which is dated April 14th, is more abrupt. Here he expresses his conviction that the papers of Rowley are genuine, and requests Walpole, unless he should be inclined to publish the transcripts, to return them, as he wished to give them to "Mr. Barrett, an able antiquary, now writing the History of Bristol," and had no other copy.

When this second note reached Arlington Street, Walpole was on the eve of a journey to Paris; and, in the hurry, the request to return the MSS. was not attended to. Again Chatterton wrote; but, as the virtuoso was absent, he received no answer. It was not till after six weeks that Walpole returned to London; and then so insignificant a matter was not likely to be remembered. Towards the close of July, however, and when he had been again in town five or six weeks, he was reminded of his Bristol correspondent by the receipt of what he thought "a singularly impertinent note":

"SIR,-I cannot reconcile your behaviour to me with the notions I once entertained of you. I think myself injured, Sir; and, did you not know my circumstances, you would not dare to treat me thus. I have sent twice for a copy of the MSS.; no answer from you. explanation or excuse for your silence would oblige "THOMAS CHATTERTON.

"July 24."

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Walpole's conduct, on the receipt of this note, we will let himself relate:

My heart did not accuse me of insolence to him. I wrote an answer, expostulating with him on his injustice, and renewing good advice; but, upon second thoughts, reflecting that so wrong-headed a young man, of whom I knew nothing, and whom I had never seen, might be absurd enough to print my letter, I flung it into the fire; and, snapping up both his poems and letters, without taking a copy of either (for which I am now sorry), I returned both to him, and thought no more of him or them."

Thus ended the correspondence between Walpole and Chatterton, Walpole soon forgetting the whole affair, and Chatterton persisting in his belief that, had he not committed the blunder of letting his aristocratic correspondent know that he was "a poor widow's son," he would have fared better at his hands. No doubt there was something in this. But, of all the unreasonable things ever done by a misjudging public, certainly that of condemning Walpole to infamy for his conduct in this affair, and charging on him all the tragic sequel of Chatterton's life, is one of the most unreasonable. Why, the probability is that Walpole behaved better than most people would have done in the circumstances! Let anyone in the present day fancy how he would aet if some one utterly unknown to him were to try to impose on him, in a similar way, through the post-office. Would the mere cleverness of the cheat take away the instinctive frown of resentment, and change it into

admiring enthusiasm? That there may possibly have been in London at that time persons of rare goodness, of overflowing tolerance and compassion, that would have acted differently from the virtuoso of Arlington Street-persons who, saying to themselves, "Here is a poor young man of abilities in a bad way," would have immediately called for their carpet-bags, and set off for Bristol by coach, to dig out the culprit, and lecture him soundly, and make a man of him-we will not deny. If that time was like the present, however, such men, we fear, must have been very thinly scattered, and very hard to find. Looking back now, we must, of course, feel that it was a pity the correspondence did not lead to a better issue; and Walpole himself lived to know this. But, as Burke has said, "Men are wise with little reflection, and good with little self-denial, in the business of all times except their own." Let, therefore, such as are disposed to blame Walpole in this affair lay the whole story to heart in the form of a maxim for their own guidance.

While the correspondence with Walpole had been going on, Chatterton had not been idle. In the month of January, 1769, there appeared in London' the first number of a new periodical, called the Town and Country Magazine, somewhat on the model of the Gentleman's Magazine, and those other curious monthly

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collections of scraps with which our ancestors, strangers to the more elaborate entertainment of modern periodicals, used to regale their leisure. Here was an opportunity for the young littérateur of Bristol. cordingly, in the February number (magazines were then published retrospectively, i.e., at the close of the month whose name they bore), there appeared two contributions from the pen of Chatterton: one a prose account of the costume of Saxon heralds, signed "D. B."; the other a little complimentary poem addressed to "Mr. Alcock, the miniature painter of Bristol," and signed "Asaphides." Under these signatures he continued to contribute to the magazine; and effusions of his, chiefly Ossianic prose-poems, purporting to be from the Saxon or ancient British, appeared in all the subsequent numbers for the year 1769, except those of June, September, and October. In the number for May appeared one of the finest of his minor Rowley poems. In short, at the publishing office of the Town and Country, in London, the handwriting of "D. B.," of Bristol, must have been recognised, in 1769, as that of one of the established correspondents of the magazine ; and in Bristol it must have been a fact known and enviously commented on among the Carys, the Smiths, the Kators, and other young men of Chatterton's acquaintance, that he could have his pieces printed as often as he liked in a London periodical. Chatterton

felt the immensity of the honour; and there is extant a somewhat unveracious letter of his to a distant relative," a breeches-maker in Salisbury," in which he brags of it. He tells the breeches-maker, at the same time, of his correspondence with Walpole. "It ended," he says, "as most such do. I differed from him in the age of "a MS.; he insists upon his superior talents, which is no proof of that superiority. We possibly may engage publicly in some one of the periodical publications, though I know not who will give the onset."

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The Town and Country Magazine seems to have been the only metropolitan print to which Chatterton was a contributor during the year 1769. But in the beginning of 1770 he succeeded in another venture, and became the correspondent also of a London newspaper.

The newspapers of that day were by no means such as we now see. The largest of them consisted of but a single sheet, corresponding in size with our small evening papers. Their contents, too, were neither so various nor so elaborately prepared as those of our present newspapers. Advertisements, paragraphs of political gossip picked up outside the Houses of Parliament, and scraps of miscellaneous town, country, and foreign news, constituted nearly all that the newspaper then offered to its readers. What we now call "leading articles" were hardly known. It was enough for even a metropolitan journal to have one editorial hand to assist the