exton to St. Mary Redcliffe church for a century and a half, till
the death of John Chatterton, great uncle of the poet.

From what is recorded of the infancy of Chatterton, parents may be
satisfied that an inaptness to learn in childhood, is far from being a
prognostic of future dullness. At the age of five years, he was sent to
the school of which his father had been master, and was found so
incorrigibly stupid, that he was rejected by the teacher, whose name was
Love, as incapable of profiting by his instruction. His mother, as most
mothers would have done in the like case, bitterly lamented her son's
untowardness; when an old musical manuscript in French coming in his
way, he fell in love, as she expressed it, with the illuminated
capitals. Of this fancy she eagerly availed herself to lead him on to an
acquaintance with the alphabet; and from hence proceeded to teach him to
read in an old Testament or Bible in the black letter. Doctor Gregory,
one of his biographers, justly observes, that it is not unreasonable to
suppose his peculiar fondness for antiquities to have originated in this
incident.

It is related, on the testimony of his sister, as a mark of his early
thirst for distinction, that being offered a present of china-ware by a
potter, and asked what device he would have painted on it, he replied,
"Paint me an angel with wings, and a trumpet to trumpet my name about
the world." It is so usual with those who are fondly attached to a
child, to deceive themselves into a belief, that what it has said on the
suggestion of others, has proceeded from its own mind, that much credit
is seldom due to such marvels.

A little before he had attained his eighth year, he was admitted into
Colston's charity school in Bristol, an institution in some respects
similar to that excellent one of Christ's Hospital in London, the boys
being boarded and clothed, as well as instructed, in the house. In two
years his dislike to reading was so thoroughly overcome, that he spent
the pocket-money allowed him by his mother in hiring books from a
circulating library. He became reserved, thoughtful, and at times
melancholy; mixed little in childish sports; and between his eleventh
and twelfth years had made a catalogue of the books he had read to the
number of seventy. It is to be regretted, that with a disposition thus
studious, he was not instructed in any language but his own. The example
of one of the assistants in the school, named T