the body, "may have bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening."

Turning from the starving track of literature, he applied for a situation as surgeon's mate in a voyage to the coast of Africa; but in vain. Here was a downfall for the aspirant after wealth and distinction. The enthusiasm, and the glory, and the exultation of his bright and shiny boyhood days were gone; the ladder on which he had hoped to have climbed to the heaven of greatness was withdrawn; and the sleeper awoke to find that his only pillow was a stone; that he must exchange the communings of angels for intercourse with cold and heartless men. His last hope had failed. He was friendless, alone, and unassisted, and looked forward to the time when he should be a wanderer and an outcast! What wonder if, in his dark and deep distress, self-contempt drowned youth's starlight smiles in tears? and the victim angrily refused to be fed, to be kept alive by the hand of charity. For two or three days he tasted nothing. Three days before his death he was walking with a friend in St. Pancras'-churchyard, reading the epitaphs, and fell into a grave he had not noticed. His friend helped him out, and told him he "was happy at beholding the resurrection of genius!" Poor Chatterton smiled faintly, and, taking his companion by the arm, said: "My dear friend, I feel the sting of a speedy dissolution. I have been at war with the grave for some time. I find it is not so easy to vanquish as I imagined. We can find an asylum for every creditor but that."

An

On the 24th of August, 1770, he took poison, and died at the age of seventeen and three-quarters. inquest was held, and a verdict of insanity was returned. He was buried among the paupers in the burial-ground in Shoe-lane. Farringdon market now stands on or near the spot. Tossed and troubled was his life, and even his ashes knew not repose. A monument to his memory is erected in the churchyard of Redcliffe. Who could read thereon without one feeling of sympathy or regret the very words written by that marvellous boy himself for his supposed monument, and inserted in his will?

"To the memory of

THOMAS

CHATTERTON.

Reader, judge not! If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged

By a superior Power. To that Power alone is he now answerable."

Dr. Fry, not knowing of his end, shortly after his death proceeded to Bristol to relieve and assist the young poet. Poor Chatterton! Had he but learned to confide in the wisdom and love of his God, his grief would have endured for a night, and joy would have come with the morning. The marvellous boy would have become the perfect man; and, instead of a record of sorrow and a death of madness, we should, in all probability, have had to commemorate the history of a happy poet, and the end of a Christian philosopher.

In personal appearance Chatterton was comely and manly beyond his years. His eyes were grey and piercingly brilliant. Like Byron, one eye was more remarkable than the other, and its lightning-like flashes had something about them almost supernatural. I cannot here recapitulate the number of works and poems he wrote. Amongst these were the "Death of Sir Charles Bawdyn," "Ella, the Bristowe Tragedy," "Godwyn," ""The English Metamorphoses," ""The Tournament," Parlyament of Sprytes," dens," &c., &c.

The

"Kew Gar

His famous poems of "Rowley" caused a strong controversy in the literary world, lasting nearly down to our day, some asserting them to be forgeries, other writers as strongly proving, or trying to prove, their authenticity.

In his works there are, of course, traces of extreme youth, but the language is vigorous, and the versification melodious. There is in them an excellent pathos, emanating from a heart full of the softest emotions, and vibrating beneath the touch of sorrow, as the lyre under the finger of some skilful master. Although he penetrates not into the inner mysteries of our nature, he never portrays it in false colours. His men are brave, generous, and heroic, and true to the impulses of the heart in a barbarous age. His women gentle, loving, and faithful, and not less wise than women should be. His expression is most frequently chaste and beautiful. His hero, Sir Charles Bawdyn,

Recounts the actions of the day
Each night before he sleeps.

He writes:

See the white moon shines on high, Whiter is my true love's shroud! He speaks of “a church on which the stars do set to appearing," of the "kingcup-decked meads," of the "murky clouds hanging on the waning moon," of the "grey morning lark, chanting out so noisily ;" and that sweet line is his, so full of the freshness and vigorous youth of a spring morning :

Like king-cups bursting with the morning dew.

The following is an eloquent description of autumn :

When autumn bare and sunburnt doth appear, With his gold hand, gilding the falling leaf, Bringing up winter to fulfil the year, Bearing upon his back the yellow sheaf! He speaks, too, of the "soft young cowslip," " and "the silver-footed doe," "the gathered storm," "the blue Levin," and shouts when the winds are up." Had he lived, we might have had another "Midsummer Night's Dream." We see only what Chatterton is, and it were perhaps vain to speculate on what he might have been; for he passed Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn Robes in its golden beams.

