1809.) 
Miss Clark, &c. were all included in 
the above letter from Chatterton, to his 
friend, and will be found in vol. i.” 
In the Life of Chatterton also, is an 
other note by the editors, at page 17, 
where, after relating that soon after he 
left school, he corresponded with a boy, 
who had been his bedfellow while at 
Colston’s, and was bound apprentice to 
a merchant at New York, at the bottom 
of the page is the following note, viz. 
** At the desire of his friend he wrote 
love verses to be transmitted to him, and 
exhibited as bis own.” 
Dr. Sherwin seems also to ‘have en- 
tirely overlooked, when producing so 
victoriously this one hobbling stanza, 
sent in 1768 to America, which he gives 
a certain mark, that C. was unable to 
write heroic verse, that it was accom- 
panied with half a dozen more sets of 
love-letters; some of which, although all 
calculated to display that they were ma- 
nufactured for the commerce they were 
designed to promote between the parties, 
yet he seemed not to have been able to 
debase sufficiently, asa reader of com- 
mon judgment may see. The whole 
being enclosed in a letter to Baker, 
wherein he says, “‘ my friendship is as firm 
as the white rock, when the black waves 
roar around it, and the waters burst on 
its hoary top; when the driving wind’ 
ploughs the sable sea, and the rising 
waves aspire to the clouds, turning with 
the ratling hail,” adding, “so much for 
heroics; to speak in plain English, I 
am, and ever will be, your unalterable 
fnend, &c.” ) 
This letter, with its bundle of love- 
verses, which was furnished, as Mr. Cot 
tle, one of the editor’s, says, by Mr. 
Calcott, might, I think, probably have 
been committed to his hands to forward, 
but never sent for want of occasion; and 
as it has now served for a trap for a 
eritic, who comes, I think, himself hob- 
bling after the race is decided, it is, I 
think, fortunate that it has remained; 
both on that account, and because it may 
serve as 4 lesson to those who blame the 
miaccnracies of commentators, while they 
must either confess they neglected to 
read the work they criticise, or plead 
guilty of wilful misrepresentation. 
I shall bere therefore withdraw my 
pen, contented with having parried with 
so littie difficulty this learned gentle- 
man’s first back-handed blow, leaving 
hin very willingly amid the thorny laby- 
rinths of verbal criticism, attempting 
Mis-statement in an Essay, by Dr. Sherwin 
437 
with toil to prove, what can never be 
proved, that Chatterton knew not the 
value of the words he used; after it has 
been shewn that before he was twelve 
years old, he had made a catalogue of 
books that he had read to the number of 
seventy, having in the year 1762, when 
he was only ten years old, acquired a 
taste for general reading. 
Wealso find, he read a letter at home, 
written to this very Mr. Baker, (vide 
Mirs. Newton’s Letter, page 461, 3d vol.) 
containing a collection of all the hard 
words in the English language; but that 
not the shadow of a doubt may remain of 
this charge being founded on misrepre+ 
sentation, since by quoting its pages, it 
appears that this: writer must have had 
the last edition before him; permit me 
to show that, without reading the re-« 
markable notes, the lines themselves 
shew that it was not Chatterton’s mis- 
tress that he was talking of, for in the 
first copy of verses to Miss Hoyland, 
he says, 
Far distant from Britannia’s lofty isle, 
What shall I find to make the genius smile ? 
This could not come from C. who 
never left England; and in the second 
set, dated 1768, after alluding to the 
Wilds of America, he adds, 
There gently moving through the vale, 
Bending before the bustling gale, 
Fell apparitions glide ; 
Whilst roaring rivers echo round, 
The drear reverberating sound, 
Runs through the mountain’s side. 
Concluding thus: 
When wilt thou own a flame as pure, 
As that seraphic souls endure, 
. And make thy Baker blest. 
After this, shall we be told that these 
lines were written by Chatterton to the 
mistress of his soul? That love could not 
inspire him? and that even under this 
impression, hobbling and ungrammatical 
were his numbers, by way of grand proof 
that he could never have been the author 
of Ella? 
If I may seem too warm in the eyes of 
the public, or even of Dr. Sherwin, in 
any expressions that may have naturally 
occurred in this correction of an error, 
that might at any rate have been dane 
gerous to the reputation of the unhappy - 
poet, let it be atcributed to a sentiment 
that I can never divest myself of—that 
men of great talents should be treated by 
the world as always living, and that he 
who would not defend their urns, would 
never 
