to their forgery. The
forged manuscripts which he had the hardihood afterwards to present, were
totally unlike those of Edward the Fourth's time; he was entirely at fault
in his heraldry; words were used out of their meaning; and, in his poem on
_The Battle of Hastings_, he had introduced the modern discoveries
concerning Stone Henge. He uses the possessive case _yttes_, which did not
come into use until long after the Rowlie period. Add to these that
Chatterton's reputation for veracity was bad.

The truth was, that he had found some curious scraps, which had set his
fancy to work, and the example of Macpherson had led to the cheat he was
practising upon the public. To some friends he confessed the deception,
denying it again, violently, soon after; and he had been seen smoking
parchment to make it look old. The lad was crazy.

HIS SUICIDE.--Keeping up appearances, he went to London, and tried to get
work. At one time he was in high spirits, sending presents to his mother
and sisters, and promising them better days; at another, he was in want,
in the lowest depression, no hope in the world. He only asks for work; he
is entirely unconcerned for whom he writes or what party he eulogizes; he
wants money and a name, and when these seem unattainable, he takes refuge
from "the whips and scorns of time," the burning fever of pride, the
gnawings of hunger, in suicide. He goes to his little garret
room,--refusing, as he goes, a dinner from his landlady, although he is
gaunt with famine,--mixes a large dose of arsenic in water, and--"jumps
the life to come." He was just seventeen years and nine months old! When
his room was forced open, it was found that he had torn up most of his
papers, and had left nothing to throw light upon his deception.

The verdict of literary criticism is that of the medical art--he was
insane; and to what extent this mania acted as a monomania, that is, how
far he was himself deceived, the world can never know. One thing, at
least; it redeems all his faults. Precocious beyond any other known
instance of precocity; intensely haughty; bold in falsehood; working best
when the moon was at the full, he stands in English literature as the most
singular of its curiosities. His will is an awful jest; his declaration of
his religious opinions a tissue of contradictions and absurdities: he
bequeathes to a clergyman his humility; to Mr. Burgum his prosody and
grammar, with half his modesty--the other half to a