In his "Elegy on Philips," occur some beautiful lines descriptive of the seasons. Those following are his description of winter :

Pale rugged winter, bending o'er his tread,
His grizzed hair bedropt with icy dew,
His eyes a dusky light, congealed, dead,
His robe a tinge of light ethereal blue,
His train a motley, sanguine sable cloud,
He limps along the russet dreary moor,
Whilst rising whirlwinds blasting, keen, and
loud,

Roll the white surges to the sounding shore. Of this Anna Seward says:-"It appears to me so finely executed, that no poet, living or dead, has ever excelled it."

I must close these short extracts from his writings with a few lines from a specimen worthy of his powers, entitled

RESIGNATION.

Oh! God whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,

To Thee, my only rock, I fly,
Thy merey in Thy justice praise.

The mystic mazes of Thy will,
The shadows of celestial light,
Are past the powers of human skill,
But what the Eternal acts is right.

Oh! teach me in the trying hour,

When anguish swells the dewy tear,
To still my sorrows, own Thy power,
Thy goodness love, Thy justice fear.
If in this bosom aught but Thee
Encroaching sought a boundless sway,
Omniscience could the danger see,
And mercy look the cause away.
Then why, my soul, dost thou complain?
Why, drooping, seek the dark recess?
Shake off the melancholy chain,

For God created all to bless.
But, ah! my breast is human still;
The rising sigh, the falling tear,
My languid vitals' feeble rill

The sickness of my soul declare.
But yet with fortitude resigned,

I thank the Inflicter of the blow:
Forbid the sigh, compose my mind,
Nor let the gush of misery flow.
The gloomy mantle of the night,

Which on my sinking spirit steals,
Will vanish wth the morning light,

Which God, my east, my sun reveals! Ah! would that the mist of distraction and despair had ne'er o'erclouded this faith in Divine goodness!

Fair samples of the poetic powers of Chatterton cannot easily be presented, because his most powerful poems are shrouded in obsolete language and antiquated phraseology.

It has been urged that the poems acknowledged by him as his own composition, are of a cast much inferior to those which he produced as written by the counterfeit Rowley; but let us remember that on the latter he lavished all his powers, with them he purposed to astonish or deceive the world, whilst his miscellaneous writing was the progeny of indigence, distraction, and despair.

Wordsworth says of him :-"If he had not been the unquestionable genius he was, the brotherhood of poets would yet owe him a debt of gratitude for having exhibited to the world a bright and beautiful example of the ideal Creator, knowing no desire which genius did not hallow, and possessed of a heart which kept pure the holy forms of young imagination. His temperance should be imitated by all, and his abstinence was surpassed by none.'

We will here give a few other quotations from well-known authorities, bearing upon the genius and writings of the unfortunate young poet.

The "Edinburgh Review" remarks: "The pretended antiquity of his poems has been denounced as a crime against truth, with all the solemnity

with which the lie of Ananias is quoted from Scripture. Why, the word forgery does not apply to such an innocent deception!"

Mr. Britton feelingly observes :"Posterity may be excused, if, forgetting his errors in the contemplation of his neglected state and youthful sorrows, it speaks only of his genius.”

Southey says: "The deception might most assuredly have been begun, and continued, without the slightest share of criminality in Chatterton."

con

Chambers writes :-"Such precocity of genius was never before witnessed." Carpenter says:-"When we ceive the inspired boy transporting himself in imagination back to the days of his fictitious Rowley, embodying his ideal characters, and

"Giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name,'

we may forget the impostor in the enthusiast, and forgive the fiction of his reverie for its beauty and ingenuity."

The memory of Chatterton has been branded as that of a forger. If he was guilty, it was of a forgery upon his own brain. Were not the poems themselves a genuine reality? Why, instead of having dug them from the rubbish of the ruined temple of hoar antiquity, they were all his own. What, then, was his crime? Why robbing himself of his own intellectual riches, and depositing them on the altar of his country's glory. For this he was denounced as an imposter! Not thus in our latter and more enlightened day, was treated the great author of "Waverley," who for thirteen years chose to palm off his own productions as those of Peter Pattison, or Jedediah Cleishbotham. If Chatterton is to be so fiercely denounced as an imposter, what must we say of Paley, so well known as the author of the "Natural Theology?" a work which modern research has proved to be a gross plagiarism from a foreign and little-known writer; and yet on the fame of this very work Paley lived in renown, and died in the odour of sanctity!

