with sable trappings wrought about by the nuns of St. Kenna;" no "most goodly show in the priests and freres all in white albs." Give that up, and all was given; and poor Chatterton could not give all up. He could only determine for the future to produce Ellas and Godwyns, and other "beauteous pieces;" wherein "the plot should be clear, the language spirited; and the songs interspersed in it, flowing, poetical, and elegantly simple; the similes judiciously applied; and though written in the reign of Henry VI., not inferior to many of the present age." Had there but been any merit of this kind, palpable even to Bristol Literati, to fall back upon in the first instance, if the true authorship were confessed! But that was otherwise; and so the false course, as we have said, was unforeseeingly entered upon. Yet still, from the first, he was singularly disposed to become communicative of his projects and contrivances for carrying them into effect. There was, after all, no such elaborate deception about any of them. Indeed, had there only happened to be a single individual of ordinary intelligence among his intimates, the event must assuredly have fallen out differently. But as it was, one companion would be present at the whole process of "antiquating," as Chatterton styled it, his productions (the pounding of ochre and crumpling of parchments); another would hear him carelessly avow himself master of a power "to copy, by the help of books he could name, the style of our elder poets so exactly, that they should escape the detection of Mr. Walpole himself;"컴and yet both these persons remain utterly incapable of perceiving that such circumstances had in the slightest degree a bearing upon after events at Bristol! It is to be recollected, too, that really in Bristol itself there was not any thing like a general interest excited in the matter. And when at last, yielding to the pertinacity of inquirers, these and similar facts came lingeringly forth, as the details of so many natural appearances with which unconscious rustics might furnish the philosopher anxious to report and reason upon them컴Chatterton was dead. Of several of his most characteristic compositions, he confessed, at various times, on the least solicitation, the authorship. He had found and versified the argument of the Bristowe Tragedy컴he had written the Lines on our Ladye's Church. But these confidences were only to his mother and sister. Why? Because mother and sister were all who cared for him rather than for Rowley, and would look at his connection with any verses as a point in their favour. As for his two patrons, Barrett and Catcott, they took great interest in the yellow streaks, and verse written like prose without stops; less interest in the poetry; and in Chatterton least, or none at all! And a prophet's fate in his own country was never more amusingly exemplified than when grave Deans and Doctors, writing to inquire after Chatterton's abilities of his old companions, got the answers on record. "Not having any taste myself for ancient poetry," writes Mr. Cary, "I do not recollect Chatterton's ever having shown such writings to me, but he often mentioned them, when, great as his capacity was, I am convinced that he was incapable of writing them!" "He had intimated," remarks Mr. Smith, "very frequently both a desire to learn, and a design to teach himself컴Latin; but I always dissuaded him from it, as being in itself impracticable. But I advised him by all means to try at French. As to Latin, depend upon it you will find it too hard for you. Try at French, if you please: of that you may acquire some knowledge without much difficulty, and it will be of real service to you." "And, sir," winds up Mr. Clayfield, "take my word for it, the poems were no more his composition than mine!" With such as these there was no fellowship possible for Chatterton. We soon discover him, therefore, looking beyond. From the time of his communication of the Rowley poems, "his ambition," writes Mrs. Newton, his sister, "increased daily. When in spirits he would enjoy his rising fame; confident of advancement, he would promise that my mother and I should be partakers of his success." As a transcriber, we suppose! We find Sir Herbert Croft, to whom this very letter was addressed, declaring "that he will not be sure that the writer and her mother might not have easily been made to believe that injured justice demanded their lives at Tyburn, for being the relatives of him who forged the poems of Rowley." Thus only, in this sideway at the best, could the truth steal out. Meanwhile the sorry reception given to the so-called falsehood produced its natural effects. On the one hand there is a kind of ambition on being introduced to Mr. Barrett and Mr. Catcott, which increases daily; but on the other we are told that his spirits became at the same time "rather uneven컴sometimes so gloomed, that for some days together he would say very little, and that by constraint." No doubt, and no wonder! For there was the sense of his being the author of the transcendent chorus to Freedom, or the delicious roundelay in Ella; ever at fierce variance with the pitiful claim he was entitled to make in the character of their mere transcriber. We shall not pursue this painful part of the question. Day followed day, and found him only more and more deeply involved. What we have restricted our inquiry to, is the justice or injustice of the common charge that