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tion. On the 25th of August he was found dead in his bed, from the effects of poison, which he had swallowed. He was interred in a shell in the burialground of Shoe-lane workhouse.

The heart which can peruse the fate of Chatterton without being moved is little to be envied for its tranquillity; but the intellects of those men must be as deficient as their hearts are uncharitable, who, confounding all shades of moral distinction, have ranked his literary fiction of Rowley in the same class of crimes with pecuniary forgery, and have calculated that if he had not died by his own hand he would have probably ended his days upon a gallows. This disgusting sentence has been pronounced upon a youth who was exemplary for severe study, temperance, and natural affection. His Rowleian forgery must indeed be pronounced improper by the general law which condemns all falsifications of history; but it deprived no man of his fame, it had no sacrilegious interference with the memory of departed genius, it had not, like Lauder's imposture, any malignant motive, to rob a party or a country, of a name which was its pride and ornament.

Setting aside the opinion of those uncharitable biographers, whose imaginations have conducted him to the gibbet, it may be owned that his un, formed character exhibited strong and conflicting elements of good and evil. Even the momentary project of the infidel boy to become a methodist

preacher, betrays an obliquity of design, and a contempt of human credulity that is not very amiable. But had he been spared, his pride and ambition would have come to flow in their proper channels; his understanding would have taught him the practical value of truth and the dignity of virtue, and he would have despised artifice, when he had felt the strength and security of wisdom. In estimating the promises of his genius, I would rather lean to the utmost enthusiasm of his admirers, than to the cold opinion of those, who are afraid of being blinded to the defects of the poems attributed to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology which is thrown over them. If we look to the ballad of Sir Charles Bawdin, and translate it into modern English, we shall find its strength and interest to have no dependance on obsolete words. In the striking passage of the martyr Bawdin standing erect in his car to rebuke Edward, who beheld him from the window, when

"The tyrant's soul rushed to his face,"

and when he exclaimed,

"Behold the man! he speaks the truth,
"He's greater than a king;"

in these, and in all the striking parts of the ballad, no effect is owing to mock antiquity, but to the simple and high conception of a great and just character, who

VOL. V.

M

"Summ'd the actions of the day,
"Each night before he slept."

What a moral portraiture from the hand of a boy! The inequality of Chatterton's various productions may be compared to the disproportions of the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the definite neatness of that precocious talent which stops short in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay up materials for the exercise of great and undeveloped powers. Even in his favourite maxim, pushed it might be to hyperbole, that a man by abstinence and perseverance might accomplish whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications of a genius which nature had meant to achieve works of immortality. Tasso alone can be compared to him as a juvenile prodigy'. No English poet ever equalled him at the same age.

In the verses which Tasso sent to his mother when he was nine years old.

BRISTOWE TRAGEDIE:

OR,

THE DETHE OF SYR CHARLES BAWDIN.

THE featherd songster chaunticleer

Han wounde hys bugle horne,

And tolde the earlie villager

The commynge of the morne:

Kynge Edwarde sawe the ruddie streakes
Of lyghte eclypse the greie;
And herde the raven's crokynge throte
Proclayme the fated daie.

"Thou'rt ryght," quod he, "for, by the Godde

That syttes enthron'd on hyghe!

Charles Bawdin, and hys fellowes twaine,

To-daie shall surelie die."

Thenne wythe a jugge of nappy ale

Hys knyghtes dydd onne hymm waite; "Goe tell the traytour, thatt to-daie Hee leaves thys mortall state."

Syr Canterlone thenne bendedd lowe,
Wythe harte brymm-fulle of woe;
Hee journey'd to the castle-gate,
And to Syr Charles dydd goe.

But whenne hee came, hys children twaine,
And eke hys lovynge wyfe,

Wythe brinie tears dydd wett the floore,
For goode Syr Charleses lyfe.

"O goode Syr Charles!" sayd Canterlone, "Badde tydyngs I doe brynge."

Speke boldlie, manne," sayd brave Syr Charles, "Whatte says thie traytor kynge?"

"I greeve to telle; before yonne sonne
Does fromme the welkin flye,
Hee hath upponn hys honour sworne,
Thatt thou shalt surelie die."

"Wee all must die," quod brave Syr Charles;

"Of thatte I'm not affearde;

Whatte bootes to lyve a little space?

Thanke Jesu, I'm prepar'd:

"Butt telle thye kynge, for myne hee's not,

I'de sooner die to-daie,

Thanne lyve hys slave, as manie are,
Though I shoulde lyve for aie."

Then Canterlone hee dydd goe out,
To telle the maior straite
To gett all thynges ynne reddyness
For goode Syr Charleses fate.

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