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of Chatterton handled his memory, the writers of more recent notices have certainly made out, in favour of "the marvellous boy," a certificate of good behaviour to which he was not entitled, and for which he would not have thanked them. The evidence on which they have laid most stress in connexion with this point is that of Chatterton's sister, as given by her in her letter to the Rev. Sir Herbert Croft, eight years after Chatterton's death, and published by that gentleman in his singular book, Love and Madness. The following is a passage from that touching and simple epistle, spelt as in the original:

"He wrote one letter to Sir Horace Warlpool; and, except his corrispondence with Miss Rumsey, the girl I have mentioned, I know of no other. He would frequently walk the Colledge green with the young girls that statedly paraded there to shew their finery. But I realy beleive he was no debauchee (tho some have reported it). the dear unhappy boy had faults enough I saw with concern. he was proud and exceedingly impetious, but that of venality" [poor Mrs. N. thinks this a fine word for licentiousness] " he could not be justly accused with. Mrs. Lambert informed me not 2 months before he left Bristol, he had never been once found out of the office in the stated hours, as they frequently sent the footman and other servants to see Nor but once stayed out till 11 o'clock; then he had leave, as we entertained some friends at our house at Christmas."

This very distinct piece of evidence in favour of Chatterton's punctual conduct as an apprentice has been strained into a testimony to his moral reproachlessness. A fruitless attempt, we fear! The worth of a sister's assurance that her deceased brother could not be justly accused of "venality" it is not difficult to estimate; besides that it is accompanied with the information that the common report was to the contrary, and with the allusion to the habit of "walking with the girls on the College-green," whatever that may mean. Then, again, we have the fact that Mr. Barrett, in his remonstrance with him respecting his alarming letter to Mr. Clayfield, attributed his bad state of mind to his keeping immoral company. His own allusions, too, scattered through his writings, are quite decisive, even were we not to take into account the almost constant tone which runs through all that part of his writings that is not antique-evidently the productions as those modern pieces are of a clever boy too conscious of forbidden things, and eager (as boys are till some real experience of the heart has made them earnest and silent) to assert his manhood among his compeers by constant and irreverent talk on certain topics. And, after all, have we not the native probabilities of the case itself? Are young men in general, and attorneys' apprentices in particular, so immaculately moral that it becomes necessary

to argue out something like a perfectly virtuous character for Chatterton before venturing to introduce him to the admirers of genius and literature? Should we fail in doing this for him, will Byron, Burns, and the rest, refuse to shake hands with him? It is a pity, certainly, that we should have to say so. Young men of genius may take warning. A convenient theory of "wild oats" has been provided and put in circulation for their use by the thoughtless and the interested; but better for themselves in the end if they decidedly reject it. Were Byron and Burns, or were Chatterton himself, to speak now, they would say so. Happiest is he who, needing no benefit from the theory, yet can weigh it, and know how to be charitable!

If the reader were to

And now for our document. go to the reading-room of the British Museum, and ask for the Chatterton MSS. (a considerable portion of all the surviving MSS. of Chatterton is in the Museum, the remainder being in Bristol and elsewhere), he would have three volumes brought to him, containing papers and parchments of various shapes and sizes, some stained, smoked, and written like antiques, others undisguisedly modern. If, after overcoming the strange feeling that here in his hands are the very sheets over which so many years ago Chatterton bent, tracing with nimble fingers the black characters over

the white pages, the reader should examine the papers successively and individually, he would come upon one that would puzzle him much. It is a dingy piece of letter-paper, once folded as a letter, and containing a very ugly scrawl in an uneducated female hand.

Here it is, printed for the first time:

"Sir, I send my Love to you and Tell you This if you prove Constant I not miss but if you frown and Torn away I can make oart of battered Hay pray excep of me Love Hartley an send me word Cartingley. Tell me How maney ouncs of Green Gingerbread Can Sho the baker of Honiste.

"My House is not belt with Stavis. I not be Coarted by Boys nor navis. I Haive a man and a man Shall Haive me, if I whaint a fool I Send for Thee.

66

If you are going to the D—- I wish you a good Gonery."

What in all the world have we here? Exercising our utmost ingenuity for the purpose of determining, if possible, what petty, and perhaps not very reputable Bristol occurrence of the year 1770, this mystic piece of ill-written doggrel (the reader will observe that part of the letter is in a kind of cripple rhyme) has come down to us to perpetuate and represent, we can honestly arrive but at one conclusion-that it is the spiteful epistle of some obscure female, avenging herself, with all the energy of feminine malice, for the spreta injuria forma or some other fancied wrong.

Did we dare to copy the version of the letter, or rather jocular answer to it, written in Chatterton's own hand on the back of the sheet, in the shape of a few extremely impolite and not at all quoteable Hudibrastic lines, the hypothesis would appear inevitable. In short, we explain the matter thus:-Among the various acquaintances of Chatterton interested ir the news of his approaching departure is some one of the other sex, labouring under the provocation of some injury, or fancied injury, not now ascertainable. This Bristol Juno sees, with pangs incredible, her faithless Jove dispensing the gingerbread he has bought at "Mr. Freeling's over the way" among the nymphs waiting for it on the steps of Redcliffe Church; she goes home, and discharges all her malevolence in one fell epistle, into which, with vast literary effort, she contrives to introduce an allusion to the gingerbread; this epistle, intended to pierce her Jove's heart like a poisoned arrow, she sends to him anonymously; and he, reading it, and recognising the hand of the distempered donor, enjoys the joke amazingly, and expresses his opinion of it and her by scribbling his wicked answer on the other side. Strange bit of defunct real life thus to be dug up again into the light! The departure of poor Chatterton for London from his native place was not, it would thus appear, an event which all Bristol viewed with indifference.

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