henceforth the whole nature of Chatterton became no other than one headstrong spirit of Falsehood, in the midst of which, and by which, he perished at the last. And we think its injustice will be shown without much difficulty, in showing that he really made the most gallant and manly effort of which his circumstances allowed to break through the sorry meshes that entangled him. We purposely forbear, with any view to this, taking for granted the mere instigation of that Moral Sense which it is the worst want of charity to deny to him, and with direct and strong evidences of which his earliest poetry abounded. We will simply inquire what, in the circumstances referred to, would have been the proper course to pursue, had the writer of the "Bristowe Tragedy" chanced to adopt on a single occasion the practice of its hero, "who summed the actions of the day each night before he slept." Confessions at the market-cross avail nothing, and most injure those to whom they are unavoidably made. Should he not have resolutely left Bristol, at least? and, disengaging himself from the still increasing trammels of his daily life of enforced deceit, begun elsewhere a wiser and happier course? That he did so may in our opinion be shown. It is our firm belief that on this, and no other account, he determined to go to London. "A few months before he left Bristol," mentions his sister, "he wrote letters to several booksellers in London컴I believe to learn if there was any probability of his getting an employment there." He had some time previously applied to Dodsley, the noted publisher, for his assistance in printing the tragedy of Ella; on the strength of a submitted specimen, which the great man of the Mall did not vouchsafe, it seems, to glance over. He was led, therefore, to make a final experiment on the taste and apprehensiveness of Horace Walpole: not, as in Dodsley's case, by enclosing the despised poetical samples, but by sending a piece of antiquarian ware in which his presumed patron was understood to especially delight. Of nothing are we so thoroughly persuaded as that these attempts were the predetermined last acts of a course of dissimulation he would fain discard for ever컴on their success. The Rowleian compositions were all he could immediately refer to, as a proof of the ability he was desirous of employing in almost any other direction. He grounded no claim on his possession of these MSS.; he was not soliciting an opportunity of putting off to advantage the stock in hand, or increasing; and when Walpole subsequently avowed his regret at having omitted to transcribe before returning, the manuscript thus received, what has been cited as a singular piece of unprincipled effrontery, appears to us perfectly justifiable. For even after the arrival of a discouraging letter, Chatterton's words are, that "if Mr. Walpole wishes to publish them himself, they are at his service." Nay컴Mr. Barrett, or "the Town and Country Magazine, to which copies may be sent," or indeed "the world, which it would be the greatest injustice to deprive of so invaluable a curiosity"컴may have them and welcome. And Chatterton's anxiety to recover them afterwards is only intelligible on the supposition that his originals were in jeopardy. To the very conceited question Walpole himself has asked컴"Did Chatterton impute to me anything but distrust of his MSS.?"컴we should answer, Every thing but that. Let the young poet's own verses, indeed, answer. Walpole, I thought not I should ever see So mean a heart as thine has proved to be: Thou, who in luxury nursed, behold'st with scorn The boy who friendless, fatherless, forlorn, Asks thy high favour. Thou mayst call me cheat컴 Say didst thou never practice such deceit? Who wrote Otranto?컴but I will not chide. Scorn I'll repay with scorn, and pride with pride. Had I the gifts of wealth and luxury shared컴 Not poor and mean컴Walpole! thou hadst not dared Thus to insult. But I shall live and stand By Rowley's side, when thou art dead and damned. In this unhappy correspondence with Walpole,컴it never seems to have been admitted, yet it cannot be said too often,컴there is no new "falsehood" discernible: there is nothing but an unavailing and most affecting effort, to get somehow free from the old. He makes no asseveration of the fact of his discoveries; affirms nothing the denial of which hereafter would be essentially disgraceful to him; commits himself by only a few ambiguous words which at any time a little plain speaking (and blushes, if we will) would explain away. Let it be observed, above all, that there is no attempt to forge, and produce, and insist on the genuineness of the MSS.; though this was a step by which he could have lost nothing and might have gained every thing, since Walpole's recognition of their extraordinary merit was before him. In the course the correspondence took, alas! that very recognition was fatal. If Walpole could suspect a boy of sixteen had written thus, and yet see nothing in a scrivener's office and its duties which such an one had any title to withdraw from, all was over with Chatterton's hopes. At this point, accordingly, he simply replied that, "he is not able to dispute with a person of his literary character: he has transcribed Rowley's poems from a transcript in the possession of a gentleman who is assured of their authenticity," (poor Catcott!) "and he will go a little beyond Walpole's advice, by destroying all his useless lumber of