We have no space for examination of the "numerous verse," and verses numerous, that Chatterton left undisguised by barbarous phraseology. His modern poems, morally exceptionable as is much of the matter, are affluent of the genius that inspired the old. African Eclogues, Elegies, Political Satires, Amatory Triflings, Lines on the Copernican System, the Consuliad, Lines on Happiness, _Resignation_, The Art of Puffing, and Kew Gardens--to say nothing of his equally remarkable prose writings--attest the versatility of his powers, and the variety of his perception of men and manners. His knowledge of the world appears to have been almost intuitive; for surely no youth of his years ever displayed so much. Bristol, it is true, was, of all great towns in England, one of the most favourable to the development of his peculiar and complicated faculties. His passion for antiquarian lore, and his poetical enthusiasm, found a nursing mother in a city so rich in ancient architecture, heraldic monuments, and historical interest; his caustic humour was amply fed from the full tide of human life, with all its follies, in that populous mart; and his exquisite sensibility to the beautiful and magnificent in nature, was abundantly ministered to by the surrounding country. We are told that he had been by some odd chance taught his alphabet, and his first lesson in "reading made easy," out of a black-letter Bible! That accident may have had its share in forming his taste for old-fashioned literature. But he was an attorney's clerk! The very name of a lawyer's office seems to suggest a writ of ejectment against all poetical influences in the brain of his indented apprentice. Yet Chatterton's anomalous genius was in all likelihood fostered by that dark, yet subtle atmosphere. His duty of copying precedents must have initiated him in many of the astute wiles and twisted lines of reasoning that lead to what is termed sharp practice, and so may have confirmed and aided his propensities to artifice; while the mere manual operation tutored his fingers to dexterity at quaint penmanship. He had much leisure too; for it is recorded that his master's business seldom occupied him more than two hours a-day. He was left to devote the rest of his time unquestioned to all the devices of an inordinate imagination. After all, it is no unreasonable charity to believe, that what was unworthy and unsound in his character, and probably in his physical temperament, might, under more auspicious circumstances of condition and training, have been kept in check till utterly expelled by the force of his own maturer mind. In weighing his faults against his genius and its better fruits, it should never be forgotten that when he terminated his existence he was only seventeen years and nine months old. "More wounds than nature gave he knew, While misery's form his fancy drew In dark ideal hues and horrors not its own."[39]