Of his career little more need be said:  he was too shrewd a man to need sympathy; he took care of himself.  He was successful in his pecuniary schemes; as agent of the Nabob of Arcot, he had a seat in parliament for ten years, and was quite unconcerned what the world thought of his literary performances.  He had achieved notoriety, and enjoyed it.

But, unfortunately, his forgery did fatal injury by its example; it inspired Chatterton, the precocious boy, to make another attempt on public credulity.  It opened a seductive path for one who, inspired by the adventure and warned by the causes of exposure, might make a better forgery, escape detection, and gain great praise in the antiquarian world.

THOMAS CHATTERTON.—­With this name, we accost the most wonderful story of its kind in any literature; so strange, indeed, that we never take it up without trying to discover some new meaning in it.  We hope, against hope, that the forgery is not proved.

Chatterton was born in Bristol, on the Avon, in 1752, of poor parents, but early gave signs of remarkable genius, combined with a prurient ambition.  A friend who wished to present him with an earthen-ware cup, asked him what device he would have upon it.  “Paint me,” he answered, “an angel with wings and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world.”  He learned his alphabet from an old music-book; at eight years of age he was sent to a charity-school, and he spent his little pocket-money at a circulating library, the books of which he literally devoured.

At the early age of eleven he wrote a piece of poetry, and published it in the Bristol Journal of January 8, 1763; it was entitled On the last Epiphany, or Christ coming to Judgment, and the next year, probably, a Hymn to Christmas-day, of which the following lines will give an idea: 

    How shall we celebrate his name,
    Who groaned beneath a life of shame,
      In all afflictions tried? 
    The soul is raptured to conceive
    A truth which being must believe;
      The God eternal died.

    My soul, exert thy powers, adore;
    Upon Devotion’s plumage soar
      To celebrate the day. 
    The God from whom creation sprung
    Shall animate my grateful tongue,
      From Him I’ll catch the lay.

Some member of the Chatterton family had, for one hundred and fifty years, held the post of sexton in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol; and at the time of which we write his uncle was sexton.  In the muniment-room of the church were several coffers, containing old papers and parchments in black letter, some of which were supposed to be of value.  The chests were examined by order of the vestry; the valuable papers were removed, and of the rest, as perquisites of the sexton, some fell into the hands of Chatterton’s father.  The boy, who had been, upon leaving school, articled to an attorney, and had thus become familiar with the old English text, caught sight of these, and seemed then to have first formed the plan of turning them to account, as The Rowlie papers.