[Footnote 64: Before Chatterton was twelve years old, he wrote a catalogue, in the same manner as Lord Byron, of the books he had already read, to the number of seventy. Of these the chief subjects were history and divinity.] [Footnote 65: The perfect purity with which the Greeks wrote their own language, was, with justice, perhaps, attributed by themselves to their entire abstinence from the study of any other. "If they became learned," says Ferguson, "it was only by studying what they themselves had produced."] [Footnote 66: The only circumstance I know, that bears even remotely on the subject of this poem, is the following. About a year or two before the date affixed to it, he wrote to his mother, from Harrow (as I have been told by a person to whom Mrs. Byron herself communicated the circumstance), to say, that he had lately had a good deal of uneasiness on account of a young woman, whom he knew to have been a favourite of his late friend, Curzon, and who, finding herself, after his death, in a state of progress towards maternity, had declared Lord Byron was the father of her child. This, he positively assured his mother, was not the case; but, believing, as he did firmly, that the child belonged to Curzon, it was his wish that it should be brought up with all possible care, and he, therefore, entreated that his mother would have the kindness to take charge of it. Though such a request might well (as my informant expresses it) have discomposed a temper more mild than Mrs. Byron's, she notwithstanding answered her son in the kindest terms, saying that she would willingly receive the child as soon as it was born, and bring it up in whatever manner he desired. Happily, however, the infant died almost immediately, and was thus spared the being a tax on the good nature of any body.] [Footnote 67: In this practice of dating his juvenile poems he followed the example of Milton, who (says Johnson), "by affixing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own compositions to the notice of posterity." The following trifle, written also by him in 1807, has never, as far as I know, appeared in print:-- "EPITAPH ON JOHN ADAMS, OF SOUTHWELL, A CARRIER, "WHO DIED OF DRUNKENNESS. "John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell, A _Carrier_, who _carried_ his can to his mouth well; He _carried_ so much, and he _carried_ so fast, He could _carry_ no more--so was _carried_ at last; For, the liquor he drank being too much for one, He could not _carry_ off,--so he 's now _carri-on_. "B----, Sept. 1807." ] [Footnote 68: Annesley is, of course, not forgotten among the number:--