A18 On Genius. 
this necessity occurred, he might still have 
been distinguished, but we should probably 
have had none of his dramas. Chatterton’s 
history is very remarkable. He could not 
be induced to learn his letters, till his atten- 
tion had been caught by the illuminated capi- 
tals of a French musical MS.; and his mo- 
ther afterwards taught him to read from an 
old black-letter Bible. In this way, his taste 
for antiquities and old English learning was 
first awakened ; and it wasafterwards strength- 
ened by deciphering the curious old parch- 
ments, which his father had purloined from 
the muniment room of the church of St. 
Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, and which he used for 
covering. books in his school. ‘The propensi- 
ties of the youth, thus excited, found addi- 
tional nutriment in the gratification, which 
the architectural remains of his native place 
furnished to a romantic and antiquarian mind. 
We may estimate the effect of these early 
associations on his Genius by considering the 
acknowledged fact, that his poems in the old 
English dialect, which he attempted to pass 
off as the productions of Rowley, are deci- 
dedly superior, in all the qualities of genuine 
poetry, to those which he wrote in modern 
English.(z) The enthusiastic fondness of 
(x) How strongly and how permanently the most trifling circum- 
