xl LIFE OF 



lation of the Samson Agonistes. I have inspected all 

 the existing manuscripts of Chatterton, and they excited 

 less wonder than these. 



Had my knowledge of Henry terminated here, I 

 should have hardly believed that my admiration and re- 

 gret for him could have been increased ; but I had yet 

 to learn that his moral qualities, his good sense, and his 

 whole feelings, were as admirable as his industry and 

 genius. All his letters to his family have been commu- 

 nicated to me without reserve, and most of those to his 

 friends. A selection from these are arranged in this 

 volume in chronological order, which will make him his 

 own biographer, and lay open to the world as pure, and 

 as excellent, a heart, as it ever pleased the Almighty to 

 warm with life. Much has been suppressed, which, if 

 Henry had been, like Chatterton, of another generation, 

 I should willingly have published, and the world would 

 willingly have received; but in doing honour to the dead, 

 I have been scrupulously careful never to forget the 

 living. 



It is not possible to conceive a human being more 

 amiable in all the relations of life. He was the confi- 

 dential friend and adviser of every member of his family ; 

 this he instinctively became ; and the thorough good sense 

 of his advice is not less remarkable than the affection 

 with which it is always communicated. To his mother, 

 he is as earnest in beseeching her to be careful of her 

 health, as he is in labouring to convince her that his own 

 complaints were abating ; his letters to her are always 

 of hopes, of consolation, and of love. To Neville he 

 writes with the most brotherly intimacy, still, however, 

 in that occasional tone of advice which it was his nature 

 to assume, not from any arrogance of superiority, but 

 from earnestness of pure affection. To his younger bro- 

 ther he addresses himself like the tenderest and wisest 

 parent ; and to two sisters, then too young for any other 

 communication, he writes to direct their studies, to in- 

 quire into their progress, to encourage, and to improve 

 them. Such letters as these are not for the public ; but 

 they to whom they are addressed will lay them to their 



