hatterton demanded
back his poems; Walpole was going to Paris, and forgot to return them.
Another letter came: the wounded poet again demanded them, adding that
Walpole would not have dared to use him so had he not been poor. The
poems were returned in a blank cover: and here all Walpole's concern
with Thomas Chatterton ends. All this happened in 1769. In August, 1770,
the remains of the unhappy youth were carried to the burial-ground of
Shoe Lane workhouse, near Holborn. He had swallowed arsenic; had
lingered a day in agonies; and then, at the age of eighteen expired.
Starvation had prompted the act: yet on the day before he had committed
it, he had refused a dinner, of which he was invited by his hostess to
partake, assuring her that he was not hungry. Just or unjust, the world
has never forgiven Horace Walpole for Chatterton's misery. His
indifference has been contrasted with the generosity of Edmund Burke to
Crabbe: a generosity to which we owe 'The Village,' 'The Borough,' and
to which Crabbe owed his peaceful old age, and almost his existence. The
cases were different; but Crabbe had his faults--and Chatterton was
worth saving. It is well for genius that there are souls in the world
more sympathizing, less worldly, and more indulgent, than those of such
men as Horace Walpole. Even the editor of 'Walpoliana' lets judgment go
by default. 'As to artists,' he says, 'he paid them what they earned,
and he commonly employed mean ones, that the reward might be smaller.'

Let us change the strain: stilled be the mournful note on which we have
rested too long. What have wits and beaux and men of society to do with
poets and beggars? Behold, Horace, when he has written his monitory
letter, packs up for Paris. Let us follow him there, and see him in the
very centre of his pleasures--in the _salon_ of La Marquise du Deffand.

Horace Walpole had perfected his education, as a fine gentleman, by his
intimacy with Madame Geoffrin, to whom Lady Hervey had introduced him.
She called him _le nouveau Richelieu_; and Horace was sensible of so
great a compliment from a woman at once '_spirituelle_ and _pieuse_'--a
combination rare in France. Nevertheless, she had the national views of
matrimony. 'What have you done, Madame,' said a foreigner to her, 'with
the poor man I used to see here, who never spoke a word?'

'Ah, _mon Dieu!_ was the reply, 'that was my husband: he is dead.' She
spoke in the same tone as if she had been specifying