ng: while his pride led him to seek for notoriety
for himself, it was only to render his mother and sister comfortable
that he coveted wealth.

It is not our province to enter into the controversy as to whether the
MSS. were originals or forgeries: it would seem to be as undecided
to-day as it was three quarters of a century ago; the boy "died and made
no sign:" and the world has not been put in possession of any additional
facts by which the question might be determined: the balance of proof
appears in favor of those who contend they were the sole offspring of
his mind, suggested merely by ancient documents from which he could have
borrowed no idea except that of rude spelling; yet it is by no means
impossible that poems did actually exist, and came into his hands, which
he altered and interpolated, but which he did not create.

In aid of his plans, Chatterton first addressed himself to Dodsley, the
Pall Mall bookseller, once with smaller poems, and afterwards on behalf
of the greatest production of his genius--the tragedy of "Ella;" but the
booksellers of those days were not more intellectual than those at the
present: they devoured the small forgery of the great Horace Walpole,
"The Castle of Otranto," and rejected the magnificence of a nameless
composition. This man's neglect drove the young poet to the "Autocrat of
Strawberry Hill." In reply he at first received a polished letter. The
literary trifler was not aware of the poverty and low station of his
correspondent, and so was courteous; he is "grateful" and "singularly
obliged;" bowing, and perfumed, and polite. Other communications
followed. Walpole inquired--discovered the poet's situation; and _then_
he changed! The poor fond boy! how hard and bitter was the rebuff. How
little had he imagined that _the_ Walpole's soul was not, _by five
shillings_, as large as the Bristol pewterer's!--that he who was an
adept at literary imposition could have been so harsh to a
fellow-sinner! The volume of his works containing "Miscellanies of
Chatterton" is now before us. Hear to his indignant honesty! He declares
that "all the house of forgery are relations; and that though it be but
just to Chatterton's memory to say his poverty never made him claim
kindred with the richest, or more enriching branches, yet that his
ingenuity in counterfeiting styles, and I believe hands, might easily
have led him to those more facile imitations of prose--promissory
notes." The literal meani