publisher; and the notion of employing a staff of educated men to write comments on the proceedings of the day was but in its infancy. The place, however, of leading articles by paid attachés of the newspaper was in part supplied by the voluntary letters of numerous anonymous correspondents, interested in politics, and glad to see their lucubrations in print. Men of political note sometimes took this mode of serving the ends of their party; but the majority of the correspondents of newspapers were literary clients of official men, or private individuals scattered up and down the country. Chief of these unpaid journalists, king among the numberless Brutuses, Publicolas, and Catos, that told the nation its grievances through the columns of the newspapers, was the terrible Junius of the Public Advertiser. The boldest of his letters was perhaps that containing his "Address to the King," which was published on the 19th December, 1769. The excitement that followed this letter, and above all the report that the publisher, Mr. H. J. Woodfall, was to be brought to account for it before the public tribunals, produced a crisis-some called it a panic, some a jubilee—in the newspaper world.

The other newspapers were, of course, anxious to obtain a share of the renown which the threatened prosecution conferred on the Public Advertiser. Accordingly, to re-assure its correspondents, and to

convince its subscribers of its unflinching liberalism in the midst of danger, the Middlesex Journal, a biweekly newspaper of the day, not far behind the Advertiser in credit, hastened to put forth the following manifesto:

"William George Edmunds, of Shoe Lane, in the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, Gent., maketh oath and saith, that he will not at any time declare the name of any person or persons who shall send any papers to the Middlesex Journal or Chronicle of Liberty, or any other publication in which he shall be concerned, without the express consent and direction of the author of such paper; and that he will not make any discovery by which any of his authors can be found out; and that he will give to the public, in the fairest and fullest manner, all such essays, dissertations, and other writings, without any alteration, so far as he can or ought, consistently with the duty of an honest man, a good member of society, a friend to his country, and a loyal subject.-W. G. EDMUNDS.

"Sworn at the Mansion House, London, January 1st, 1770, before me,

"W. BECKFORD, Mayor."

"N.B.-Mr. E. makes it a general rule to destroy all MSS. as soon as they are composed for the press. If any gentleman, however, is desirous of having his MSS. returned to him, Mr. E. begs that the words 'to be returned,' may be in large letters at the end of the originals. In that case they shall be preserved and delivered up to any person who shall bring an order

for that purpose in the same handwriting as the original."

This manifesto of Mr. Edmunds, copied by us from the Middlesex Journal for February 6th, 1770, and which was repeated in succeeding numbers, probably caught Chatterton's eye in Bristol, and determined his already cherished intention of trying his hand at a newspaper article. Accordingly, he plunges at once in medias res. There had just been a change of Ministry. The Duke of Grafton, the favourite victim of Junius, had resigned, and given place, for some secret Court reason, to the goggle-eyed Lord North. Chatterton, hearing much talk about this affair, thinks it a good topic for his purpose, and, stealing a forenoon from his office-work, pens, in a style mimicked after that of Junius, a "Letter to the Duke of G-n," in which he informs that illustrious personage that his resignation has "caused more speculation than any harlequinade he has already acted," and tells him that, as he had been all along the tool of Bute, to whom he was at first recommended by his "happy vacuity of invention," so now it is Bute's influence that has dismissed him. This missive he dates "Bristol, February 16," and signs "Decimus." Mr. Edmunds, receiving it in his sanctum in Shoe Lane, glances over it, thinks it tolerably smart, and prints it. Whether the Duke of Grafton ever saw it, poor man, we do

not know. If he did, "One wasp more" would be his very natural reflection; and he would go on sipping his chocolate.

Chatterton's next contribution to the Middlesex Journal, or at least the next that Mr. Edmunds thought proper to print, was one with the same signature, dated "Bristol, April 10, 1770," and addressed to that much-abused lady, the Princess Dowager of Wales, the mother, and, as people said, manager of the king. Here is a specimen-Junius, it will be observed, to the very cadence:

"By you men of no principles were thrust into offices they did not know how to discharge, and honoured with trusts they accepted only to violate; being made more conspicuously mean by communicating error and often vice to the character of the person who promoted them. None but a sovereign power can make little villains dangerous; the nobly vicious, the daringly ambitious, only rise from themselves. Without the influence of ministerial authority, Mansfield had been a pettifogging attorney, and Warburton a bustling country curate. The first had not lived to bury the substance of our laws in the shadows of his explanations; nor would the latter have confounded religion with deism, and proved of no use to either. . . . The state of affairs very much resembles the eve of the troubles of Charles I. Unhappy

monarch, thou hast a claim, a dear-bought claim, to our pity; nothing but thy death could purchase it. 'Hadst thou died quietly and in peace, thou hadst

died infamous; thy misfortunes were the only happy means of saving thee from the book of shame. What a parallel could the freedom of an English pen strike out!”

This letter was written on a Tuesday. On the Saturday, or, more probably, on the Monday following, a tremendous dénouement occurred.

Chatterton, among his other eccentricities, had often been heard to talk familiarly of suicide. One evening, for example, pulling out a pistol in the presence of some of his companions, he had placed it to his forehead, saying, "Now, if one had but courage to draw the trigger!" Nor was this mere juvenile affectation. Hateful from the first, Chatterton's position in Bristol had by this time become unendurable to him. All his literary honours, as contributor to a London magazine and a correspondent of a London newspaper, were as nothing when put in the balance against his present servitude. If there were seasons when, sanguine in his hopes of a better future, he was able to keep his disgust within bounds, there were others when it rose to a perfect frenzy.

Such a season seems to have been the week in which the foregoing letter was written for the Middlesex Journal. By some circumstance or other Chatterton was that week reduced to the necessity of asking Burgum for a loan of money; which Burgum, at the last moment, refused. Chatterton has thus perpetuated the fact: