the pewterer, may have descended. The
document was made out wholly by Chatterton. Investigation satisfied
Burgum fully, and in return for the discovery he gave the boy a
crown-piece. This compensation seemed so inadequate that the
discoverer afterward celebrated it thus:

"Gods! What would Burgum give to get a name
And snatch the blundering dialect from shame?
What would he give to hand his memory down
To time's remotest boundary? A crown!"

A year afterward, on occasion of the completion of the new bridge over
the river Avon, he astonished the whole town by a paper printed in the
_Bristol Weekly Journal_, with the signature of "Dunelmus
Bristoliensis," which was pretended to have been discovered among
those multitudinous papers of the Treasury House, and which gave
account of the city mayor's first passage over the old bridge that had
been dedicated to the _Assumption of_ the Blessed Virgin by King
Edward III. and his queen, Philippa. Search for the sender was
expedited by his offer of further contributions on the same line, and
wonderful was the success attending his devices. No less than the
other citizens was misled William Barrett, a learned surgeon and
antiquary then engaged upon a history of Bristol. This man, who had
been signally kind to the orphan, availed himself freely of his
pretended findings, paid for them liberally, and used them in the
preparation of his book. What pleased him most was the discovery that
Bristol, among other notables two centuries back, had a great poet in
the person of Thomas Rowlie, a priest, who, among other things, had
written a great poem entitled "The Bristowe Tragedie; or, the Dethe of
Syr Charles Bawdin," founded upon the execution of Sir Baldwin
Fulford, in 1461, by order of Edward IV. This was indeed a great poem.
The muse of tragedy had inspired the young maniac with much of her
consuming fervor. The verses containing the intercession of Canynge
mayor of Bristol, and his ideas of the chiefest duties of a monarch
are among the most touching and noble among their likes in all
literature.

As a contributor to the _Town and Country Magazine_ he obtained many a
shilling, but far less often than what would have satisfied his eager
wants, foremost among which was to see his mother and sister
established in fine vestments and living in luxury. In time he grew to
feel contempt for the Bristol people, high and low, and then he turned
his eyes upon London. Application to