ed his knowledge;" and Warton, in the History of English
Poetry, where he discusses the authenticity of the Rowleian poems, gives
it as his opinion, that Chatterton "would have proved the first of
English poets if he had reached a maturer age."

"He was proud," says his sister, "and exceedingly imperious;" but both
she and his school-fellow Thistlethwaite, vindicated him from the charge
of libertinism, which was brought against him by some who thought they
could not sufficiently blacken his memory. On the contrary, his
abstemiousness was uncommon; he seldom used animal food or strong
liquors, his usual diet being a piece of bread and a tart, and some
water. He fancied that the full of the moon was the most propitious time
for study, and would often sit up and write the whole night by
moonlight. His spirits were extremely uneven, and he was subject to long
and frequent fits of absence, insomuch that he would look stedfastly in
a person's face without speaking or seeming to see him for a quarter of
an hour or more. There is said to have been something peculiarly
pleasing in his manner and address. His person was marked by an air of
manliness and dignity that bespoke the superiority of his mind. His
eyes, one of which was more remarkable than the other, were of a grey
colour, keen, and brilliant, especially when any thing occurred to
animate him.

Of all the hypotheses concerning those papers which have been the
subject of so much controversy, none seems more probable than that
suggested by Warton, who, in the History of English Poetry, admits that
some of the poems attributed to Rowley might have been preserved in
Canynge's chest; and in another publication allows that Chatterton
"might have discovered parchments of humble prose containing local
memoirs and authentic deeds illustrating the history of Bristol, and
biographical diaries, or other notices, of the lives of Canynge, Ischam,
and Gorges. But that many of the manuscripts were not genuine, is proved
not only by the dissimilitude of the style to any composition of the age
of Henry VI. and Edward IV. and by the marked resemblance to several
passages in modern poets, but by certain circumstances which leave
little or no doubt of their having been fabricated by Chatterton
himself." One of his companions, at the time that he was an apprentice
to Lambert, affirms, that he one day produced a piece of parchment on
which he wrote several words, if not lines, in a character