3 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



by dressmaking in one of the back streets of the old town, and the 

 boy was only able to gain the rudiments of an education in a 

 charity school. His biographer tells us that he was of a peculiar 

 temper, sullen and silent, and given to sudden fits of weeping or 

 violent rage. When only ten years of age he began to write 

 verses, and although he was too shy and diffident to make a confi- 

 dant of any one, his secret soon became known among the little 

 blue-coats of Colston's Charity School. His uncle, Richard Phil- 

 lips, was the sexton of the church of St. Mary Redcliff e, in Bristol, 

 one of the most beautiful specimens of parochial church archi- 

 tecture in all England, and many of this strange boy's days were 

 passed studying the inscriptions on the altar tombs and in por- 

 ing over the forgotten parchment deeds which had lain for years 

 unheeded in the oaken chests in the old muniment-room above 

 the porch. So much of his time was spent in solitude, and he 

 seemed to have so few of the characteristics of children, that many 

 regarded him as weak in intellect. But even then he was thirst- 

 ing for fame, and while only a child was wont to say that a man 

 might do anything he chose. It was the accidental discovery of 

 the old parchment deeds in the parish church that led this child 

 of genius to perpetrate the Rowley forgeries, and to claim that 

 these products of his own imagination had lain in the old chest 

 for more than three centuries. Failing to obtain the patronage 

 of Sir Horace Walpole, he determined to seek his fortune in Lon- 

 don, and in order to obtain his release from Lambert, an attorney 

 into whose employ he had been bound, he sat down on Easter 

 eve, April 17, 1770, and penned his Last Will and Testament, 

 in which he intimated his intention of committing suicide. 

 Among his satirical bequests he leaves his "humility" to the 

 Rev. Mr. Camplin, his " religion " to Dean Barton, and his " spirit 

 and disinterestedness " to Bristol. This strange document had the 

 desired effect, and Lambert canceled his indentures. So, with a 

 light heart, a lighter purse, and a bundle of valuable manuscript 

 under his arm, he set out, at the age of seventeen, to gain fortune 

 and fame as a man of letters in the great metropolis. His after- 

 life is well known. Nothing but disaster followed. He lacked 

 the simplest necessities of life, but even when starving wrote 

 cheerful words and sent small gifts to the mother and sister left 

 behind. Failure met him at every hand, and by degrees he sank 

 lower and lower into the depths of despair, until finally, with his 

 last penny, he purchased sufficient arsenic to end his unhappy 

 life. He was found on his cot of straw with torn manuscript all 

 about him. Thus ended the brief, strange life of the "fate- 

 marked babe who perished in his pride." 



Another example of Winslow's doctrine is Hugh Miller, the 

 self-taught genius, who was born at Cromarty, in the north of 



