And saw all actions which had been before

And all the scroll of fate unravelied;

And when the fate marked babe acome to gight,

I saw him eager gasping after light.

In all his simple gambols and child's play,

In every merry-making, fair or wake,

I kenn'd a perpled light of wisdom's.ray:

He ate down learning with the wastel cake,
As wise as any of the aldermen,

He'd wit enow to make a mayor at ten."

He purported that Thomas Rowley, an unknown priest of Bristol, in the days of Henry VI. and his poet laureate, John Lydgate, wrote the verses. Then he made a crude pedigree of Rowley and this is still to be seen, and while it is very crude work, when we consider that the boy was only fourteen years old at this time it is a remarkable evidence of precocity. He then continued to ascribe to Rowley dramatic, lyrical, and descriptive poems, with letters, and fragments of general history. He found no difficulty in imposing upon the most learned. He labored without a confidant, sleeping little, preferring to write by moonlight, believing that he gained inspiration from that luminary. He roamed over the meadows on Sundays musing in solitude with "a wild and vain enthusiasm and a stoical pride of talent."

Walpole was thoroughly deceived by the forgeries at first, and submitted them to Mason and Gray who recognized them as the work of a deceiver; then he ungraciously returned them to Chatterton. This so offended the young poet that he wrote a bitter satirical attack. He was an infidel and early cherished self-destruction because he believed in no hereafter. His friendship for the Lord Mayor Beckford made him ambitious of honors, and when Beckford died he became almost frantic. He moved to miserable lodgings, suffered for want of food,

put on an air of prosperity, deceiving even his mother and sister. He declined an invitation to dine with his landlady after he had been three days without food. He spent the last cent he had for arsenic, then, having destroyed all manuscripts, took the fatal dose.

He seemed to have had a premonition of death, for just three days before he committed suicide he was walking in the churchyard deep in thought, and not seeing a newly dug grave tumbled in. A friend seeing him ran to his assistance, and laughingly said it gave him pleasure to resurrect genius. Chatterton did not smile, but sadly retorted, "I have been at war with the grave for sometime and find it is not easy to vanquish. I feel the sting of speedy dissolution." His friend tried in vain to divert his thoughts. In three days he had taken his own life.

A

Chatterton had a mania for imposing upon the credulity of people. Rev. Mr. Calcott called his attention to the fact that Temple Church leaned somewhat. few days later, while yet a blue-coat boy, he wrote a poem which he declared he had found, purporting to have been written by Thomas Rowley in the 15th century, in which the same peculiarity regarding the church had been noted. Then when the new bridge was completed he discovered, so he said, another poem written at the time the old bridge had been finished. And when Mr. Burgham expressed a wish to secure the history of his family, Chatterton discovers a pedigree tracing the family back to William the Conqueror. Then to gain the good will of Mr. Stephens, the leather-breeches maker, he flatters his vanity by tracing his descent from the Earl of Ammerle; and

when Mr. Barrett desired some historical information regarding Bristol, in order to establish his history, he is presented by Chatterton with multifarious manuscripts written by this same Thomas Rowley.

It is remarkable how he succeeded so in deceiving the most learned. He had copied and so imitated the old English that few suspected him of deception.

Chatterton was very handsome, with large, piercing gray eyes, and like Byron, one eye more brilliant than the other. Wharton called him "a prodigy of genius. Shelley said he must acknowledge his "solemn agency"; Wordsworth names him "the marvelous boy, the sleepless soul that perished in his pride." Keats dedicated his "Endymion" to him, and Alfred de Vigny in one of his finest dramas makes him "a type of a suffering and unrequited genius."

He was buried in the pauper burying-ground of Shoe Lane, and the citizens of Bristol so honored him that they erected a monument to his memory.

HISTORY REVIEW.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Review Tudor Line.

Give three important events in each reign.
Review the Stuart Line.

Give one important event in each reign.
Review the Brunswick Line.

6. Which of the Georges did most for England?