In aid of his plans, Chatterton first addressed himself to Dodsley, the Pall Mall bookseller, once with smaller poems, and afterwards on behalf of the greatest production of his genius--the tragedy of "Ella;" but the booksellers of those days were not more intellectual than those at the present: they devoured the small forgery of the great Horace Walpole, "The Castle of Otranto," and rejected the magnificence of a nameless composition. This man's neglect drove the young poet to the "Autocrat of Strawberry Hill." In reply he at first received a polished letter. The literary trifler was not aware of the poverty and low station of his correspondent, and so was courteous; he is "grateful" and "singularly obliged;" bowing, and perfumed, and polite. Other communications followed. Walpole inquired--discovered the poet's situation; and _then_ he changed! The poor fond boy! how hard and bitter was the rebuff. How little had he imagined that _the_ Walpole's soul was not, _by five shillings_, as large as the Bristol pewterer's!--that he who was an adept at literary imposition could have been so harsh to a fellow-sinner! The volume of his works containing "Miscellanies of Chatterton" is now before us. Hear to his indignant honesty! He declares that "all the house of forgery are relations; and that though it be but just to Chatterton's memory to say his poverty never made him claim kindred with the richest, or more enriching branches, yet that his ingenuity in counterfeiting styles, and I believe hands, might easily have led him to those more facile imitations of prose--promissory notes." The literal meaning of this paragraph stamps the littleness of the man's mind. A slight--a very slight effort on his part might have turned the current of the boy's thoughts, and saved him from misery and death. We do not call Chatterton "his victim," because we do not think him so; but he, or any one in his position, might have turned him from the love of an unworthy notoriety to the pursuit of a laudable ambition. Following in the world's track (which he was ever careful not to outstep), when the boy was dead, Walpole bore eloquent testimony to his genius. The words of praise he gives his memory are like golden grains amid the chaffy _verbiage_ with which he defends himself. If he perceived this at first, why not have come forward hand and heart, and shouted him on to honest fortune? But, like all _clique kings_, he made no general cause with literature; he only smiled on his individual worshippers, who could applaud when he said, with cruel playfulness, "that singing birds should not be too well fed!"