driven away by Alfred the
Great! Nine shields, exhibiting the family arms, were carefully prepared
by him, and are preserved, with many other and very various inventions
by the same hand, in the British Museum; and neat engravings of those
Chatterton escutcheons are furnished by Mr Cottle, in his excellent
essays on this tortuous genius. He was equally liberal in providing a
pedigree for his friend Mr Burgham, a worthy and credulous pewterer in
his native town, convincing him, by proofs that were not conclusive at
the Herald's College, that he was descended from the De Burghams, who
possessed the estate and manor of Brougham in the reign of Edward the
Confessor, and so allying the delighted hearer with the forefathers of
an illustrious Ex-Chancellor of our day. No less a personage, too, than
Fitz-Stephen, son of Stephen Earl of Ammerle in 1095, grandson of Od,
Earl of Bloys and Lord of Holderness, was the progenitor gravely
assigned to Chatterton's relative, Mr Stephens, leather-breeches-maker
of Salisbury. Evidence of all sorts was ever ready among the treasures
in the Redcliff muniment room, the Blue-Coat boy's "Open Sesame!"

The plot of Ella may be told in a few words. Ella, a renowned English
warrior, the same who is invoked in the fine song already quoted,
marries Bertha, of whom his friend and fellow warrior, Celmond, is
secretly enamoured. On the wedding-day he is called suddenly away to
oppose a Danish force, which he defeats, but not without receiving
wounds severe enough to prevent his immediate return home. Celmond takes
advantage of this circumstance, and under pretence of conducting Bertha
to her husband, betrays her into a forest that chances to be the covert
of Hurra, the Danish general, and other of the discomfited invaders. Her
shrieks bring Hurra and his companions to her aid. They kill Celmond,
and generously resolve to restore Bertha to her lord. He in the mean
time, impatient to rejoin his bride, has contrived to get home, where,
when he hears of her ill-explained departure, believing her false, he
stabs himself. She arrives only in time to see him die.

Celmond, soliloquizing on the charms of Bertha, exclaims,--

"Ah, Bertha, why did nature frame thee fair?
Why art thou not as coarse as others are?
_But then thy soul would through thy visage shine_;
Like nut-brown cloud when by the sun made red,
So would thy spirit on thy visage spread."

At the wedding-feast, so unexpected