Of the character of Chatterton, composed as it was of most contradictory materials, it is difficult to give a satisfactory analysis. Amid the mist, the darkness, and the cloud, bright were the emanations of that genius which pierced through, and shed a light

around him. If pride and haughtiness outwardly distinguished him, his inner heart was overflowing with filial and fraternal love. The charities of home had a permanent dwelling-place in his soul. We find him, even in the distress and agony of his London career, speaking comfort and hope to his friends at Bristol, remembering their wants and ministering to their necessities.

He was naturally subject to morbid feelings and gloomy apprehensions. Against these, except at the very last, he successfully struggled. Decided symptoms of madness were in his family. His sister was placed under confinement, and her child was subject to frequent fits of mental aberration. On this point, Southey remarks: "This is the undoubted key to the eccentricities of his life, and the deplorable rashness of his death!"

Had Chatterton lived longer, he would doubtless have come to the full knowledge of the truth; if the poet had lived to continue his self-education, he would have learnt reverence for others, mistrust for himself, charity for all, with humility and the fear of God, until at length, instead of being naked, and miserable, and poor, he would have been "clothed and in his right mind."

The writer was lately at Bristol, and, of course, visited the old and beautiful church of St. Mary, Redcliffe, and standing at an early hour in the calm quiet of a Sabbath-morning, in that old stony hexagon apartment over the northporch, and looking through its mouldering windows over the silent city beneath, he felt how deep an influence that spot must have exercised over the poetic genius of the subject of this essay. For, as a living writer truly remarks," you seem then and there only first fully to feel how actual and how sad is the story of Thomas Chatterton." Standing on the dusty floor at this very day, are the very self-same old crumbling chests, dusty and wormeaten, in which he professed to have found the relics and writings of Rowley. Here, indeed, began his wondrous scheme of fame, hence it spread and stood forth as a brilliant mystery for a moment, and the proud boy gloried in the sudden blaze, until

Black despair,
The shadow of a starless night was thrown
Over the earth on which he walked alone!
W. H. P.

DANIEL O'CONNELL. MR. Roebuck, in his History of the Whigs, speaks of Mr. O'Connell in the following manner :—

"In the history of mankind there have been few instances of a power so extraordinary as that which Mr. O'Connell now exercised over his countrymen. He was himself thoroughly an Irishman, endowed with many great powers, wanting many qualities, without which no man can be deemed really great. Of a commanding presence, gifted with a beautiful and flexible voice; also with great quickness, versatility, wit, and the power of compressing a long argument into a short and epigrammatic sentence, he seemed formed by nature for the very part which the peculiar condition of his country called upon him to enact. His early education had given his manners something of an ecclesiastical smoothness when in the society of gentlemen, more particularly English gentlemen; but when addressing his own countrymen, he could assume (perhaps resume might be the more correct word) a rollicking air, which completely won the hearts of the exciteable peasantry whom he sought to move, and over whom he indeed ruled with an absolute despotism. With the Catholic priesthood he had also great influence, and by their aid obtained and continued his extraordinary power over his uneducated countrymen. When speaking of the priesthood, or to a priest, the demeanour of Mr. O'Connell, indeed, was so deferential as to appear a perfect prostration of mind and body to ghostly dominion. His strict observance of the forms of his religion, the fervour of his outward piety, won the confidence and esteem of the Irish Catholic clergy. They believed him a true and obedient son of the Church; they trusted him, and finding him endowed with great ability, they, in their turn, followed and supported his political agitation. This mutual confidence was greatly promoted by the character of Mr. O'Connell's piety, in which terror played no common part. Subject to the influence of strong passions, of undoubting faith, but also liable to fits of despondency and fear, he was just the man to be an active and useful instrument in the hands of an astute and grasping priest

hood. In most cases in which an alliance takes place between a layman and a priest, there is a lurking mutual distrust, which, spite of every art and disguise, betrays itself from time to time. But in the instance of Mr. O'Connell no such distrust seems ever to have

arisen on either side. The priests of his Church were too sagacious to fail in accurately appreciating the extent and character of their power over his mind. They knew his weakness and their own strength; they had no fear, consequently, when aiding him to acquire power over the peasantry; because they were sure that his power would never be employed to diminish or even to check their own spiritual influence, and temporal authority and wealth. A perfect mutual cordiality and confidence appeared to exist, and we believe did in reality exist, between them and Mr. O'Connell; and great advantage resulted to both parties from this alliance. The benefit which Mr. O'Connell received from the priests he amply repaid by the many political services which he rendered to the whole of his Catholic countrymen.

