186 WALPOLE'S CONTEMPT OF AUTHORS.

and supernatural; it may be said to have been the parent of similar admired productions. Being at Paris, about this time, he wrote a French letter, in the name of the King of Prussia, addressed to ROUSSEAU, with which the Parisians were much amused. But poor Rousseau was indignant, thinking it part of a plan meditated by Hume and the French philosophers to ruin his reputation. He deserved censure for thus trifling with the feelings of a man already the victim of a morbid sensibility. But Walpole, under the influence of an aristocratical spirit, held, though an author, the profession of an author in contempt. Thus he strangely tells Hume, in one of his letters, "You know, in England, (speaking of writers) we read their works, but seldom or never take any notice of authors. We think them sufficiently paid if their books sell, and of course leave them to their colleges and obscurity, by which means we are not troubled with their vanity and impertinence." Dr. Aikin very justly remarks, "To comment on such sentiments would be superfluous.” Declining altogether a seat in parliament, in 1767, Walpole devoted himself to study, and soon produced a curious work, entitled, "Historical Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third." His object was to lessen the obloquy with which the cha. racter of this monarch is loaded, and what he advances has considerable weight, though it did not produce general conviction. Answers were made to the work, and replies given to those answers. Walpole, how

ever, lost his temper on the occasion; he shewed his displeasure at the reading of two papers before the Antiquarian Society, which controverted part of his evidence, by expunging his name from the list of the members of that society.

Next year his own press sent forth a tragedy of his own composition The Mysterious Mother, fraught with too much horror for modern representation. It displayed dramatic talent; and in this line, had he proceeded, he might have established a reputation. However, he did not pursue it, but turned his attention to other subjects.

About this period it was that the unfortunate Chatterton applied to Walpole; and the manner in which he treated his applicant, has subjected him to no small obloquy. The affair shall be stated with brevity :

CHATTERTON, (articled to an attorney at Bristol) in 1769, wrote Walpole a letter, offering to furnish him with accounts of a series of eminent painters who had flourished at Bristol, mentioning at the same time the discovery of some Old Poems, of which he sent a specimen. To a very polite reply, requesting further information, Chatterton returned an answer, stating his condition in life, and hinting a wish to be freed from an irksome profession, and placed in a situation more favourable to the pursuit of elegant studies. Walpole shewed the papers to Gray and Mason, who pronounced them FORGERIES! This occasioned a cold monitory letter from him to Chatterton, which so offended this high spirited youth,

that he immediately demanded back the manuscripts. Walpole, about to depart for Paris, neglected to send them back, and on his return found a very resentful letter from Chatterton, peremptorily requiring the papers, and telling Walpole "that he would not have dared to use him so had he not been acquainted with the narrowness of his circumstances!" Walpole then enclosed them in a blank cover, and thus the correspondence ended. His conduct, on this occasion, has been severely reprobated, charging him with suffering this flower of genius to be blighted by neglect; and even has been made remotely accessary to Chatterton's unhappy end. But Dr. Aikin, with his usual candour and judgment, remarks, that "to this it has been very properly replied, that Chatterton could appear to him in no other light than a young man disgusted with his proper profession, and attempting to obtain his notice by passing a forgery upon him. Whatever were the merit of the pieces, as he himself imputed them to another, they implied no singular ability in him. The neglect of returning them was, however, a fault, though one, apparently, of no great consequence." I may, however, just remark, that it is deeply to be regretted that this neglect should have happened, especially when viewed in connexion with Chatterton's tragic end. This end shall be mentioned in a few words :

Chatterton got soon dismissed from his situation of attorney's clerk with Mr. Lambert, at Bristol, by threatening to commit suicide, and then went to

CHATTERTON'S DEATH.

London, where he wrote for the booksellers.

189

Falling

into a state of indigence, he was reduced to the want of food. And yet, such was his pride, that he refused, as a sort of insult, an invitation to dinner with his hostess on the very day preceding his death, assuring her he was not hungry, though that evening, supping with a friend, he ate most ravenously of oysters! However, on August 24, 1770, he swallowed arsenic, and was found dead next day; his room scattered over with torn papers, and the fatal phial lying at his feet. The poet has thus affectingly described the sad event :

Oh! ill-starr'd youth, whom nature form'd in vain
With pow'rs on Pindus' splendid height to reign;
O! dread example of what pangs await
Young genius struggling with malignant fate!
What could the Muse, who fir'd thy infant frame
With the rich promise of poetic fame,
Who taught thy hand its magic art to hide,
And mock the insolence of critic pride-
What could her unavailing cares oppose,
To save her darling from his desperate foes,
From pressing Want's calamitons controul,
And Pride, the fever of the ardent soul?
Ah! see, too conscious of her failing power,
She quits her nursling in his deathful hour!
In a CHILL ROOM, within whose wretched wall
No cheering voice replies to Misery's call,
Near a vile bed, too crazy to sustain
Misfortune's wasted limbs convuls'd with pain,
On the bare floor, with Heaven-directed eyes,
The hapless youth in speechless horror lies!

190

CHATTERTON'S FORGERIES.

The poisonous phial, by distraction drain'd,
Falls from his hand in wild contortion strain'd;
Pale with life-wasting pangs, its dire effect,
And stung to madness by the world's neglect,
HE in abhorrence of the dangerous art,
Once the dear idol of his glowing heart,
Tears from his harp the vain detested wires
And in the frenzy of despair expires!

HAYLEY.

It should have been mentioned that these Old Poems, sent to Walpole, were, according to Chatterton's account, poems of one Rowley, a monk of the fifteenth century, found in an old coffer, in the tower of Redcliff Church, Bristol. It is, however, now, after a long, furious and learned controversy, believed that the whole was his own composition, and, therefore, a forgery! is merits, on this hypothesis were, however, singularly great, and highly pathetic tributes of praise have been paid to his memory. Dr. Knox has, in his Essays, an entire paper on the subject. Some of these encomiums are thought to have been exaggerated; whilst many of his admirers have not hesitated to declare, that had Chatterton been born under happier auspices, and lived to the maturity of his faculties, he would have risen to the very first rank of English poetry.-But it is time to return to Mr. Horace Walpole, who again, in 1775, visited Paris, where he was received with distinction. Here he commenced an intimate acquaintance with Madam Du Deffand, which continued to his death, and their correspondence has since been published. In 1791,