He goes to his little garret
room,--refusing, as he goes, a dinner from his landlady, although he is
gaunt with famine,--mixes a large dose of arsenic in water, and--"jumps
the life to come." He was just seventeen years and nine months old! When
his room was forced open, it was found that he had torn up most of his
papers, and had left nothing to throw light upon his deception.
The verdict of literary criticism is that of the medical art--he was
insane; and to what extent this mania acted as a monomania, that is, how
far he was himself deceived, the world can never know. One thing, at
least; it redeems all his faults. Precocious beyond any other known
instance of precocity; intensely haughty; bold in falsehood; working best
when the moon was at the full, he stands in English literature as the most
singular of its curiosities. His will is an awful jest; his declaration of
his religious opinions a tissue of contradictions and absurdities: he
bequeathes to a clergyman his humility; to Mr. Burgum his prosody and
grammar, with half his modesty--the other half to any young lady that
needs it; his abstinence--a fearful legacy--to the aldermen of Bristol at
their annual feast! to a friend, a mourning ring--"provided he pays for it
himself"--with the motto, "Alas, poor Chatterton!" Fittest ending to his
biography--"Alas, poor Chatterton!"
And yet it is evident that the crazy Bristol boy and the astute Scotchman
were alike the creatures of the age and the peculiar circumstances in
which they lived.
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