shudder. Mrs. Lambert was afraid to continue under the same roof as this desperate young man, and thus Chatterton was liberated from the obligations of his apprenticeship. On the 24th April, 1770, a week after leaving Lambert's, he started for London, with high hopes of earning a livelihood and literary fame. The rapidity with which he accomplished so much during his residence in London is astonishing. In May and June he had articles in the Town and Country Magazine, the London Museum, the Freeholder's Magazine, the Political Register, the Court and City Magazine, and Gospel Magazine. One week he is about an oratorio; the second finds him busy with a burletta, which was afterwards acted at Marylebone gardens; and the third opens with another dramatic effort—"The Woman of Spirit." Little songs, for which Mr. Hamilton paid him at the rate of eightpence a piece, took well at the gardens, and became popular with street boys. Such were the rare endowments of Chatterton that, in these various occupations, his talent never failed him. We must not, however, apply the rigid laws of criticism to these hurried contributions to literature. He was writing for bread, and not for fame. The antique poems exhibit a fine imagination and true poetic feeling. His talent lay in depicting the stronger emotions, and giving form and life to abstract ideas. In his political essays and letters we do not find evidences of such rare powers. They are written in smart serial style, without much thought. Chatterton arrived in London with some five pounds in his pocket. Three months had not passed away before he was reduced to a state of penury. At last he was driven to buy his bread stale, that it might last the longer. One whole week he took nothing but a loaf. His pride repelled the benevolent advances of his friends. Mr. Cross, a chemist, living in the same street, and very intimate with Chatterton, was afraid to ask him to supper. Mrs. Angell, the landlady, out of sheer pity, returned him sixpence from the rent, but this he indignantly refused, and added, pointing to his forehead—"I have that here which will get me more." Under so severe a pressure the powers of nature gave way. Neighbours noticed a certain wildness about his looks. He was observed to talk to himself, to pause suddenly in conversation, and then to start off volubly on some irrelevant subject. On the 22nd of August, 1770, he came home in a great passion with the baker's wife, who had refused to let him have another loaf till he had paid her three and sixpence, which he owed her previously. This drove him to the last desperate act. Under the pretence of having an experiment on hand, he purchased a quantity of poison from Mr. Cross. The next morning Chatterton was not astir at the usual hour. When the door of his bedroom was burst open, he was found "lying on the bed with his legs hanging over, quite dead. Some of the bits of arsenic were between his teeth." Of the Rowleian manuscripts Chatterton only produced four originals. That which he exhibited first, the longest of the four, has been lost. It contained "The Challenge to Lydgate;" "The song to Ella;" and "Lydgate's Answer;" amounting in all to sixty-six verses. The remaining three, which may now be seen in the British museum, were—"The Accounte of William Canynge's Feast;" "Epitaph on Robert Canynge;" and thirty-six verses of the "Storie of William Canynge." These are written in continuous lines, extending like prose across the breadth of the parchment. The square pieces of vellum were, no doubt, "antiquated" by himself, and the writing exhibits a skilful imitation of mediæval orthography.—G. H. P.
