his views expressed in an article written some few days before his death.  He believed in a daemon or conscience which prompted every man to follow good and avoid evil; but—­different men different daemons—­his held self-slaughter justified when life became intolerable; with him therefore it would be no crime.  Wilson suggests too that the boy who had read theology, orthodox and the reverse, held to the common eighteenth century view that death was annihilation; and this may well have been the case.  One thing at any rate is certain, that Chatterton on the 14th of April 1770 left on his desk a number of pieces of paper filled with a jumble of satiric verse, mocking prose, and directions for the construction of a mediaeval tomb to cover the remains of his father and himself.  Part of this strange document was headed in legal form—­’This is the last Will and Testament of me Thomas Chatterton,’ and contained the declaration that the Testator would be dead on the evening of the following day—­’being the feast of the resurrection.’  The bundle was dated and endorsed ’All this wrote between 11 and 2 o’clock Saturday in the utmost distress of mind.’  Now while one need not doubt that the distress was perfectly genuine, it is tolerably certain that Chatterton intended his master to find what he had written and draw his own conclusions as to the desirability of dismissing his apprentice.  The attorney (who is represented as timid, irritable and narrow-minded)[9] did in fact find the document, was thoroughly frightened, and gave the boy his release.  He was now free to starve or earn a living by his pen—­so no doubt he represented the alternative to his mother.  He must go to London, where he would certainly make his fortune.  He had been supplying four or five London journals of good standing with free contributions for some time past, and had received it appears great encouragement from their editors.  He gained his point and started out for the great city.

His letters show that he called upon four editors the very day he arrived.  These were Edmunds of the Middlesex Journal; Fell of the Freeholders Magazine; Hamilton of the Town and Country Magazine; and Dodsley—­the same to whom he had sent a portion of AElla—­of the Annual Register.  He had received, he wrote, ’great encouragement from them all’; ’all approved of his design; he should soon be settled.’  Fell told him later that the great and notorious Wilkes ’affirmed that his writings could not be the work of a youth and expressed a desire to know the author.’  This may or may not have been true, but it is certain that Fell was not the only newspaper proprietor who was ready to exchange a little cheap flattery for articles by Chatterton that would never be paid for.[10]