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I saw the lover's living shade
Shivering in summer's rosiest gale,
The look of woe, the cheek decay'd,

The eye's dark brilliance sunk and pale,-
Rather than drag that life of pain

Give me the sword-the strife--the plain

CXLIX.

WHEN I BEHELD THY BLUE EYE SHINE.

When I beheld thy blue eye shine,

Through the bright drop that pity drew,

I saw beneath those tears of thine,
A blue-ey'd violet bath'd in dew.

The violet ever scents the gale,

Its hues adorn the fairest wreath;

But sweeter through a dewy veil,
Its colours glow, its odours breathe.

And thus thy charms in brightness rise—-
When wit and pleasure round thee play,
When mirth sits smiling in thine eyes,
Who but admires their sprightly ray?

:

But when thro' pity's flood they gleam,

Vho but must love their soften'd beam?

CL.

O! SYNGE UNTOE MIE ROUNDELAIE'.

O! synge untoe mie roundelaie,

O! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee,
Daunce ne moe attę hallie daie,

Lycke a reynynge † ryver bee;
Mie love ys dedde,

Gon to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe tree.

*The name of the unfortunate Chatterton must be familiar to the most of our readers. From his dramatic piece, entitled "Ella, a Tragical Enterlude, or Discoorseynge Tragedie," is this beautiful and highly poetical song extracted. Ella is perhaps one of the finest of these poems which he ascribes to the pen of the fictitious Thomas Rowley, whom he stiled a secular priest of the fifteenth century. It is a complete and well written tragedy, abounding in the most apposite imagery, and interesting situations.-Many of the characters are delineated with a powerful and masterly hand, and their interest sustained to the last, with a vigour of thought, and brilliancy of fancy, altogether astonishing.

The life of Chatterton, short as it was, presents nothing but a dark tissue of repeated disappointments-blasted prospects-neglect-poverty-and de. Spair. He was born, at Bristol, on the 20th November 1752. The ancestors

Reynynge, running.

Blacke hys cryne* as the wyntere nyghte,
Whyte hys rode † as the sommer snowe,
Rodde hys face as the mornynge lyghte,

Calehe lyes ynne the grave belowe;
Mie love ys dedde,

Gon to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe tree.

of his family had been for the space of a century and a half, sextons of St. Mary, Redcliffe, in Bristol; and his father, who died in August preceding the birth of his son, Thomas Chatterton, was a master in a free school in that city.

It is a singular circumstance, that Chatterton in his infancy displayed few or none of those marks of that vivid genius which afterwards irradiated the latter part of his brief, but fatal career. On the contrary, so unpromis ing were his faculties, that, after attending school a short time, he was sent back to his mother, as a dull child, incapable of improvement. While at home, the illuminated capitals of a French musical manuscript caught his fancy, and his mother taking advantage of his momentary admiration, initiated him in the alphabet, and afterwards taught him to read from a black letter testament or bible. To this trifling incident may be attributed the bent which his mind took towards the study of antiquities, and the blazonings of heraldry. He was now admitted into a charity school, where he was boarded, cloathed, and instructed in writing and arithmetic. Instead of the thoughtless levity of childhood, he had now the gravity, pensiveness, and melancholy of maturer life. He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that, for many days successively, he would say little, and even that apparently by constraint. At the hours allotted for play, he generally retired to read. In July 1767, he was bound an apprentice to a Mr. Lambert, attorney in Bristol, for seven years; with him, however, he did not remain long, and he soon abandoned the pursuit of a lucrative profession, for the uncertain pursuit of literary emolument.

Thus, at an age when young men in general are only beginning to think, or to choose for themselves their future occupation, did Chatterton boldly determine to launch forth into the world, inexperienced and unprotected.

+ Cryne, hair.

Rode, complexion.

¶ Cale, cold.

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Swote hys tyngue as the throstles note,

Quycke ynn daunce as thoughte canne bee,
Defte + hys taboure, codgelle stote,

O! hee lyes bie the wyllowe tree :

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Alle underre the wyllowe tree.

London was the field which he choose as the theatre of action. He had been invited there by several booksellers, whose earnest solicitations, and a consciousness of his own talent, bade him hope of success, and indulge in those fond dreams of realizing a fortune, which experience proves are too often fallacious and vain. For a considerable time he managed to support himself with his pen, by engaging warmly in the political disputes of the day. Indeed, the activity of his mind, at this period, was almost unparalleled. But these literary speculations, when unbacked by interest, and unpatronized by power, seldom succeed, and are at all times a precarious mode of earning a livelihood. It was even so with him. Before he left Bristol he had written the Hon. Horace Walpole, enclosing some of his pieces, and requesting that gentleman would use his influence to procure him some situation fitted for his talents. From him, however, he received a cold and mortifying repulse, which the proud soul of Chatterton could neither brook nor forget. Accordingly, we find Mr. Walpole placed in a very ridiculous light in one of his humorous pieces, styled "The Memoirs of a Sad Dog," under the name of the "redoubted baron Otranto, who spent his whole life in conjectures.”

To record the minute events of his life, our limits forbid: suffice it to say, that, disappointed in all the gay visions of happiness and fame, he gradually sunk into a gloomy despondence, and at last, driven to desperation by absolute want, he on the 24th August 1770, swallowed poison, of which he died next day. All his unfinished productions he had cautiously destroyed before his death, and his room when broken into was found covered with scraps of paper. This melancholy catastrophe happened in his eighteenth year, and little more than four months after the commencement of what he, thoughtlessly and mistakenly, had imagined would prove an uninterrupted source of felicity.

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Iarke! the ravenne flappes hys wynge,

In the bricred delle belowe;

Harke! the dethe-owle loude dothe synge,
To the nyghte-mares as heie goe;

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe tree.

"The person of Chatterton," says his Biographer, "like his genius, was premature; he had a manliness and dignity beyond his years; there was something about him remarkably prepossessing. His most remarkable feature was his eyes, which, though grey, were uncommonly piercing; when he was warmed in argument or otherwise, they sparked with fire, and one eye it is said was still more remarkable than the other.”

With regard to the poems ascribed to Rowley, many learned treatises have been written by the first critics and antiquaries of the country. Opinion is much divided on the subject of their genuineness. However, after carefully perusing and comparing them with the poetry of the age in which they are alledged to have been written, we think there can be little doubt but that they are all the fabrications of Chatterton himself. If so, he certainly was one of the most extraordinary literary prodigies that this or any other country has produced. Knowledge seems to have been acquired by him intuitively; for these poems evince an intimate acquaintance with the antiquities, language, and customs of the age, to which he uniformly and pertinaciously alleged they belonged. In them his powers of imagination and poetical skill, appear most eminently conspicuous. All his avowed pieces are vastly inferior (if we except some of his satires, which are peculiarly caustic, with his two African Eclogues) and indeed unworthy the great mind that produced Ella, Goddwyn, the Battle of Hastings, &c.

Concerning Chatterton and the Rowleian controversy, one way and another there has been no less than twenty volumes of pamphlets, or tracts already published. It is to be regretted that so much were written, and so little done for that unfortunate youth.-That so many were free with their pens, and so few munificent with their purses-But the annals of Literature exhibit many a counterpart to the present melancholy instance; and the fate of Butler, Otway, and Chatterton, will long remain indelible stains on the country which gave them birth.

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