Thomas Chatterton, an English poet, born in Bristol, Nov. 20, 1752, died in London, Aug. 24,1770. His father, who was a school teacher, died three months before his birth. At five years of age he was sent to a charity school, but was withdrawn after a year and a half as an incorrigible dunce. His mother then, taking him in charge, attracted his curiosity by an old manuscript with illuminated capitals, from which he rapidly learned to read, He resolutely prosecuted his studies, mastered various treatises on antiquities and heraldry, and conceived the wildest dreams of ambition. Sent again to school in his eighth year to a pedant of poetry, he was almost the only pupil whom his master could not excite to poetical enthusiasm. In this school he remained seven years, veiling beneath an appearance of melancholy and incapacity the labor of an original mind, taking no interest in his associates, and devoting himself intensely to miscellaneous reading. In his 11th year he wrote verses, the fruits of painful elaboration, and chiefly of a satirical character.

In his 12th year he completed the poem of "Elinoure and Iuga." His mother and sister, who seem to have been the only objects of his love, were surprised at his change to unwonted vivacity, and at the brilliant hopes which he expressed as well for them as himself. In 1707 he was apprenticed to an attorney in Bristol, and though laboriously occupied in the drudgery of copying, he yet found time to continue his study of history, theology, and especially antiquities and old English phraseology. In the next year he began his unparalleled series of literary impositions. A new bridge being finished at Bristol, he sent to a journal of the place an account of the ceremonies on opening the old bridge, which he pretended was taken from an ancient manuscript. Being questioned, he said he had found the parchments in the chest of a wealthy merchant of the reign of Edward IV., "Canynge's cofre," which, having been preserved in a room of the Redclitf'e church, had in 1727 been broken open by proper authority, and some old deeds being taken from it, the remaining MSS. had been left exposed as of no value.

Chatter-ton's father had taken a number of these parchments to serve as covers for books in his school, and among those remaining the youthful poet affirmed that he had found many writings of Mr. Canynge and his friends, especially of Thomas Rowley, an ecclesiastic and poet. He was prepared to confirm his tale by several compositions which he had already finished, and by parchments which he had stained to resemble antiques. To a pewtcrer named Bur-gum, ambitious of heraldic honors, he gave a pedigree tracing his descent from the noble Norman family of De Bergham; to the historian of Bristol he presented an account of all the churches in the city as they appeared 300 years before, which he had drawn from the writings of the "gode prieste Thomas Bow-ley;" to a theologian he sent a fragment of a sermon on the Holy Spirit, as "wroten" by Rowley; to a wealthy citizen he presented a poem, the "Romaunt of the Cnyghte," written by one of his ancestors four centuries before. He contributed several fictitious poems to the "Town and Country Magazine" of London; and to Horace Walpole, then preparing his anecdotes of British painters, he sent an account of eminent "carvellers and peync-ters" who once flourished in Bristol. He labored without a confidant, sleeping little, preferring to write by moonlight, since he believed that the presence of that planet added to his inspiration, roaming over the country on Sunday, lying in meadows, where in a sort of trance he would contemplate old churches and edifices, and nursing in solitude a wild and vain enthusiasm and a stoical pride of talent.

The literary antiquaries, who had just been at war about the authenticity of Ossian, engaged in new controversy about the productions of Chatterton. Walpole was at first deceived by them, but having submitted them to Mason and Gray, the latter pronounced them to be forgeries. The result was that Walpole returned his MSS. to the young poet, who indignantly avenged himself by a bitter satirical attack. In his 17th year Chatterton was dismissed from his apprenticeship, and set off for London. He designed a literary career, but declared that if disappointed he would become a Methodist preacher, a founder of a sect, or would have the pistol for his final resort. He contributed to reviews and magazines; wrote political letters, sermons for clergymen, and songs for the public gardens; was introduced to the lord mayor Beckford, formed high expectations of influence as an opposition writer, and boasted that he "would settle the nation before he had done." At the death of Beckford soon after, he is said to have gone almost frantic; he dissipated his despair in elegies, removed to wretched lodgings, continued in his misery to remit presents to his mother and sister, to whom he had before announced his splendid hopes, suffered for want of food while with a gay exterior he frequented places of public amusement, retained his unconquerable pride and vanity, confided his distress to no one, declined the invitation of his landlady to a dinner after he had been three days without food, spent his last penny for a dose of arsenic, and was found dead in his room surrounded by numerous manuscripts which he had torn into shreds.

He was interred in the pauper burying ground of Shoe lane, and the citizens of Bristol have erected a monument to his memory. It was several years before he became an object of public interest, and the result of the discussion concerning the poems which he ascribed to Rowley and other old poets is the general belief that, however extraordinary it was for Chatterton to have written them, it was impossible for them to have been written in the 15th century. In a life of less than 18 years this misdirected genius made himself proficient in the most various studies, created the person, history, and language of an ancient poet, composed epics, tragedies, satires, elegies, ballads, and long narrative poems, and exhibited not only a facility of versification but a luxuriance of fancy and power of invention which promised him a high position among English poets. The early poems of Pope and Cowley are not comparable to those of Chatterton, and even the almost fabulous Mirandola was less precocious if not less great.

Warton called him a "prodigy of genius;" Shelley acknowledged his "solemn agency;" Wordsworth names him " the marvellous boy;" Keats dedicated "Endymion" to his memory; and Alfred de Vigny has made him the subject of one of his finest dramas, in which he represents him as the type of suffering and unrequited genius. The personal appearance of Chatterton was proud, manly, and very prepossessing. His eyes were gray and piercing, and, as in the case of Lord Byron, one of them was more brilliant than the other. - Chatterton's "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse" were published in 1778. An edition of his works, with his life, was prepared by Southey and Cottle in 1803. There have been several editions and biographies, the latest published in London, 1872. - See "Chatterton, a Biographical Study," by Daniel Wilson (London, 1870).