Could Burgum then-my critic, patron, friend- No, that would be imprudent in the man : This disappointment throws him into a state of humour bordering on the suicidal; and, being left alone in his master's office on the Saturday forenoon following, he displays it by penning a kind of satirical will or suicide's farewell to the world. This extraordinary document, which is still extant, is headed thus: "All this wrote between 11 and 2 o'clock, Saturday, in the utmost distress of mind, April 14, 1770;” and, after some fifty lines of verse addressed to Burgum, the Rev. Mr. Catcott, and Barrett, it proceeds as follows:— "This is the last will and testament of me, Thomas Chatterton, of the city of Bristol; being sound in body, or it is the fault of my last surgeon: the soundness of my mind the coroner and jury are to be judges of desiring them to take notice that the most perfect masters of human nature in Bristol distinguish me by the title of the mad genius; therefore, if I do a mad action, it is conformable to every action of my life, which all savoured of insanity. “Item.—If, after my death, which will happen to-morrow night before eight o'clock, being the Feast of the Resurrection, the coroner and jury bring it in lunacy, I will and direct that Paul Farr, Esq., and Mr. John Flower, at their joint expense, cause my body to be interred in the tomb of my fathers, and raise the monument over my body to the height of four feet five inches, placing the present flat stone on the top, and adding six tablets. ["Here follow directions for certain engravings to be placed on the six tablets viz., on two of them, fronting each other, certain heraldic achievements; on another, an inscription, in old English characters, to his ancestor, Guatevine Chatterton, A.D. 1210; on another, an inscription, in the same character, to another ancestor, Alanus Chatterton, A.D. 1415; on another, an inscription, in Roman letters, to the memory of his father; and on the remaining one, this epitaph to himself :— 66 "TO THE MEMORY OF Reader, judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a supreme power: to that power alone is he now answerable.”] "And I will and direct that if the coroner's inquest bring it in felo-de-se, the said monument shall be, notwithstanding, erected. And if the said Paul Farr and John Flower have souls so Bristolish as to refuse this my request, they will transmit a copy of my will to the Society for supporting the Bill of Rights, whom I hereby empower to build the said monument according to the aforesaid directions. And if they, the said Paul Farr and John Flower, should build the said monument, I will and direct that the second edition of my Kew Gardens shall be dedicated to them in the following dedication:- To Paul Parr and John Flower, Esqrs., this book is most humbly dedicated by the author's ghost.' 66 Item.-I give all my vigour and fire of youth to Mr. George Catcott, being sensible he is most in want of it. "Item.-From the same charitable motive, I give and bequeath unto the Rev. Mr. Camplin, sen., all my humility. To Mr. Burgum all my prosody and grammar, likewise one moiety of my modesty; the other moiety to any young lady who can prove, without blushing, that she wants that valuable commodity. To Bristol all my spirit and disinterestedness, parcels of goods unknown on her quay since the days of Canning and Rowley. (Tis true, a charitable gentleman, one Mr. Colston, smuggled a considerable quantity of it; but, it being proved that he was a Papist, the worshipful society of aldermen endeavoured to throttle him with the oath of allegiance). I leave also my religion to Dr. Cutts Barton, Dean of Bristol, hereby empowering the sub-sacrist to strike him on the head when he goes to sleep in church. My powers of utterance I give to the Rev. Mr. Broughton, hoping he will employ them to a better purpose than reading lectures on the immortality of the soul. I leave the Rev. Mr. Catcott some little of my free-thinking, that he may put on spectacles of reason, and see how vilely he is duped in believing the Scriptures literally. (I wish he and his brother George would know how far I am their real enemy; but I have an unlucky way of raillery; and when the strong fit of satire is upon me, I spare neither friend nor foe. This is my excuse for what I have said of them elsewhere). I leave Mr. Clayfield the sincerest thanks my gratitude can give; and I will and direct that whatever any person may think the pleasure of reading my works worth, they immediately pay their own valuation to him, since it is then become a lawful debt to me, and to him as my executor in this case. "I leave my moderation to the politicians on both sides of the question. I leave my generosity to our present right worshipful mayor, Thomas Harris, Esq. I give my abstinence to the company at the Sheriff's annual feast in general, more particularly the aldermen. "Item.-I give and bequeath to Mr. Matthew Mease a mourning ring with this motto, 'Alas, poor Chatterton!' provided he pays for it himself. Item.— I leave the young ladies all the letters they have had from me, assuring them that they need be under no apprehensions from the appearance of my ghost, for I die for none of them. Item.-I leave all my debts, the whole not five pounds, to the payment of the charitable and generous Chamber of Bristol, on penalty, if refused, to hinder every member from a good dinner by appearing in the form of a bailiff. If, in defiance of this terrible spectre, they obstinately persist in refusing to discharge my debts, let my two creditors apply to the supporters of the Bill of Rights. Item.