"I employ my money now in fitting myself fashionably, as my profession (of letters) obliges me to frequent the places of best resort. But I have engaged to live with a gentleman, the brother of a lord, who is going to advance pretty deeply into the bookselling branches. I shall have lodging and boarding, genteel and elegant, gratis. I shall have likewise no inconsiderable premium. I will send you two silks this summer, and expect, in answer to this, what colors you prefer.... Essay writing has this advantage: you are sure of constant pay; and when you have once wrote a piece which makes the author inquired after, you may bring the booksellers to your own terms." {204} Ah, how young he was! If only those first literary dreams and hopes could be realized, which nestle in the brains of so many--what silks--what houses--what gold--what fame! Yet this stripling not yet eighteen could write. I will give you a taste of his quality--in verses shorn of some of the old words he put in them for sake of disguise:-- "The budding floweret blushes at the light, The meads are sprinkled with the yellow hue, In daisied mantles is the mountain dight, The nesh young cowslip bendeth with the dew; The trees enleafed, into heaven straught, When gentle winds do blow, to whistling din are brought. The evening comes and brings the dew along, The ruddy welkin sheeneth to the eyne; Around the ale stake minstrels sing their song; Young ivy round the door-post doth entwine. I lay me on the grass; yet, to my will Albeit all is fair, there lacketh something still."[9] And again, of a different order, this--from the same long poem:-- "O sing unto my Roundelay, O drop the briny tear with me, Dance no more at Holy day Like a running river be. {205} My Love is dead, Gone to his death bed, All under the willow tree. Come with acorn cup and thorn Drain my hearte's blood away; Life and all its good I scorn, Dance by night or feast by day. My love is dead Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree." Well, this is the poetry of the marvellous boy Chatterton[10]--fragments of which you will find in all the anthologies. That last tender letter to his sister, which I set before you--so gleeful, with promise of silks and of brilliant essays, was written on the last day of the month of May, 1770; and on the 24th of August--not three months later--after three days of starvation enforced by a poverty of which his pride would not let him tell, he took poison and made an end of his career. Few knew of this; few knew that there had {206} been any such adventurer in London; fewer yet, knew what poems--brimming, many of them, with fine fancies--he had left behind him.