Meantime Walpole, through his scholarly friend the poet Gray, had come to doubt the antiquity of Rowley's verse; and the plebeianism of this correspondent has shocked his gentility. He replies coolly, therefore; expresses doubts of the Rowley authorship, and advises poor Chatterton to keep {209} by his apprenticeship at the scriveners. This sets the young poet's blood on fire; he will go to London; he will win his way; he will smite the Philistines hip and thigh. And--as I have told you--he did go; did work; did struggle. But it is a great self-seeking world he has to face, full throughout of thwarting circumstance. Yet courage and pride hold him up--hold him up for months against terrific odds; at least he will tell nothing of his griefs. Thus his last pennies, which should have gone for bread, go to carry little love-tokens to the dear ones he has left. So lost is he in his little Holborn chamber, in that great seething, turbulent whirl of London, that he thinks--even as he mixes his death potion--they will never know; they will never hear: "Gone"--that is all! But they do know: and for them it is to chant broken-hearted the refrain of his own roundelay, My love is dead, Gone to his death bed All under the willow tree. It is not alone for reason of the romantic aspects of the story that I have given you this glimpse of the boy Chatterton, but because there was really {210} much literary merit and great promise in his work; in some respects, he reminds us of our American Poe--the same disposition to deal with mysteries, the same uncontrolled ardors, the same haughty pride; and although Chatterton's range in all rhythmic art was far below that of Poe, and although he did not carry so bold and venturous a step as the American into the region of _diableries_, he had perhaps more varied fancies and more homely tendernesses. The antique gloss which he put upon his work was unworthy his genius; helping no way save to stimulate curiosity, and done with a crudeness which, under the light of modern philologic study, would have deceived no one. But under this varnish of archæologic fustian and mould, there is show of an imaginative power and of a high poetic instinct, which will hold critical respect[12] and regard as long as English poetry shall be read. {211} _Laurence Sterne._ [Sidenote: A sentimentalist.]