ply implicated, he presented
the poor bluecoat-boy, who had been so fortunate in _finding_ so much,
and so assiduous in his endeavors to collect the remainder, with _five
shillings_!" Blush, Bristol, blush at this record of a citizen's
meanness; the paltry remuneration could have hardly tempted even so poor
a lad as Thomas Chatterton to continue his labors for the love of gain;
yet he furnished Burgum with further information, loving the indulgence
of his mystifying powers, and secretly satirizing the folly he duped.

It is quite impossible to trace back any circumstance which could, to
speak advisedly, have led to such a course of deception as was practised
by this boy; born of obscure parents, his father, a man of dissolute
habits, was sub-chanter of the Cathedral, and also master of the free
school in Pyle-street; this clever, but harsh, and dissolute man died in
August, 1752, and the poet was born on the 20th of the following
November.[3] Such a parent could not be a loss; he would have been, in
all human probability, as careless of his son as he was of his wife;
and, at all events, Chatterton had not the misery of early cruelty to
complain of, for he had a mother, tender and affectionate, although
totally unfit to guide and manage his wayward nature. Her first grief
with him arose, strange as it may seem, from his inaptitude for
learning--as a child he disdained A B C, and indulged himself with his
own thoughts. When nearly seven years old he "fell in love," to use his
mother's phrase, "with an illuminated French manuscript," and thus
learned his letters from the very sort of thing he spent his early days
in counterfeiting. His progress was wonderful, both as to rapidity and
extent, and his pride kept pace therewith. A friend, wishing to give the
boy and his sister a present of china-ware, asked him what device he
would choose to ornament his with. "Paint me," he said, "an angel with
wings and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world." Here was a
proof of innate ambition; if his mother had had an understanding mind,
this observation would have taught her to read his character. Such
ambition could have been directed,--and directed to noble deeds.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF CHATTERTON.]

[Illustration: CHATTERTON AS DOORKEEPER.]

He was admitted into the Blue Coat School, commonly called "Colston's
School,"[4] before he was eight years old, and his enthusiastic joy at
the prospect of learning so much, was d