too expensive, he removed to a Mr. Angell's, sac (or dress) maker, 4, Brook Street, Holborn. This woman, who seems to have been of a gentle nature, finding that for two days he had confined himself to his room, and gone without sustenance, invited him to dine with her; but he was offended, and assured her he was not hungry. It is quite impossible to account for this uncalled for pride. It was his nature. Lord Byron said he was mad: according to his view of the case, all eccentricity is madness; but in the case of unhappy Chatterton, that madness which arises from "hope deferred," was unquestionably endured. Three days before his death, pursuing, with a friend, the melancholy and speculative employment of reading epitaphs in the churchyard of St. Pancras, absorbed by his own reflections, he fell into a new-made grave. There was something akin to the raven's croak, the death-fetch, the fading spectre, in this foreboding accident: he smiled at it, and told his friend he felt the sting of speedy dissolution:—

At the age of seventeen years and nine months, his career ended; it was shown that he had swallowed arsenic in water, and so—

An inquest was held, and yet though Englishmen—men who could read and write, and hear—who must have heard of the boy's talents, either as a poet, a satirist, or a political writer—though these men were guided by a coroner, one, of course, in a more elevated sphere than those who usually determine the intentions of the departed soul—yet was there not one—not one of them all—with sufficient veneration for the casket which had contained the diamond—not one with enough of sympathy for the widow's son—to wrap his body in a decent shroud, and kneel in Christian piety by his grave!—not one to pause and think that, between genius and madness,

In a letter from Southey to Mr. Britton (dated in 1810, to which we have already referred, and which Mr. Britton kindly submitted to us with various other correspondence on the subject), he says, "there can now be no impropriety in mentioning what could not be said when the collected edition of Chatterton's works was published,—that there was a taint of insanity in his family. His sister was once confined; and this is a key to the eccentricities of his life, and the deplorable rashness of his death." Of this unhappy predisposition, indeed, he seems to have been himself conscious, for "in his last will and testament," written in April, 1770, before he quitted Bristol, when he seems to have meditated suicide—although, from the mock-heroic style of the document his serious design may be questioned,—he writes, "If I do a mad action, it is conformable to every action of my life, which all savored of insanity." His "sudden fits of weeping, for which no reason could be assigned," when a mere child, were but the preludes to those gloomy forebodings which haunted him when a boy. His mother had said, "she was often apprehensive of his going mad."

And so,—the verdict having been pronounced, he was cast into the burying-ground of Shoe Lane work-house—the paupers' burying-ground,—the end, as far as his clayey tabernacle was concerned, of all his dreamy greatness. When the ear was deaf to the worship of the charmer, he received his meed of posthumous praise. Malone, Croft, Dr. Knox, Wharton, Sherwin, Pye, Mrs. Cowley, Walter Scott, Haley, Coleridge, Dermody, Wordsworth, Shelley, William Howitt, Keats, who dedicated his "Endymion" to the memory of his fellow-genius; the burly Johnson, whose praise seemed unintentional; the gentle and most Christian poet, James Montgomery,—have each and all offered tributes to his memory. Robert Southey, whose polished, strong and long unclouded mind was a treasure-house of noble-thoughts, assisted Mr. Cottle in providing for the poet's family by a collection of his works; and, though last, not least, excellent John Britton has labored all his long life to render justice to the poor boy's memory. To him, indeed, it was mainly owing, that the cenotaph to which we have referred (and which now lies mouldering in the Church vault), was erected in the graveyard of Redcliffe Church, by subscription, of which the contributions of Bristol were very small.[12]

Chatterton was another warning, not only

but that no mortal should ever abandon Hope! for a reverend gentleman,—who was, in all things, what, unhappily, Horace Walpole was not,—had actually visited Bristol, to seek out and aid the boy while he lay dead in London.

CHATTERTON'S MONUMENT.

The knowledge of these facts cheered us as we set forth to the neighborhood of Shoe-Lane to see the spot where he had been laid. Alas, it is very hard to keep pace with the progress of London changes. After various inquiries, we were told that Mr. Bentley's printing office stands upon the ground of Shoe-Lane Workhouse. We ascended the steps leading to this shifting emporium of letters, and found ourselves face to face with a kind gentleman, who told us all he knew upon the subject, which was, that the printing office stands—not upon the burying-ground of Shoe-Lane Workhouse, where he had always understood Chatterton was buried—but upon the church burial-ground. He showed us a very curious basso-relievo, in cut-stone, of the Resurrection, which he assured us had been "time out of mind" above the entrance to the Shoe-Lane burying-place "over the way," and which is now the site of Farrington Market. This, when "all the bones" were moved to the old graveyard in Gray's Inn Road, had come "somehow" into Mr. Bentley's possession.

We were told also that Mr. Taylor, another printer, had lived, before the workhouse was pulled down, where his office-window looked upon the spot pointed out as the grave of Chatterton, and that a stone, "a rough white stone," was remembered to have been "set in a wall" near the grave with "Thomas Chatterton" and something else "scratched" into it.

We strayed back through the damp chill of the city's evening fog to the market-place, hoping, even unconsciously, to stand beside the pit into which the marvellous boy had been thrust; but we grew bewildered. And as we stood upon the steps looking down upon the market—alone in feeling, and unconscious of every thing but our own thoughts—St. Paul's bell struck, full, loud, and clear; and, casting our eyes upward, we saw its mighty dome through the murky atmosphere. We became still more "mazed," and fancied we were gazing upon the monument of Thomas Chatterton!