—I leave my mother and sister to the protection of my friends, if I have any. "Executed in the presence of Omniscience, this 14th of April, 1770. "THOMAS CHATTERTON." Whether this dreadful document got immediately abroad among Chatterton's friends, does not appear; another document, however, written at the same time and in the same mad mood, was sufficiently alarming to produce a catastrophe. The Mr. Clayfield mentioned with such peculiar respect in the preceding paper, a distiller, of means and respectability, and a friend of Mr. Lambert's, seems to have been a person of more than usual consideration in the eyes of Mr. Lambert's apprentice. To him, accordingly, rather than to any other person in Bristol, he chose to indite a letter conveying his rash intention of suicide. This letter-not actually sent to Mr. Clayfield by Chatterton, but inadvertently left about, it would appear, with that gentleman's address upon it-was prematurely delivered to him. Startled by its contents, he lost no time in communicating them to Mr. Lambert. There was an immediate consultation among Chatterton's friends, and Mr. Barrett undertook to see the insane lad, and reason with him on the folly and criminality of his conduct. Accordingly, a long conversation took place between them, in which, to use his own words, he took Chatterton to task for the "bad company and principles he had adopted," and lectured him seriously "on the horrible crime of self-murder, however glossed over by present libertines." Chatterton was affected, and shed tears. The next day, however, he sent Mr. Barrett the following letter, the original of which may be seen in the British Museum : - "SIR,-Upon recollection I don't know how Mr. Clayfield could come by his letter, as I intended to give him a letter, but did not. 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 damn'd native unconquerable PRIDE, that plunges me into distraction. You must know that nineteen-twentieths of my composition is pride. I must either live a slave, a servant, to have no will of my own, which I may freely declare as such, or DIE. Perplexing alternative! but it distracts me to think of it! I will endeavour to learn humility, but it cannot be here. What it may cost me in the trial, Heaven knows. "I am your much obliged unhappy humble servant, "Thursday Evening." "T. C. Before this letter had been written by Chatterton, one thing had been fully determined with regard to him. Mr. Lambert was no longer to keep him in his service. Even had the lawyer himself been willing to make the attempt, his mother, who kept house for him-an old lady between whom and Chatterton there had never, we have reason to think, been any kind of cordiality—would certainly not have listened to such a thing. What! sleep under the same roof with a profligate young scoundrel that had threatened to make away with himself? Find the garret in a welter some morning with the young rascal's blood, and have a coroner's inquest in the house? Better at once give him up his indentures, and be rid of him! And with this advice of the old lady, even the calmer deliberations of Chatterton's own friends, Barrett, Catcott, and the rest, could not but agree. So on or about Monday, the 16th of April, 1770, it was intimated to Chat Q terton that he must no longer consider himself as in the employment of Mr. Lambert. Tuesday, the 17th, it will be remembered, was the day of Wilkes's release from prison; and on Thursday, the 19th-the very day, as we guess, on which the foregoing letter to Mr. Barrett was written-there took place in Bristol that dinner, in honour of the patriot, at which, according to the announcement in the Public Advertiser, the more prominent Liberals of the place were to assemble at "the Crown, in the passage from Broad-street to Tower-lane," to eat their fortyfive pounds of meat, drink their forty-five tankards of ale and their forty-five bowls of punch, and smoke their forty-five pipes of tobacco. Were we wrong, then, in fancying that while these guests were making merry in the Crown, Chatterton may have been moodly perambulating the adjacent streets? And shall we be wrong if we fancy, farther, that Barrett was one of the guests; that the story of Mr. Lambert's apprentice and his intended suicide may have been talked over by the happy gentlemen, when, having finished their toasts, they sat down at leisure to their pipes and their remaining punch; and that the precise moment when Mr. Barrett may have received the above epistle from his misguided young acquaintance, may have been, when, after seeing Catcott part of the way home, he had just let himself into his surgery, about midnight, with his unsteady latch-key, and begun to whistle, to assure the wakeful Mrs. B. that he was perfectly sober? Shade of the surgeon, or his descendants, if he has any, forgive us, if we wrong him! CHAPTER III. IMPROPER FEMALE FRIENDS, AND A JOURNEY TO LONDON. CAST out of all chance of a livelihood in his native town, there was but one course open to Chatterton: to bid farewell to Bristol and attorneyship, and try what he could do in the great literary mart of London. Sanguine as were his hopes of success, it can have cost him but little thought to make up his mind to this course; if, indeed, he did not secretly congratulate himself that his recent escapade had ended so agreeably. Probably there was but one thing that stood in the way of an immediate declaration by himself, after the fracas was over, that this was the resolution he had come to the want, namely, of a little money to serve as outfit. No sooner, therefore, was this obstacle removed by the charitable determination of his friends, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Clayfield, the Catcotts, &c., to make a little subscription for him, so as to present him with the parting gift of a few pounds, than the tide of feeling was turned, and from a state of despondency Chatterton gave way to raptures of unbounded joy. London! London! A few days and he should have left the dingy quays of abominable Bristol, and should be treading, in the very footsteps of Goldsmith, Garrick, and Johnson, the liberal London streets! Chatterton remained exactly a week in Bristol after his dismissal from Mr. Lambert's; i. e. from the 16th to the 24th of April. A busy week we may suppose that must have been to Mrs. Chatterton and her daughter: shirts to be made and buttoned, stockings to be looked after, and all Thomas's wardrobe to be got decently in order against his departure. Poor fellow! notwithstanding all that idle people say of him, they know better; he has a proud spirit, but a good heart, and he will make his way yet with the best of them! And so, in their humble apartments, the widow and her daughter ply their needles, talking of Thomas and his prospects, as only a mother and sister can. The subject of their conversation, meanwhile, is generally out, going from street to street, and taking leave of his friends. Barrett, the two Catcotts, Mr. Alcock, Mr. Clayfield, Burgum, Matthew Mease; also his younger friends, the Carys, Smiths, and Kators-he makes the round of them all, receiving their good wishes, and making arrangements to correspond with them. To less intimate acquaintances, too, met accidentally in the streets, he has to bid a friendly goodbye. Moreover, there are his numerous female friends-the Miss Webbs, the Miss Thatchers, the Miss Hills, &c., not to |