gal, generous, and industrious to do good? Have I, in all my behavior, consulted the happiness and ease of those I live with, and of all who have any dependence upon me? Have I preserved my understanding clear, my temper calm, my spirits cheerful, my body temperate and healthy, and my heart in a right frame? If to all these questions I can humbly, yet confidently answer, that I have done my best: if I have truly repented all the faulty past, and made humble, yet firm, and vigorous, and deliberate resolutions for the future, poor as it is, the honest endeavor will be graciously accepted.

IMPORTANCE OF EARLY RISING.

Reflections on Saturday.

Awake, my Laura, break the silken chain,
Awake, my Friend, to hours unsoil'd by pain:
Awake to peaceful joys and thought refined,
Youth's cheerful morn, and Virtue's vigorous mind:
Wake to all joys fair friendship can bestow,
All that from health and prosperous fortune flow.
Still dost thou sleep? awake, imprudent fair;
Few hours has life, and few of those can spare.

Forsake thy drowsy couch, and sprightly rise
While yet fresh morning streaks the ruddy skies:
While yet the birds their early matins sing,
And all around us blooming as the spring.
Ere sultry Phœbus with his scorching ray

Has drank the dew-drops from their mansion gay,
Scorch'd every flower, embrown'd each drooping green,
Pall'd the pure air, and chased the pleasing scene.
Still dost thou sleep? O rise, imprudent fair;
Few hours has life, nor of those few can spare.

Think of the task those hours have yet in view,
Reason to arm, and passion to subdue;
While life's fair calm, and flattering moments last,
To fence your mind against the stormy blast:
Early to hoard blest Wisdom's peace-fraught store,
Ere yet your bark forsakes the friendly shore,
And the winds whistle, and the billows roar.
Imperfect beings! weakly arm'd to bear
Pleasure's soft wiles, or sorrow's open war;
Alternate shocks from different sides to feel,
Now to subdue the heart, and now to steel:
Not weakly arm'd, if ever on our guard,
Nor to the worst unequal if prepared:
Not unsurmountable the task, if loved,
Nor short the time, if every hour improved.
O rouse thee then, nor shun the glorious strife,-
Extend, improve, enjoy thy hours of life:
Assert thy reason, animate thy heart,

And act through life's short scene the useful part:
Then sleep in peace, by gentlest memory crown'd,
Till time's vast year has fill'd its perfect round.

THOMAS CHATTERTON. 1752-1770.

THOMAS CHATTERTON was the son of the master of a free-school in Bristol, and was born on the 20th of November, 1752. His father dying about three months before the birth of the son, the whole care of his education devolved upon the mother, who appears to have discharged her duty with great fidelity. At the age of eight, he was put to a charity-school at Bristol, where he soon discovered a great passion for books, and before he was twelve had perused about seventy volumes, chiefly on history and divinity, and written some verses which were wonderful for his years. At the age of fourteen he was bound apprentice to a Mr. Lambert, a scrivener in his native city, and he devoted all his leisure time to acquiring a knowledge of English antiquities and obsolete language, as a sort of preparation for the wonderful fabrication he shortly after palmed upon the world.

It was in the year 1768 that he first attracted public attention. On the occasion of the new bridge at Bristol being opened, there appeared in the Bristol Journal an article purporting to be the transcript of an ancient manuscript, entitled, "A Description of the Fryers first passing over the Old Bridge, taken from an Ancient Manuscript." This was traced to Chatterton, who said he had received the paper, together with many other ancient manuscripts, from his father, who had found them in an iron chest in the Redcliff church, near Bristol, and that they were written by Thomas Rowley, a priest of the fifteenth century. Having deceived many persons of some literary pretensions in Bristol, he wrote to Horace Walpole, in London, sending him some specimens of his Rowleian poetry, and requesting his patronage. The virtuoso, how. ever, having shown the poetical specimens to Gray and Mason, who pronounced them to be forgeries, sent the youth a cold reply, and advised him to stick to his professional business.

In the mean time Chatterton commenced a correspondence with the Town and Country Magazine, to which he sent a number of communications relating to English Antiquities; and his situation in Mr. Lambert's office becoming every day more and more irksome to him, he solicited and obtained a release from his apprenticeship; his master, it is said, being alarmed by the hints which Chatterton gave of his intention to destroy himself.

In the month of April, 1770, Chatterton, then seventeen years old, arrived in London, with many of his ancient manuscripts, and some acknowledged original poems, and received from the booksellers several important literary engagements. He was filled with the highest hopes, and his letters to his mother and sister, which were always accompanied with presents, expressed the most joyous anticipations. But suddenly, for some causes that are not known, all his dreams of honor and wealth to be obtained from his literary labors vanished. His poverty soon became distressing-he suffered from actual want of food; and-having no religious principles to sustain him-he took poison, and was found dead in his bed on the 25th of August, 1770.

