In a letter from Southey to Mr. Britton (dated in 1810, to which we have already referred, and which Mr. Britton kindly submitted to us with various other correspondence on the subject), he says, "there can now be no impropriety in mentioning what could not be said when the collected edition of Chatterton's works was published,--that there was a taint of insanity in his family. His sister was once confined; and this is a key to the eccentricities of his life, and the deplorable rashness of his death." Of this unhappy predisposition, indeed, he seems to have been himself conscious, for "in his last will and testament," written in April, 1770, before he quitted Bristol, when he seems to have meditated suicide--although, from the mock-heroic style of the document his serious design may be questioned,--he writes, "If I do a mad action, it is conformable to every action of my life, which all savored of insanity." His "sudden fits of weeping, for which no reason could be assigned," when a mere child, were but the preludes to those gloomy forebodings which haunted him when a boy. His mother had said, "she was often apprehensive of his going mad." And so,--the verdict having been pronounced, he was cast into the burying-ground of Shoe Lane work-house--the paupers' burying-ground,--the end, as far as his clayey tabernacle was concerned, of all his dreamy greatness. When the ear was deaf to the worship of the charmer, he received his meed of posthumous praise. Malone, Croft, Dr. Knox, Wharton, Sherwin, Pye, Mrs. Cowley, Walter Scott, Haley, Coleridge, Dermody, Wordsworth, Shelley, William Howitt, Keats, who dedicated his "Endymion" to the memory of his fellow-genius; the burly Johnson, whose praise seemed unintentional; the gentle and most Christian poet, James Montgomery,--have each and all offered tributes to his memory. Robert Southey, whose polished, strong and long unclouded mind was a treasure-house of noble-thoughts, assisted Mr. Cottle in providing for the poet's family by a collection of his works; and, though last, not least, excellent John Britton has labored all his long life to render justice to the poor boy's memory. To him, indeed, it was mainly owing, that the cenotaph to which we have referred (and which now lies mouldering in the Church vault), was erected in the graveyard of Redcliffe Church, by subscription, of which the contributions of Bristol were very small.[12] Chatterton was another warning, not only "Against self-slaughter There is a prohibition so divine--" but that no mortal should ever abandon Hope! for a reverend gentleman,--who was, in all things, what, unhappily, Horace Walpole was not,--had actually visited Bristol, to seek out and aid the boy while he lay dead in London. "Beware of desperate steps; the darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away." [Illustration: CHATTERTON'S MONUMENT.]