The history of this 'marvellous boy' is familiar to all the readers of English poetry, and requires only a cursory treatment here. Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol, November 20, 1752. His father, a teacher in the free-school there, had died before his birth, and he was sent to be educated at a charity-school. He first learned to read from a black- letter Bible. At the age of fourteen, he was put apprentice to an attorney; a situation which, however uncongenial, left him ample leisure for pursuing his private studies. In an unlucky hour, some evil genius seemed to have whispered to this extra-ordinary youth,--'Do not find or force, but forge thy way to renown; the other paths to the summit of the hill are worn and common-place; try a new and dangerous course, the rather as I forewarn thee that thy time is short.' When, accordingly, the new bridge at Bristol was finished in October 1768, Chatterton sent to a newspaper a fictitious account of the opening of the old bridge, alleging in a note that he had found the principal part of the description in an ancient MS. And having thus fairly begun to work the mint of forgery, it was amazing what a number of false coins he threw off, and with what perfect ease and mastery! Ancient poems, pretending to have been written four hundred and fifty years before; fragments of sermons on the Holy Spirit, dated from the fifteenth century; accounts of all the churches of Bristol as they had appeared three hundred years before; with drawings and descriptions of the castle--most of them professing to be drawn from the writings of 'ane gode prieste, Thomas Rowley'--issued in thick succession from this wonderful, and, to use the Shakspearean word in a twofold sense, 'forgetive' brain. He next ventured to send to Horace Walpole, who was employed on a History of British Painters, an account of eminent 'Carvellers and Peyneters,' who, according to him, once flourished in Bristol. These labours he plied in secret, and with the utmost enthusiasm. He used to write by the light of the moon, deeming that there was a special inspiration in the rays of that planet, and reminding one of poor Nat Lee inditing his insane tragedies in his asylum under the same weird lustre. On Sabbaths he was wont to stroll away into the country around Bristol, which is very beautiful, and to draw sketches of those objects which impressed his imagination. He often lay down on the meadows near St Mary's Redcliffe Church, admiring the ancient edifice; and some years ago we saw a chamber near the summit of that edifice where he used to sit and write, his 'eye in a fine frenzy rolling,' and where we could imagine him, when a moonless night fell, composing his wild Runic lays by the light of a candle burning in a human skull. It was actually in one of the rooms of this church that some ancient chests had been deposited, including one called the 'Coffre of Mr Canynge,' an eminent merchant in Bristol, who