literature and never urging his pen again but in the law." Is this any very close or deliberate keeping of Rowley's secret! In a word, he felt that Walpole should have said, "Because I firmly believe you, Chatterton, wrote or forged these verses of Rowley, I will do what you require." And so we all feel now. And what was it the poor baffled youth required? To ascertain this will in a manner satisfy our whole inquiry컴so let us try to ascertain it. His immediate application to Walpole, on his succeeding in forcing his notice, and seemingly engaging his interest, was for some place in a government-office. Did he want to be richer? who had from his earliest boyhood been accustomed to live upon bread and water, and who would refuse to partake of his mother's occasional luxury of a hot meal,컴remarking that "he was about a great work, and must make himself no stupider than God had made him." Did he want to obtain leisure, then, for this work컴in other words, for the carrying on of his old deceptions? "He had," says his sister, "little of his master's business to do컴sometimes not two hours in a day, which gave him an opportunity to pursue his genius." Mr. Palmer states, that "Chatterton was much alone in his office, and much disliked being disturbed in the day-time." We should like to know what kind of government-office would have allowed greater facility for the pursuit of poetical studies and "forgeries" than he was already in possession of; since what advantages, in a literary life, government-office-labour can have over law-business, we are far from guessing. It may be said that the pure disgust and weariness of that law business had formed motive sufficient. But our sympathy with Chatterton's struggles컴were nothing to be escaped from worse than this "servitude" as he styles it컴would seriously diminish, we confess. Relieve Henry Jones from the bricklayer's hod, and Stephen Duck from the thrasher's flail, if needs must: but Chatterton, from two hours a day's copying precedents!컴Ay, but "he was obliged to sleep in the same room as the footboy, and take his meals with the servants컴which degradation, to one possessing such pride as Chatterton, must have been mortifying in the highest degree!" Now, Chatterton taking his stand on the inherent qualities of his own mind, shall part company with an Emperor, if he so please, and have our approbation; but let him waive that prerogative, and condescend to the little rules of little men, and we shall not sufficiently understand this right컴in a blue-coat charity-boy, apprenticed out with ten pounds of the school-fund, and looking for patronage to pipe-makers and pewterers컴to cherish this sensitiveness of contamination. There are more degrading things than eating with footboys, we imagine. "The desire," for example, "of proving oneself worthy the correspondence of Mr. Stephens (leather breeches-maker of Salisbury) by tracing his family from Fitz Stephen, son of Stephen, Earl of Aumerle, in 1095, son of Od, Earl of Bloys, and Lord of Holderness." In a word, Chatterton was very proud, and such crotchets never yet entered the head of a truly proud man. Another motive remains. Had he any dislike to Bristol or its inhabitants generally? "His company pleased universally," he says: "he believed he had promised to write to some hundreds of his acquaintance." And for the place itself,컴while at London, nothing out of the Gothic takes his taste, except St. Paul's and Greenwich-hospital: he is never tired of talking in his letters about Bristol, its Cathedral, its street improvements: he even inserts hints to the projectors of these last, in a local paper: nay, he will forestall his mother's intended visit to him at London, and return to Bristol by Christmas: and when somebody suggested, just before his departure, that his professed hatred for the city was connected with ill-treatment received there, he returns, indignantly, "He who without a more sufficient reason than commonplace scurrility can look with disgust on his native place, is a villain, and a villain not fit to live. I am obliged to you for supposing me such a villain!" Why then, without this hatred or disgust, does he leave Bristol? Whence arises the utmost distress of mind in which the mad "Will," whereby he announced his intention of committing suicide, is written? On being questioned concerning it "he acknowledged that he wanted for nothing, and denied any distress on that account." "The distress was occasioned," says Dr. Gregory, "by the refusal of a gentleman whom he had complimented in his poems, to accommodate him with a supply of money." Here are his own reasons. "In regard to my motives for the supposed rashness, I shall observe that I keep no worse company than myself: I never drink to excess, and have, without vanity, too much sense to be attached to the mercenary retailers of iniquity. No: it is my PRIDE, my damned, native, unconquerable pride, that plunges me into distraction. You must know that nineteen-twentieth of my composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own, which I may freely declare as such; or DIE. Perplexing alternative! But it distracts me to think of it컴I will endeavour to learn Humility컴but it cannot be HERE!" That is, at Bristol. It is needless for us here to interpose that our whole argument goes, not upon what Chatterton said, but what he did: it is part of our proof to show that all his distress arose out of the impossibility of his saying