Then your religion, ah! beware, beware, Altho' a deist is no monster here,

Yet hide your tenets, priests are powerful foes,
And priesthood fetters justice by the nose.
Think not the merit of a jingling song
Can countenance the author's acting wrong;
Reform your manners, and with solemn air
Hear Ct bray and R- -s squeak in pray'r.
Honour the scarlet robe, and let the quill
Be silent when his worship eats his fill.
Regard thy int'rest, ever love thyself;
Rise into notice, as you rise in pelf;
The Muses have no credit here, and fame
Confines itself to the mercantile name;
Then clip imagination's wing, be wise,
And great in wealth, (to real greatness rise;)
Or, if you must persist to sing and dream,
Let only panegyric be your theme:
Make North a Chatham, canonize his grace,
And get a pension, or procure a place."

Damn'd narrow notions! tending to disgrace
The boasted reason of the human race.
Bristol may keep her prudent maxims still,
But know, my saving friends, I never will.
The composition of my soul is made
Too gr. at for servile, avaricious trade:
When raving in the lunacy of ink

1 catch the pen, and publish what I think.
North is a creature, and the king's misled;
Mansfield and Norton came as justice fled:
Few of our ministers are over wise:
Old Harpagon's a cheat, and Taylor lies.
When cooler judgment actuates my brain,
My cooler judgment still approves the strain;
And if a borrid picture greets your view,
There it continues still, if copied true.
Tho' in the double infamy of lawn
The future bishopric of Barton's drawn.
Protect me, fair ones, if I durst engage
To serve ye in this catamitish age,
To exercise a passion banish'd hence,
And summon satire in to your defence.
Woman, of ev'ry happiness the best,
Is all my Heaven; religion is a jest.
Nor shall the Muse in any future book
With awe upon the chains of favour look:
North shall in all his vices be display'd,
And Warburton in lively pride array'd;
Sandwich shall undergo the healing lash,
And read his character without a dash:
Mansfield, surrounded by his dogs of law,
Shall see his picture drawn in ev'ry flaw:
Luttrell, (if satire can descend so low)
Shall all his native little vices show:
And Grafton, tho' prudentially resign'd,
Shall view a striking copy of his mind.
Whilst iron Justice, lifting up her scales,
Shall weigh the princess dowager of Wales.
Finis. Book the first.

ELEGY,

Begin the mournful strain;
To deck the much-lov'd Tandey's urn,
Let the poetic genius burn,

And all Parnassus drain.

Ye ghosts! that leave the silent tomb,
To wander in the midnight gloom,

Unseen by mortal eye:
Gariands of yew and cypress bring,
Adorn his tomb, his praises sing,

And swell the gen'ral sigh.

Ye wretches, who could scarcely save
Your starving offspring from the grave,
By God afflicted sore;

Vent the big tear, the soul-felt sigh,
And swell your meagre infant's cry,
For Tandey is no more.

To you his charity he dealt,
His melting soul your mis'ries felt,
And made your woes his own:
A common friend to all mankind;
His face the index of his mind,

Where all the saint was shown.
In him the social virtues join'd,
His judgment sound, his sense refin'd,
His actions ever just-
Who can suppress the rising sigh,
To think such saint-like men must die,
And mix with common dust.

Had virtue pow'r from death to save,
The good man ne'er would see the grave,
But live immortal here:

Hawksworth and Tandey are no more;
Lament, ye virtuous and ye poor,
And drop the unfeigned tear.

TO A FRIEND,

ON HIS INTENDED MARRIAGE,

[From the original, copied by Mr. Catoott.]
MARRIAGE, dear M——, is a serious thing;
'Tis proper every man should think it so:
"Twill either ev'ry human blessing bring,
Or load thee with a settlement of woe.
Sometimes indeed it is a middle state,
Neither supremely blest nor deeply curst;
A stagnant pool of life; a dream of fate:
In my opinion, of all states the worst.
Observe the partner of thy future state:
If no strong vice is stamp'd upon her mind,
Take her; and let her ease thy am'rous pain:
A little errour, proves her human-kind.
What we call vices are not always such;
Some virtues scarce deserve the sacred name:
Thy wife may love, as well as pray too much,
And to another stretch her rising flame.

