ief
Discourse concerning the Different Wits of Men_ (1675).

CHATTERTON, THOMAS (1752-1770).--Poet, _b._ at Bristol, posthumous _s._
of a schoolmaster, who had been a man of some reading and antiquarian
tastes, after whose death his mother maintained herself and her boy and
girl by teaching and needlework. A black-letter Bible and an illuminated
music-book belonging to her were the first things to give his mind the
impulse which led to such mingled glory and disaster. Living under the
shadow of the great church of St. Mary Redcliffe, his mind was impressed
from infancy with the beauty of antiquity, he obtained access to the
charters deposited there, and he read every scrap of ancient literature
that came in his way. At 14 he was apprenticed to a solicitor named
Lambert, with whom he lived in sordid circumstances, eating in the
kitchen and sleeping with the foot-boy, but continuing his favourite
studies in every spare moment. In 1768 a new bridge was opened, and C.
contributed to a local newspaper what purported to be a contemporary
account of the old one which it superseded. This attracted a good deal of
attention. Previously to this he had been writing verses and imitating
ancient poems under the name of Thomas Rowley, whom he feigned to be a
monk of the 15th century. Hearing of H. Walpole's collections for his
_Anecdotes of Painting in England_, he sent him an "ancient manuscript"
containing biographies of certain painters, not hitherto known, who had
flourished in England centuries before. W. fell into the trap, and wrote
asking for all the MS. he could furnish, and C. in response forwarded
accounts of more painters, adding some particulars as to himself on which
W., becoming suspicious, submitted the whole to T. Gray and Mason
(_q.v._), who pronounced the MS. to be forgeries. Some correspondence,
angry on C.'s part, ensued, and the whole budget of papers was returned.
C. thereafter, having been dismissed by Lambert, went to London, and for
a short time his prospects seemed to be bright. He worked with feverish
energy, threw off poems, satires, and political papers, and meditated a
history of England; but funds and spirits failed, he was starving, and
the failure to obtain an appointment as ship's surgeon, for which he had
applied, drove him to desperation, and on the morning of August 25, 1770,
he was found dead from a dose of arsenic, surrounded by his writings torn
into small pieces. From childhood C. had shown a