anything to the real purpose. But is there no approximation to the truth in what has just been quoted? Had he not reduced himself to the alternative of living, as Rowley's transcriber, "a slave, with no sentiment of his own which he might freely declare as such," or "dying?" And did not the proud man컴who, when he felt somewhat later that he had failed, would not bring his poverty to accept the offer of a meal to escape "dying"컴solicit and receive, while earlier there was yet the hope of succeeding, his old companions' "subscription of a guinea apiece," to enable himself to break through the "slavery?" This, then, is our solution. For this and no other motive컴to break through his slavery컴at any sacrifice to get back to truth컴he came up to London. It will, of course, be objected, that Chatterton gave the very reasons for his desire to obtain a release from Bristol that we have rejected. But he was forced to say something, and what came more plausibly? To Walpole the cause assigned was, "that he wished to cease from being dependant on his mother;"컴while, by a reference to his indenture of apprenticeship, we find him to have been supplied with "meat, drink, clothing, and lodging" by his master. To others the mercantile character of Bristol is made an insuperable objection;컴and he straightway leaves it for Holborn. As who, to avoid the smell of hemlock, should sail to Anticyra! It may also yet be urged컴as it has been too often컴that Chatterton gave to the very last, occasional symptoms that the fabricating, falsifying spirit was far from extinct in him. "He would turn Methodist preacher, found a new sect," &c. Now no one can suppose, and we are far from asserting, that at word of command Chatterton wholly put aside the old habit of imposing upon people컴if that is to be the phrase. But this "imposing upon people" has not always that basest meaning. It is old as the world itself, the tendency of certain spirits to subdue each man by perceiving what will master him, by straightway supplying it from their own resources, and so obtaining, as tokens of success, his admiration, or fear, or wonder. It has been said even that classes of men are immediately ruled in no other way. Poor Chatterton's freedom from some such tendency we do not claim. He is indeed superior to it when alone, in the lumber-closet on Redcliff Hill, or the lath-walled garret at Shoreditch; but in company with the Thistlethwaites and Burgums, he must often have felt a certain power he had, lying dormant there, of turning their natures to his own account. He, "knowing that a great genius can effect anything, endeavoured in the foregoing poems to represent an Enthusiastic Methodist, and intended to send it to Romaine, and impose it on the infatuated world as a reality;"컴but Now, no sooner is the intellectual effort made than the moral one succeeds, and destroying these poems he determined to kill himself. Every way unsuccessful, every way discouraged, the last scene had come. When he killed himself, his room was found "strewn thick over with torn papers." To the Rowley forgeries he had recurred but in one instance, the acknowledgment of which by a magazine only appeared after his death. He had come to London to produce works of his own; writings he had hoped to get some hearing for. "At the Walmsleys," says Sir Herbert Croft, "he used frequently to say he had many writings by him, which would produce a great deal of money, if they were printed. To this it was once or twice observed, that they lay in a small compass, for that he had not much luggage. But he said he had them, nevertheless. When he talked of writing something which should procure him money to get some clothes컴to paper the room in which he lodged; and to send some more things to his sister, mother, and grandmother컴he was aked why he did not enable himself to do all this by means of these writings which were `worth their weight in gold.' His answer was, that `they were not written with a design to buy old clothes, or to paper rooms; and that if the world did not behave well, it should never see a line of them.'" It behaves indifferently, we think, in being so sure these were simply fresh books of the "Battle of Hastings," or remodellings of "the Apostate." Look back a little, and see to what drudgery he had submitted in this London, that he could but get the means at last of going on his own ground. "A History of England"컴"a voluminous history of London; to appear in numbers the beginning of next week"컴"necessitates him to go to Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln, Coventry, and every collegiate church near." 컴Any thing but Rowley! And when the hopes he had entertained of engaging in such projects fail him, he cheerfully betakes himself to the lowest of all literary labour. He writes any thing and every thing for the magazines. Projects the Moderator; supports the Town and Country; "writes, for a whim, for the Gospel Magazine;" contributes to the London, Middlesex Freeholders', Court and City;컴and Registers and Museums get all they ask from him. Thus, we say, with these ultimate views, was he constantly at work in this London pilgrimage; at work, heart and soul; living on a halfpenny roll, or a penny tart, and a glass of water a day, with now and then a sheep's tongue; writing all the while brave letters about his happiness and success to his grandmother, mother, and sister at Bristol, the only creatures he loved as they loved him; and