The above-mentioned gentleman was a man of unblemished character; and father-in-law to Mr. William Barrett, author of the History of Bristol; and lies interred in Redeliff church, in the same vault with Mr. Barrett's wife. Elegy would have been inserted in one of the Bristol journals, but was suppressed at the particular request of Mr. Tandy's eldest son.

The

Choose no religionist; whose every day
Is lost to thee and thine, to none a friend:
Know too, when pleasure calls the heart astray,
The warmest zealot is the blackest fiend.

Let not the fortune first engross thy care,
Let it a second estimation hold:

A Smithfield marriage is of pleasures bare,
And love, without the purse, will soon grow cold.

Marry no letter'd damsel, whose wise head
May prove it just to graft the horns on thine:
Marry no idiot, keep her from thy bed;
What the brains want, will often elsewhere shine.

A disposition good, a judgment sound,
Will bring substantial pleasures in a wife:
Whilst love and tenderness in thee are found,
Happy and calm will be the married life.

THOMAS CHATTERTON.

ON THOMAS PHILLIPS'S DEATH.

[From the original, copied by Mr. Catcott.]
To Clayfield, long renown'd the Muses' friend,
Presuming on his goodness this I send :
Unknown to you, tranquillity and fame,
In this address perhaps I am to blame.
This rudeness let necessity excuse,

And anxious friendship for a much-lov'd Muse.
Twice have the circling hours unveil'd the east
Since horrour found me and all pleasure ceas'd;
Since ev'ry number tended to deplore;
Since Fame asserted, Phillips was no more,

Say, is he mansion'd in his native spheres,
Or is't a vapour that exhales in tears!
Swift as idea rid me of my pain,

And let my dubious wretchedness be plain,
It is too true: the awful lyre is strung,
His elegy the sister Muses sung.

O may he live, and useless be the strain!
Fly gen'rous Clayfield, rid me of my pain.
Forgive my boldness, think the urgent cause,
And who can bind necessity with laws:
I wait the admirer of your noble parts,
You, friend to genius, sciences, and arts,

FABLES FOR THE COURT,

ADDRESSED TO MR. MICHAEL CLAYFIELD, OF BRISTOL.

[Transcribed by Mr. Catcott, October 19, 1796, from Chatterton's MS.]

THE SHEPHERDS.

MORALS, as critics must allow,
Are almost out of fashion now,
And if we credit Dodsley's word,
All applications are absurd.

What has the author to be vain in,
Who knows his fable wants explaining,
And substitutes a second scene,

To publish what the first should mean:

Besides, it saucily reflects Upon the reader's intellects. When arm'd in metaphors and dashes, The bard some noble villain lashes, 'Tis a direct affront, no doubt, To think he cannot find it out. The sing-song trifles of the stage, The happy fav'rites of the age, Without a meaning crawl along, And, for a moral, give a song, The tragic Muse, once pure and chaste, Is turn'd a whore, debauch'd by taste: Poor Juliet never claims the tear 'Till borne triumphant on the bier, And Ammon's son is never great 'Till seated in his chair of state; And yet the hariot scarce goes down, She's been so long upon the town, Her morals never can be seen. Not rigid Johnson seems to mean, A tittering epilogue contains The cobweb of a poet's brains. If what the Muse prepares to write To entertain the public sight, Should in its characters be known, The knowledge is the reader's own. When villany and vices shine, You wont find Sandwich in the line; When little rascals rise to fame, Sir Fletcher cannot read his name; Nor will the Muse digressive run, To call the king his mother's son, But plodding on the beaten way, With honest North prepares the lay, And should the meaning figures please The dull reviews of laughing ease, No politician can dispute

My knowledge of the earl of Bute.

A flock of sheep, no matter where,
Was all an aged shepherd's care;
His dogs were watchful, and he took
Upon himself the ruling crook:
His boys who wattled-in the fold
Were never bought and never sold.
'Tis true, by strange affection led,
He visited a turnip bed;

And, fearful of a winter storm,
Employ'd bis wool to keep it warm;
But that comparatively set
Against the present heavy debt,
Was but a trifling piece of state,
And hardly made a villain great.
The shepherd died-the dreadful toll
Entreated masses for his soul.
The pious bosom and the back
Shone in the farce of courtly black.
The weeping laureat's ready pen
Lamented o'er the best of men:
And Oxford sent her load of rhyme
In all varieties of chime,
Administering due consolation,
Well season'd with congratulation.
Cambridge her ancient lumber wrote,
And what could Cambridge do but quote.
All sung, tho' very few could read,
And none but mercers mourn'd indeed.
The younger shepherd caught the crook
And was a monarch in his look.
The flock rejoic`d, and could no less
Than pay their duty and address;

And Edinburgh was heard to sing
"Now Heaven be prais'd for such a king."
All join'd in joy and expectation,
And union echoed thro' the nation.
A council call'd-

EXTRACT FROM KEW GARDENS.

