* * * * * THOMAS CHATTERTON. If it were allowable for one who professes to write the lives of English poets to pass the name of Chatterton in silence, I should think the literature of our country more honoured by the concealment of his fate than by the record of his genius. Yet from his brief story, the young will learn, that genius is likely to lead them into misery, if it be not accompanied by something that is better than genius; and men, whom birth and station have rendered eminent, may discover that they owe some duty to those whom nature has made more than their equals; and who-- Beneath the good tho' far--are far above the great. Thomas Chatterton was born in the parish of St. Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol, on the twentieth of November, 1752. His father, who was of the same name, and who died about three months before the birth of his son, had been writing-master to a classical school, singing-man in Bristol cathedral, and master of the free-school in Pyle-street in that city; and is related to have been inclined to a belief in magic, and deeply versed in Cornelius Agrippa. His forefathers had borne the humble office of sexton to St. Mary Redcliffe church for a century and a half, till the death of John Chatterton, great uncle of the poet. From what is recorded of the infancy of Chatterton, parents may be satisfied that an inaptness to learn in childhood, is far from being a prognostic of future dullness. At the age of five years, he was sent to the school of which his father had been master, and was found so incorrigibly stupid, that he was rejected by the teacher, whose name was Love, as incapable of profiting by his instruction. His mother, as most mothers would have done in the like case, bitterly lamented her son's untowardness; when an old musical manuscript in French coming in his way, he fell in love, as she expressed it, with the illuminated capitals. Of this fancy she eagerly availed herself to lead him on to an acquaintance with the alphabet; and from hence proceeded to teach him to read in an old Testament or Bible in the black letter. Doctor Gregory, one of his biographers, justly observes, that it is not unreasonable to suppose his peculiar fondness for antiquities to have originated in this incident. It is related, on the testimony of his sister, as a mark of his early thirst for distinction, that being offered a present of china-ware by a potter, and asked what device he would have painted on it, he replied, "Paint me an angel with wings, and a trumpet to trumpet my name about the world." It is so usual with those who are fondly attached to a child, to deceive themselves into a belief, that what it has said on the suggestion of others, has proceeded from its own mind, that much credit is seldom due to such marvels.