th "angel visits, short and far between"--throw him
into a reverie on the life of William Canning, whose boyhood was more
fortunate than the poet's; for it is here reported of Canning, that

"He ate down learning with the wastlecake."

Chatterton, poor fellow, had neither fine bread to eat, nor fine
learning within the possibility of his acquisition. Yet even the worthy
Corporation of his native city will, we doubt not, be willing to allow
that the Blue-Coat Charity boy might be entitled to the praise he gives
Canning in the next couplet: that he--

"As wise as any of the Aldermen,
Had wit enough to make a Mayor at ten."

We have limited these slight notices to the Rowley Poems; and such
readers of our extracts as have been repelled from the perusal of those
poems, by the formidable array of uncouth diction and strange spelling,
may enquire what has become of the hard words. Here are long quotations,
and not an obsolete term or unfamiliar metre among them. Chatterton took
great pains to encrust his gold with verd-antique; it requires little to
remove the green rubbish from the coin. By the aid of little else than
his own glossary, "the Gode Preeste Rowleie, Aucthoure," is restored to
his true form and pressure, and is all the fairer for the renovation.

We have no space for examination of the "numerous verse," and verses
numerous, that Chatterton left undisguised by barbarous phraseology. His
modern poems, morally exceptionable as is much of the matter, are
affluent of the genius that inspired the old. African Eclogues, Elegies,
Political Satires, Amatory Triflings, Lines on the Copernican System,
the Consuliad, Lines on Happiness, _Resignation_, The Art of Puffing,
and Kew Gardens--to say nothing of his equally remarkable prose
writings--attest the versatility of his powers, and the variety of his
perception of men and manners. His knowledge of the world appears to
have been almost intuitive; for surely no youth of his years ever
displayed so much. Bristol, it is true, was, of all great towns in
England, one of the most favourable to the development of his peculiar
and complicated faculties. His passion for antiquarian lore, and his
poetical enthusiasm, found a nursing mother in a city so rich in ancient
architecture, heraldic monuments, and historical interest; his caustic
humour was amply fed from the full tide of human life, with all its
follies, in that populous mart; and his exquisite sensibility t