In 1769 Chatterton had begun contributing miscellaneous articles, in prose and verse, to the Town and Country Magazine, a London periodical.  Among these appeared the eclogue of “Elinoure and Juga,"[10] the only one of the Rowley poems printed during its author’s lifetime.  He had now turned his pen to the service of politics, espousing the side of Wilkes and liberty.  In April, 1770, he left Bristol for London, and cast himself upon the hazardous fortunes of a literary career.  Most tragical is the story of the poor, unfriended lad’s struggle against fate for the next few months.  He scribbled incessantly for the papers, receiving little or no pay.  Starvation confronted him; he was too proud to ask help, and on August 24 he took poison and died, at the age of seventeen years and nine months.

With Chatterton’s acknowledged writings we have nothing here to do; they include satires in the manner of Churchill, political letters in the manner of Junius, squibs, lampoons, verse epistles, elegies, “African eclogues,” a comic burletta, “The Revenge”—­played at Marylebone Gardens shortly after his death—­with essays and sketches in the style that the Spectator and Rambler had made familiar:  “The Adventures of a Star,” “The Memoirs of a Sad Dog,” and the like.  They exhibit a precocious cleverness, but have no value and no interest today.  One gets from Chatterton’s letters and miscellanies an unpleasant impression of his character.  There is not only the hectic quality of too early ripeness which one detects in Keats’ correspondence; and the defiant swagger, the affectation of wickedness and knowingness that one encounters in the youthful Byron, and that is apt to attend the stormy burst of irregular genius upon the world; but there are things that imply a more radical unscrupulousness.  But it would be harsh to urge any such impressions against one who was no more than a boy when he perished, and whose brief career had struggled through cold obstruction to its bitter end.  The best traits in Chatterton’s character appear to have been his proud spirit of independence and his warm family affections.

The death of an obscure penny-a-liner, like young Chatterton, made little noise at first.  But gradually it became rumored about in London literary coteries that manuscripts of an interesting kind existed at Bristol, purporting to be transcripts from old English poems; and that the finder, or fabricator, of the same was the unhappy lad who had taken arsenic the other day, to anticipate a slower death from hunger.  It was in April, 1771, that Walpole first heard of the fate of his would-be protege.  “Dining,” he says, “at the Royal Academy, Dr. Goldsmith drew the attention of the company with an account of a marvelous treasure of ancient poems lately discovered at Bristol, and expressed enthusiastic belief in them; for which he was laughed at by Dr. Johnson, who was present.  I soon found this was the trouvaille of my friend Chatterton, and I told Dr. Goldsmith that this novelty was known to me, who might, if I had pleased, have had the honor of ushering the great discovery to the learned world.  You may imagine, sir, we did not all agree in the measure of our faith; but though his credulity diverted me, my mirth was soon dashed; for, on asking about Chatterton, he told me he had been in London and had destroyed himself.”