CHAUCER, Geoffrey, the most distinguished of the early poets of England, was born in the first half of the fourteenth century, but in what year cannot be stated with positive certainty. Tradition assigns the date of his nativity as 1328, while Leland gives a later period, and a deposition made by Chaucer seems to confirm this view. Sir Harris Nicolas, who has investigated the matter with his usual care and ability, is disposed to think that upon the whole the earlier date is the nearest to probability. The birthplace, parentage, and education of Chaucer are involved in like obscurity, and it would be a bootless task to pursue all the speculations on these subjects. The probabilities are in favour of his having been born in London; whether he was the son of a knight, a merchant, or a vintner, it is in vain to inquire: there is, however, reason to believe that his family, though not of rank, were wealthy and respectable, and it is certain that he received the education befitting a gentleman of those times. Where that education was received is equally problematical; Cambridge and Oxford each claim the honour, but neither can adduce any proof to support its pretension. It is not improbable that he may have studied in each, and Leland asserts that he completed his education at Paris. But be this as it may, Chaucer acquired a large amount of information and learning, which the evidence of his contemporaries and his own compositions abundantly attest. Indeed there is no branch of the knowledge of his times in which he appears to be deficient, and he was equally proficient in scientific subjects as in the learning of the schoolmen, in divinity, law, and philosophy. The first reliable notice of Chaucer occurs in 1359, when it appears that he served under Edward III. in the expedition against France, and was taken prisoner. In that country he remained some years, probably till the conclusion of the peace of Chartres in 1360. Shortly after he married Philippa, a maid of honour in the royal household, and daughter of Sir Payne Roet, a gentleman of Hainault, who came to England in the retinue of Queen Philippa; another daughter, Katherine, attached herself to Blanche, the first consort of John of Gaunt, by which circumstance Chaucer was subsequently brought into intimate acquaintance with that noble. It is remarkable that Chaucer's wife afterwards entered into the service of John's second wife, while Katherine subsequently became his third wife, and secured to Chaucer and his wife the favour and protection of the duke. Chaucer's accomplishments and brilliant parts soon recommended him to the patronage of Edward III. In 1367 he was made one of the valets of the king's chamber, and received a grant for life of twenty marks a year. In 1372 he was sent with two Genoese citizens on a commission to determine an English port where a Genoese commercial establishment might be formed, and appears to have left England in the end of that year upon this mission. During his absence he visited Florence and Genoa, returning to his native land in November, 1373. It was during this visit to Italy that Chaucer is said to have met Petrarch at Padua. That such is the fact there is strong presumption, which more than counterbalances the mere assertions of those who maintain the contrary. Petrarch was certainly at Arqua when Chaucer was at Florence, and it is scarcely credible that the latter would have omitted the opportunity thus afforded of forming the acquaintance of one who was then the most distinguished literary man living. Wharton asserts that they met at the marriage of Violante, daughter of the duke of Milan, with the duke of Clarence, and that Boccaccio and Froissart were of the party. The clerk of Oxenford, in the prologue to the tale of Griselda, states that he learned it from "a worthy clerk" at Padua, "Franceis Petrark, the laureat poete," and we know that at this period Petrarch had translated the tale from the Decameron, and had even previously shown it. In 1374 Chaucer was granted "a pitcher of wine daily," and in the same year was appointed comptroller of the customs in the port of London, under the obligation of writing the rolls with his own hand. If the poet ever performed this duty, no roll in his handwriting is now extant. Grants, pensions, and other emoluments followed, and in the two following years he was employed in two secret missions to Flanders, the object of which was, if we credit Froissart, to negotiate a marriage between Richard, prince of Wales, and Mary, daughter of the king of France. Richard II. continued to Chaucer the favour which Edward had accorded him, and employed him on several embassies, in one of which, to Lombardy, he was accompanied by his friend the poet Gower. In February, 1385, Chaucer was permitted to appoint a permanent deputy, and being thus released from a personal discharge of the duties of comptroller, he turned his attention to politics, and sat in parliament in 1386 as representative for Kent. His known attachment to the duke of Lancaster was, there is little reason to doubt, the cause of his being deprived shortly afterwards of his office in the customs. The older biographers of Chaucer, relying on the adventures in "The Testament of Love" as an autobiographic statement by the poet, assert that he was dismissed for defalcations; was engaged in an affray in which several lives were lost; that he fled to Hainault to avoid arrest, and then to Zealand, whence, after remaining three years, he was forced through poverty to return to England; that he was committed to the Tower, and obtained his liberty on condition of impeaching his former confederates. Happily for the fame of the poet, Sir H. Nicolas supplies an authentic and complete refutation of the whole narrative; and we now know, that when Chaucer was said to have been a fugitive and exile, he was at large in London enjoying his pension; and at the very moment when he is
