Such were the words of the bards in the days of song when the king heard the music of harps, the tales of other times! The chiefs gathered from all their hills and heard the lovely sound. They praised the voice of Cona, the first among a thousand bards! But age is now on my tongue, my soul has failed! I hear at times the ghosts of bards and learn their pleasant song. But memory fails on my mind.

The

I hear the call of years! They say as they pass along, Why does Ossian sing? Soon shall he lie in the narrow house, and no bard shall raise his fame. Roll on, ye dark-brown years; ye bring us joy on your course! Let the tomb open to Ossian, for his strength has failed. The sons of song are gone to rest. My voice remains, like a surf that roars, lonely, on a sea-surrounded rock after the winds are laid. dark moss rustles there; the distant mariner sees the waving trees! The story of Thomas Chatterton, whom Byron calls "the marvellous boy who perished in his pride," is more remarkable and far more pathetic than that of the well-born and prosperous Macpherson. Chatterton was the descendant of a family of sextons who had cared for the old church of St. Mary Redcliff, at Bristol, England, for more than a century. Thomas was placed at school at five years old, but was sent back to his widowed mother as being too dull to be worth teaching. He was of a masterful temper; and it is said that when asked what device should be painted on a plate which a friendly potter was making for him, he answered, “Paint me an angel with wings and a trumpet, to trumpet my name through the world!" His mother was fain to try to do something for her "stupid" son, and herself taught him until, at eight, he was admitted to a charity school.

As soon as he could read he got on rapidly; yet he took no part in the verse-making contests of his school. His first verses were made at eleven, and compare well with Pope's at twelve and Cowley's at thirteen; while Chatterton had not the advantages of the others, for he had to make his own way in a line foreign to the family habits and traditions. At fourteen he entered on a seven years' apprenticeship to a lawyer to learn to be a scrivener or copy

ist of law-papers. in desultory reading; getting books from a circulating library and dipping into one study after another as if each, in turn, was to be the passion of his life.

Here he used his ample spare time

St. Mary Redcliff had a "muniment-room" where there were six antiquated chests or coffers, which of old were locked and double-locked; but during the time of Thomas's father had been broken open and the ancient documents exposed; and the old man (then schoolmaster as well as sexton) had helped himself to them unsparingly, using the parchment as book - covers in his school. The father having died at about the time of Thomas's birth, the latter had now easy access to the old muniments or documents, and conceiving the idea of taking them for his own use, removed all that were left to his room at the lawyer's house.

The next scene in the Chatterton tragedy was at the opening of a new bridge in Bristol, when there appeared in the Bristol "Journal" a description of the opening of the old bridge in the thirteenth century and the friars passing over it. The article was wonderfully well-written, but the printer could give no account of its origin, further than that the remarkable document had been left at the office by a boy. Chatterton was asked about it, but not liking the manner of the question put to him as if he were a mere boy-he would say nothing. More artful persuasion induced him to speak, and he said he had got the manuscript with others, from his father, who had found them in the old chest before mentioned.

Then followed other manuscripts; chiefly poems ascribed to an imaginary monk named Rowley, said to have lived and written in the fifteenth century. The poems were not good enough to gain praise by their own merit; but as bits of antiquity they were highly prized; and poor Chatterton was on the top of the wave. He generally said that the docu

ment was destroyed; but he did occasionally show a parchment fragment that he had cut from some old deed; and written upon, and smoked and smirched into the appearance of antiquity. At the same time he produced and gave out without disguise some poems of his own which were very good, considering his age and opportunities.

A morbid vanity took possession of the unhappy boy; he thought he had fame and fortune in his grasp, and would promise his mother and sister great things as a part of his own future. Unfortunately his ambition led him to tire of his humble Bristol home and to cast longing eyes on London. He wrote to Horace Walpole offering services, asking help and enclosing specimens of the "Ancient" poems. Walpole (who had just been victimized by the "Ossian" fraud) replied kindly, advising him to stay at home, and saying that there was a suspicion that the poems were not genuine. Chatterton replied in such a tone that Walpole sent him back his letters and poems without a word. Chatterton sacrificed his business in Bristol and went to London, had a time of flattering though shallow success, then fell into adversity and want. Even now he retains a hold on our sympathy, for he sent home to his mother and sister and grandmother presents which he could ill afford.

His fierce pride never waned, and he starved rather than eat the food which kind friends, seeing his wan looks, pressed upon him. On the very day of his death he was offended at his landlady's urging him to share her dinner, and that night he took poison and died, alone in his room. He was not quite seventeen years old.

A favorable specimen of Chatterton's verses is the following, written when he was sixteen years old:

TO MISS HAYLAND:

Count all the flowers that deck the meadow's side

When Flora flourishes in new - born pride;

Count all the sparkling orbits in the sky;

More are the beauteous charms that make my nymph excel. The third member of this trio of literary impostors was William Henry Ireland, who, shortly before the year 1800, professed to have discovered some original and unpublished plays of Shakespeare. He was the son of a dealer in old books and prints who was a Shakespeare enthusiast; and William Henry, at about seventeen years old, presented his father with a forged autograph of the poet. This imposture

succeeded so well that he was led on to other inventions which were generally accepted as valuable additions to the scanty stock of knowledge about Shakespeare. Growing bolder he produced an entire play which he called "Vortigern," and attributed to Shakespeare. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, himself a dramatist, went into raptures over the event, bought the play for his theatre (Drury Lane) and put it upon the stage, where its worthlessness was at once seen, and Ireland was loaded with the contempt which was his due. As is often the case, punishment fell, not on the wrongg-doer but on the innocent; for Ireland's father, who had published the spurious works, was overwhelmed with shame and died not long afterward; while the son, after giving out a shameless account of his performances, became an ordinary "literary hack," or hired writer, and lived on well into the present century.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

LATER MISCELLANEOUS POETS.

HREE poets of the latter years of the eighteenth century have been classed together from their common love of humanity and disregard of old poetical traditions. Two of these, Cowper and Burns, are reserved for a separate chapter; the third was George Crabbe (1754-1832). Born in poverty, he knew the trials. and privations of the humble poor, and has depicted them with a truthfulness which would, in these days, be called realism, and which was utterly new in the world of letters.

Crabbe had a fairly good school education, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a surgeon, in which position he had a hard life. He had his consolations, too; for while as a boy at home he had hoarded every scrap of poetry he could cut out of old newspapers, he now began to write it for himself; and, in the intervals of compounding drugs, filled a drawer with his attempts. At last he had the good fortune to gain a prize offered by a magazine; and considering his vocation to be plainly marked out, he determined, as did all country boys who wanted to be poets, to go to London. Once there, he was at his wits' end, and starvation stared him in the face.

A letter to Edmund Burke brought a kind reply. The great statesman looked over the manuscripts, made suggestions, took the poems himself to Dodsley, the famous bookseller, and Crabbe's fortune was made.

Burke's kindness did not stop here. He invited the young man out to his country - house and introduced him to men of distinction in literature who perceived his merits and admitted him into their circle. At a later