The chief of the poems of Chatterton, published under the name of Rowley, are the "Tragedy of Ella," the "Execution of Sir Charles Bawdin," "Ode to Ella,” the “Battle of Hastings," "The Tournament," one or two "Dialogues," and a "Description of Canynge's Feast." 1 "In estimating the promises of

1 "It will be asked, For what end or purpose did he contrive such an imposture? I answer, From lucrative views; or perhaps from the pleasure of deceiving the world, a motive which, in many minds, operates more powerfully than the hopes of gain. He probably promised to himself greater emolu

his genius," says Campbell, "I would rather lean to the utmost enthusiasm of his admirers, than to the cold opinion of those, who are afraid of being blinded to the defects of the poems attributed to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology which is thrown over them. If we look to the ballad of Sir Charles Bawdin, and translate it into modern English, we shall find its strength and interest to have no dependence on obsolete words. In the striking passage of the martyr Bawdin standing erect in his car to rebuke Edward, who beheld him from the window, when

'The tyrant's soul rush'd to his face,'

and when he exclaimed,

'Behold the man! he speaks the truth,

He's greater than a king;'

in these, and in all striking parts of the ballad, no effect is owing to mock antiquity, but to the simple and high conception of a great and just character, who

'Summ'd the actions of the day,

Each night before he slept.'

What a moral portraiture from the hand of a boy! The inequality of Chat. terton's various productions may be compared to the disproportions of the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the definite neatness of that precocious talent which stops in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay up materials for the exercise of great and undeveloped powers. Even in his favorite maxim, pushed it might be to hyperbole, that a man by abstinence and perseverance might accomplish whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications of a genius which nature had meant to achieve works of immortality. Tasso alone can be compared to him as a juvenile prodigy. No English poet ever equalled him at the same age."1

DEATH OF SIR CHARLES BAWDIN.

The feather'd songster chanticleer

Had wound his bugle-horn,

And told the early villager

The coming of the morn:

King Edward saw the ruddy streaks.

Of light eclipse the gray,

And heard the raven's croaking throat,

Proclaim the fated day.

"Thou'rt right," quoth he, " for by the God

That sits enthroned on high!

Charles Bawdin, and his fellows twain,

To-day shall surely die."

ments from this indirect mode of exercising his abilities: or he might have sacrificed even the vanity of appearing in the character of an applauded original author, to the private enjoyment of the success of his invention and dexterity."-Warton.

1 For papers on the authenticity of the Rowlelan poems, read-Campbell's "Specimens," vl. 152162; Warton's "History of English Poetry," vol. li. section xxvi.; "An Essay on the Evidence, ex ternal and internal, relating to the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley," by T. J. Mathias, and "The Life of Thomas Chatterton, with Criticisms on his Genius and Writings, and a Concise View of the Controversy concerning Rowley's Poems," by George Gregory, D. D.

Then with a jug of nappy ale

His knights did on him wait; "Go tell the traitor, that to-day He leaves this mortal state."

Sir Canterlone then bended low,
With heart brimful of wo;
He journey'd to the castle-gate,
And to Sir Charles did go.

But when he came, his children twain,
And eke his loving wife,

With briny tears did wet the floor,

For good Sir Charles's life.

"Oh good Sir Charles!" said Canterlone,

46

"Bad tidings I do bring."

Speak boldly, man," said brave Sir Charles;
"What says the traitor king?"

"I grieve to tell: before yon sun
Does from the welkin fly,
He hath upon his honor sworn,
That thou shalt surely die."

"We all must die," said brave Sir Charles;
"Of that I'm not afraid;

What boots to live a little space?
Thank Jesus, I'm prepared.

But tell thy king, for mine he's not,

I'd sooner die to-day,

Than live his slave, as many are,
Though I should live for aye.

We all must die," said brave Sir Charles;
"What boots it how or when?
Death is the sure, the certain fate,
Of all we mortal men.

Say why, my friend, thy honest soul
Runs over at thine eye;

Is it for my most welcome doom

That thou dost child-like cry?"

Saith godly Canynge, "I do weep,
That thou so soon must die,
And leave thy sons and hapless wife;
"Tis this that wets mine eye."

"Then dry the tears that out thine eye
From godly fountains spring;

Death I despise, and all the power

Of Edward, traitor king.

When through the tyrant's welcome means

I shall resign my life,

The God I serve will soon provide

For both my sons and wife.

In London city was I born,

Of parents of great note;
My father did a noble arms
Emblazon on his coat:

I make no doubt but he is gone
Where soon I hope to go,

Where we for ever shall be blest,
From out the reach of woe.

He taught me justice and the laws
With pity to unite;

And eke he taught me how to know
The wrong cause from the right:

He taught me with a prudent hand
To feed the hungry poor,
Nor let my servants drive away
The hungry from my door:

And none can say but all my life
I have his wordis kept;

And summ'd the actions of the day
Each night before I slept.

What though I on a sled be drawn,
And mangled by a hind,

I do defy the traitor's power,
He cannot harm my mind:

What though, uphoisted on a pole,
My limbs shall rot in air,
And no rich monument of brass

Charles Bawdin's name shall bear;

Yet in the holy book above,

Which time can't eat away,

There, with the servants of the Lord,
My name shall live for aye.

Then, welcome death! for life eterne
I leave this mortal life:

Farewell, vain world, and all that's dear,
My sons and loving wife!

Now death as welcome to me comes

As e'er the month of May;

Nor would I even wish to live,
With my dear wife to stay."

Saith Canynge, ""Tis a goodly thing
To be prepared to die;

And from this world of pain and grief

To God in heaven to fly."

And now the bell began to toll,

And clarions to sound;

Sir Charles he heard the horses' feet

A-prancing on the ground.