"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 realize, 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." A "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! 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 after this!' Pompeius, the Roman, knew it; and yet was there not C. D 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 those 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 to you? 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 various delinquencies. Or, more efficient perhaps still, fall really in love. Avoid the Miss Rumseys, 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 glimpses 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 also nonsense? Well, then, my acquaintance with general biography enables me to tell you of one particular family at this moment living in Bristol, with which it might be well for you to get acquainted. 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 mothers in Bristol as extremely clever and accomplished young women; 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 life, and the admirable old maidenhood of hers! 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 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- Which to procure, a pewter altar's made To bear his name and signify his trade, In pomp burlesqued the rising spire to head, And how would 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, Or the civic dignity of Bristol generally to this?— ""Tis doubtful if her aldermen can read: 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 goodwill. If, however, any of his friends remonstrated with him, his answer was ready "Damn'd narrow notions, tending to disgrace I catch the pen, and publish what I think." |