managing, in as miraculous a way as any of his old exercises of power, to buy them china, and fans, and gowns, and so forth, out of his (we cannot calculate how few) pence a day;컴being, as such a genius could not but be, the noblest-hearted of mortals. To be sure he had better have swept a crossing in the streets than adopted such a method of getting bread and water; but he had tried to find another outlet till he was sick to the soul, and in this he had been driven to he resolved to stay. If he could, he would have got, for instance, his livelihood as a surgeon. "Before he left Bristol, Mr. Barrett," says his sister, "lent him many books on surgery, and I believe he bought many more, as I remember to have packed them up to send to him in London;" and almost the only intelligible phrase in a mad letter of gibberish, addressed to a friend about the same time, is to the effect that "he is resolved to forsake the Parnassian mount, and would advise that friend to do so too, and attain the mystery of composing smegma"컴ointment we suppose. But nobody would help him, and this way he was helping himself, though never so little. Sufficient for the Magazine price and Magazine purpose was the piece contributed. "Maria Friendless" and the "Hunter of Oddities" may be a medley of Johnson and Steele;컴the few shillings they brought, fully they were worth, though only meant to give a minute's pleasure. As well expect to find, at this time of day, the sheep's tongues on which he lived unwasted, and the halfpenny loaves no way diminished, as find his poor "Oratorio" (the price of a gown for his sister), or bundle of words for tunes that procured these viands, as pleasant as ever. "Great profligacy and tergiversification in his political writings!" is muttered now, and was solemnly outspoken once, as if he were not in some sort still a scrivener컴writing out in plain text-hand the wants of all kinds of men of all kinds of parties. Such sought utterance, and had a right to find it컴there was an end. There might be plenty of falsehood in this new course, as he would soon have found; but it seemed as truth itself, compared with the old expedients he had escaped from. The point is, No more Rowley. His connexion with the Magazines had commenced with Rowley컴they had readily inserted portions of his poems컴and we cannot conceive a more favourable field of enterprise than London would have afforded, had he been disposed to go on with the fabrication. No prying intimates, nor familiar townsmen, in Mrs. Angel's quiet lodging! He had the ear, too, of many booksellers. Now would indeed have been the white minute for discoveries and forgeries. He was often pressed for matter; had to solicit all his Bristol acquaintance for contributions (some of such go under his own name now, possibly); but with the one exception we have alluded to (affecting for a passage in which his own destitute condition is too expressly described to admit of mistake)컴the Ballad of Charity컴Rowley was done with. We shall go no farther컴the little we proposed to attempt, having here its completion컴though the plastic and co-ordinating spirit which distinguishes Chatterton so remarkably, seems perhaps stronger than ever in these last few days of his existence. We must not stay to speak of it. But ever in Chatterton did his acquisitions, varied and abundant as they were, do duty so as to seem but a little out of more in reserve. If only a foreign word clung to his memory, he was sure to reproduce it as if a whole language lay close behind컴setting sometimes to work with the poorest materials; like any painter a fathom below ground in the Inquisition, who in his penury of colour turns the weather-stains on his dungeon wall into effects of light and shade, or outlines of objects, and makes the single sputter of red paint in his possession go far indeed! Not that we consider the mere fabrication of old poetry so difficult a matter. For what is poetry, whether old or new, will have its full flow in such a scheme; and any difficulty or uncouthness of phrase that elsewhere would stop its course at once, here not only passes with it, but confers the advantage of authenticity on what, in other circumstances, it deforms: the uncouthness will be set down to our time, and whatever significancy may lurk in it will expand to an original meaning of unlimited magnitude. But there is fine, the finest poetry in Chatterton. And surely, when such an Adventurer so perishes in the Desert, we do not limit his discoveries to the last authenticated spot of ground he pitched tent upon, dug intrenchments round, and wrote good tidings home from컴but rather give him the benefit of the very last heap of ashes we can trace him to have kindled, and call by his name the extreme point to which we can track his torn garments and abandoned treasures. Thus much has been suggested by Mr. Wilde's method with Tasso. As by balancing conflicting statements, interpreting doubtful passages, and reconciling discrepant utterances, he has examined whether Tasso was true or false, loved or did not love the Princess of Este, was or was not beloved by her,컴so have we sought, from similar evidences, if Chatterton was towards the end of his life hardening himself in deception or striving to cast it off. Let others apply in like manner our inquiry to other great spirits partially obscured, and they will but use us컴we hope more effectually컴as we have used these able and interesting volumes.