He left his dinner to ascend the tower. Hammer with every power thou canst command; To propagate thy whimsies, name, and phiz; Then, when the tottering spires or chimneys fall, A Catcott shall remain, admired by all." CHAP. V. Some of the allusions, though sufficiently suggestive, Suggestive are left to the reader's unaided interpretation. When allusions. the satire was produced their significance was obvious to every man who looked on the pewterer's dishes, stamped with his favourite device and motto, and needed no explanatory note. It was otherwise with the more important deeds here celebrated. There still exists an interleaved volume of tracts, collected by Mr. Catcott, and enriched with his own comments. Among those Illustrative this poem of "Happiness" is included, with notes in which commentary. the allusions to himself are illustrated with a vain-glorious! satisfaction that throws the satire itself into the shade. "Ride four-inch bridges" has its accompanying record of the first crossing of Bristol Bridge, and paying the first toll-of five guineas, it is said,—for the privilege.1 The more important note reveals what the twentieth century has in store for it, if enduring pewter prove faithful to its trust. A piece of pewter, five inches square, now reposes where it was deposited by the hand of Mr. George Catcott, beneath the top stone of St. Nicholas' spire, with the following inscription deeply graven on its face: 66 'Summum hujusce turris Sancti Nicholai lapidem posuit mensi Decembris 1769, Geórgius Catcott, philo-architectos, Reverendi Alexandri S. Catcott, Filius." Fully to comprehend Chatterton, and the estimate he formed of the Bristol of his day, it is needful to realize to ourselves the character of those who thus represented to him its intellectual manhood. Inconceivable as it 1 J. Evans, Dix's Life, p. 58. Bristol representa tive men. CHAP. V. might seem, it is obvious that the complacent tradesman was wholly unconscious the boy was laughing at his follies. With such patrons, to whom alone he could submit the works by which he purposed to "live in after time," need we wonder that the young poet turned with a sigh to the good old times of the princely Canynge and his imaginary poet-priest. CHAPTER VI. BRISTOL FRIENDS. * CHAP. VI. Choice of WHILE Chatterton was still a child, he appears to have associated from choice with his seniors; and had circumstances favoured him, it is probable that his personal associates. friends would, in. like manner, have been selected from among those who, by the experience and acquirements of age, were more on an intellectual equality with himself. But at home he had only Mrs. Edkins, Mrs. Phillips, and other gossips of his mother, and so he was thrown entirely on his own resources, or left to such chance school-boy friendships as Colston's Hospital afforded. There accordingly he made the most of the materials within his reach: took Thistlethwaite into his confidence ; made a friend of his bed-fellow Baker; and flung his whole heart into the affection that grew up between him and the young usher, Thomas Phillips. But school-life, with all the advantages and drawbacks pertaining to it, came to an end on the 1st of July, 1767; and, after a sojourn of seven years in the Hospital, a new career presented itself to the boy, with its vistas of hope and riper aspirations. to Mr. The same day on which Chatterton left the Bluecoat Bouna School he was bound apprentice to Mr. John Lambert, apprentice a Bristol attorney, to learn the art of a scrivener. The Lambert. apprentice fee of ten pounds was paid out of the fund left by Mr. Colston for that purpose; and, as appears from the indentures now preserved in the Bristol Insti CHAP. VI. tution, his master engaged to lodge, board, and clothe him; while, by a special agreement, his mother undertook to wash and mend his clothes. Character of the Bristol attorney. Services rendered by Colston's Hospital. Of the Bristol attorney on whom now devolved the professional training of the gifted boy, little of an authentic character is recoverable. His name does not appear in the official lists of the Bristol charities of his day; nor as a patron of letters, among the subscribers to the famous " History of Bristol," of which so large a portion was to be the work of his own apprentice, during office hours. This much, however, we may confidently surmise in regard to him, that he was a "staunch son of the Church," sound in politics, as well as in faith: for Mr. Colston, writing to his Hospital masters in 1717, conjures them "that they take effectual care, as far as in them lieth, that the boys be bred up in the doctrine of our present established Church of England; and that none of them be afterwards placed out as apprentices to any men that be dissenters from the said communion, as they will be answerable for a breach of their trust at the last and great tribunal before which we must all appear." How far this solemn appeal bore any fruit in the relations now established between Mr. Lambert and his new apprentice, we shall have occasion presently to consider. The Hospital Trustees no doubt conceived they had well and faithfully fulfilled their trust, in transferring their charge to such a master. So far, it must be owned, Colston's charity had done what it could for the boy. Its meagre curriculum of schooling was, indeed, wholly inadequate to his intellectual cravings. But it gave its best, with such added influences as Phillips could supply; and now, with its aid, he was started on a career which must have seemed well suited to his favourite tastes. Old parchments, law deeds, tenures, and charters, had been his familiar playthings from infancy; so that Mrs. Edkins said of him, she "thought he was a lawyer before his time." He was elated when he received the presentation to Colston's School, because there he imagined there must be books enough to satisfy all his eager longings for knowledge. CHAP. VI. With no less elation must he have anticipated the emancipation from its routine of dull realities, and their exchange for the attorney's office, where his daily duty would be to handle parchments, engross deeds, and unravel the mysteries of English jurisprudence. The change from school to the actual business and battle of life is at all times an important one; but it becomes doubly so, when, as in Chatterton's case, it involved the emancipation from rigid constraint, to the freedom which necessarily accompanies office duties and city life. He was now introduced to an entirely new circle of acquaintances, and soon began to interest himself in civic affairs, local politics, and ere long in all the public questions that then agitated the national mind. Mr. Lambert was a Bristol attorney; and when he undertook to board, lodge, and clothe the Bluecoat boy, for seven years, it was with the reasonable expectation that, while teaching him the art and profession of a scrivener, he should receive in return such services as would eke out the very moderate apprentice fee, and remunerate him for his cost and labour. We must not judge too harshly of the attorney if he did deal with a true poet like the peasant who, unwittingly acquiring Apollo's steed, when he only bargained for a farming-drudge, yoked Pegasus to the plough. Each ultimately did justice to the character of the other, according to his capacity of discernment. Change from school to city life. of the poetapprentice To most apprentices transferred from the Bluecoat Grievances School to the attorney's home, it would have seemed no great grievance to be required to take his meals with. the servants and share a room with the footboy. But Chatterton was "proud,"-proud as the Ayrshire peasant himself. The boy was puzzled by this very element of his character, which sprang from the unconscious recognition of his own preeminent genius. He instinctively resented the association with the illiterate society to which he was remanded; and Mr. Lambert, little dreaming that the charity boy in his office could deem himself |