even a hearing--and a threshing for all their pains. I am truly your friend and servant, J. MONTGOMERY. Sheffield, May 5, 1826." Clare was a great admirer of Chatterton, and the melancholy fate of "the marvellous boy" was frequently referred to by him in his correspondence. The idea of imitating the older poets was no doubt suggested to him by Chatterton's successful efforts, but he possessed neither the special faculty nor the consummate artifice of his model, and therefore we are not surprised to find him confessing at once to the trick he had attempted. He replied to Montgomery:-- "Helpstone, May 8, 1826. My dear Sir,-- I will lose no time in answering your letter, for I was highly delighted to meet so kind a notice from a poet so distinguished as yourself; and if it be vanity to acknowledge it, it is, I hope, a vanity of too honest a nature to be ashamed of--at least I think so, and always shall. But your question almost makes me feel ashamed to own to the extent of the falsehood I committed; and yet I will not double it by adding a repetition of the offence. I must confess to you that the poem is mine, and that the book from whence it was pretended to have been transcribed has no existence (that I know of) but in my invention of the title. And now that I have confessed to the crime, I will give you the reasons for committing it. I have long had a fondness for the poetry of the time of Elizabeth, though I have never had any means of meeting with it, farther than in the confined channels of Ritson's 'English Songs,' Ellis's 'Specimens,' and Walton's 'Angler;' and the winter before last, though amidst a severe illness, I set about writing a series of verses, in their manner, as well as I could, which I intended to pass off under their names, though some whom I professed to imitate I had never seen. As I am no judge of my own verses, whether they are good or bad, I wished to have the opinion of some one on whom I could rely; and as I was told you were the editor of the 'Iris,' I ventured to send the first thing to you, with many 'doubts and fears.' I was happily astonished to see its favourable reception. Since then I have written several others in the same style, some of which have been published; one in Hone's 'Everyday Book,' on 'Death' under the name of Marvell, and some others in the 'European Magazine;' 'Thoughts in a Churchyard,' the 'Gipsy's Song,' and a 'Farewell to Love.' The first was intended for Sir Henry Wootton; the next for Tom Davies; the last for Sir John Harrington. The last thing I did in these forgeries was an 'Address to Milton,' the poet, under the name of Davenant. And as your kind opinion was the first and the last I ever met with from a poet to pursue these vagaries or shadows of other days, I will venture to transcribe them here for the 'Iris,' should they be deemed as worthy of it as the first were by your judgment, for my own is nothing: I should have acknowledged their kind reception [sooner] had I not