"He was a skilful lawyer,-thoroughly acquainted with the character of his countrymen, and ready at all times to aid them when subject to accusation by the Government, or quarrelling among themselves. They who have witnessed his conduct on criminal trials and at Nisi Prius, describe him as unrivalled in the dexterity with which he managed a jury; while those who have heard his legal arguments before the Judges in Dublin, speak of them as models of forensic skill. The contrast between his manner on these different occasions proved his marvellous versatility, and ought to have prepared the House of Commons for his admirably appropriate demeanour, when he first appeared before them, as the one great representative of Roman-Catholic Ireland. He was at all times a finished actor, and could assume, or throw off at once and completely, any part he chose. The familiar buffoonery, the sly fun, the coarse, nay, almost vulgar but really artful pathos and sarcasm of the counsel, on the circuit,-whether defending a prisoner in the Crown Court, or engaged in a cause at Nisi Prius,— were all entirely laid aside, and suc

ceeded by a simple, grave, and even polished demeanour, when in Banco he had to argue before the judges of the superior courts. And this subdued but still natural manner, how different was it from that of the fierce demagogue, the impassioned accuser of his country's oppressors, who led the vast assemblies which attended the meetings of the Catholic Association! On this arena he seemed to revel in his freedom, to throw away restraint,to give up all command over his feelings, to make himself, indeed, his passions' slave. But amid what appeared his wildest ravings, he was ever truly master of himself;-assuming the licence of an unbridled tongue, under the guise of an overbearing indignation;-making his passion an excuse, when it was, in fact, the pretence, he forced others really to feel the indignation of which he exhibited only a finished imitation. In the House of Commons every trace of the ranting, rampant demagogue entirely disappeared. In the whole range of rhetoric difficulties, nothing approaches that of appealing successfully in the House of Commons to any romantic sentimentality. All who have been accustomed to address various assemblies of men, must have discovered, that appeals to passion, generous sentiment, romantic honour, are generally grateful only to simple and unlettered audiences. That as the audience becomes composed of men of a more finished education,-of larger experience in the ways of men, -just in the same degree all such passionate appeals become distasteful, and therefore difficult, not to say impossible. The taste becomes more fastidious, the feelings, by worldly contact, more blunted, and suspicion more ready and more quick-sighted. What would make an assembly of peasants weep, would probably send the House of Commons to sleep, or would keep them awake simply by exciting their contempt and disgust. Mr. O'Connell knew this well; and, further, he was aware that the assembly into which he entered, when he entered the House of Commons, was as courageous as fastidious. That it was as difficult to excite their fear as it was easy to offend their taste. To bully them he knew was dangerous; to frighten them im

possible; to persuade them out of their former convictions, almost hopeless; but to amuse and interest them; to command their attention and respect by wit, knowledge, clear and forcible statement and accurate reasoning, and sometimes by rare and felicitous and finished touches of passionate argument, to excite and almost convince them; all this, he was aware, was within the power of a great orator. Proudly conscious that he could aspire to this high calling, with a calm self-possession he applied himself to his last most difficult task of conquering the attentionthe respectful attention-of an adverse House of Commons, and succeeded.

"That Mr. O'Connell's powers were of the highest order cannot be denied ; that few men have had opportunities of rendering great services to their country, so numerous and happy as he had, is also certain. It must, however, be confessed that his great ability and glorious opportunities were of comparatively little use either to himself or others; and that few have so long and to such an extent engaged the attention of the world, and have passed away, leaving so little behind them by which they can be worthily remembered.

"To assume the manner and employ the language that would please a particular assembly, and contribute to the attainment of a given end, was no difficult task for so finished an actor as Mr. O'Connell. But to be observant of the truth; to sacrifice selfish purposes; to withstand the popular prejudice that created his power, required a mind trained from infancy to obey the dictates of the exalted morality fitted for a free people, and which among them alone can be found. Unfortunately for his fame and the happiness of his country, Mr. O'Connell was tainted with the vices produced by that dominion against which he reared a gallant front. The slavery that he attempted to vanquish, had exercised its baneful influence over his own mind. That carelessness respecting truth, which always attends the slave's condition, deformed the mind of him who was destined, in one remarkable instance, to overcome the very tyranny which marked with ignominy the race to which he belonged."