[From a manuscript of Chatterton in the possession of Dr. Halifax.]

How commendable this, to turn at once
To good account the vintner and the dunce;
And by a very hocus pocus hit

Dispose of damag'd claret and bad wit.

Search through the ragged tribe that drink small beer,

And sweetly echo in his worship's ear,
What are the wages of the tuneful Nine?
What are their pleasures when compared to mine?
Happy I eat, and tell my numerous pence,
Free from the servitude of rhyme and sense.
Tho' sing-song Whitehead ushers-in the year,
With joy to Britain's king and sovereign dear;
And, in compliance with an ancient mode,
Measures his syllables into an ode:
Yet such the scurvy merit of his Muse,
He bows to deans, and licks his lordship's shoes.
Then leave the wicked barren way of rhyme,
Fly far from poverty, be wise in time;
Regard the office more, Parnassus less;
Put your religion in a decent dress:

Then may your interest in the town advance,
Above the reach of Muses or romance.
Beside the town, a sober, honest town,
Which smiles on virtue, and gives vice a frown,
Bids censure brand with infamy your name,
I, even 1, must think you are to blame.
Is there a street within this spacious place,
That boasts the happiness of one fair face,
Where conversation does not turn on you,
Blaming your wild amours, your morals too?
Oaths, sacred and tremendous oaths, you swear,
Oaths that might shock a Luttrell's soul to hear:
Those very oaths, as if a thing of joke,
Made to betray, intended to be broke;
Whilst the too tender and believing maid
Remembers pretty ** is betray'd.

Then your religion, Ah! beware! beware!
Altho' a deist is no monster here,

Yet hide your tenets, priests are pow'rful foes,
And priesthood fetters Justice by the nose.
Think not the merit of a jingling song
Can countenance the author's acting wrong.
Reform your manners, and with solemn air
Hear Ct bray, and Rs squeak in prayer.
R, a reverend cully-mully puff,

Who thinks all sermons but his own are stuff;
When harping on the dull unmeaning text,
By disquisitions he's so sore perplext,
He stainmers, instantaneously is drawn
A border'd piece of inspiration lawn;
Which being thrice unto his nose apply'd,
Into his pineal gland the vapours glide;
And now we hear the jumping doctor roar
On subjects he dissected thrice before.
Honour the scarlet robe, and let the quilt
Be silent when old Isaac eats his fill.

Regard thy interest, ever love thy-self; Rise into notice as you rise in pelf:

The Muses have no credit here, and fame
Confines itself to the mercantile name;
Then clip imagination's wing, be wise,
And, great in wealth, to real greatness rise:
Or, if you must persist to sing and dream,
Let only panegyric be your theme;
With pulpit adulation tickle Cutts,
And wreath with ivy garlands, tavern butts:
Genius in Collins; harmony in Rooke:
Find sentiment in Dampier's empty look;
Swear Broderip's horrid noise the tuneful spheres;
And rescue Pindar from the songs of Shears.
Would you still further raise the fairy ground,
Praise Broughton for his eloquence profound,
His generosity, his sentiment,

His active fancy, and his thoughts on Lent.
Make North or Chatham canonize his grace;
And beg a pension, or procure a place."
Damn'd narrow notions! notions which disgrace
The boasted reason of the human race.
Bristol may keep her prudent maxims still:
I scorn her prudence, and I ever will.
Since all my vices magnified are here,
He cannot paint me worse than I appear,
When, raving in the lunacy of ink,

I catch the pen and publish what I think.

FRAGMENT.

[Transcribed from a MS. in Chatterton's handwriting.]

INT'REST, thou universal God of men,
Wait on the couplet and reprove the pen:
If aught unwelcome to thy ears shall rise,
Hold jails and famine to the poet's eyes,
Bid satire sheath her sharp avenging steel,
And lose a number rather than a meal.
Nay, prithee, Honour, do not make us mad,
When I am hungry something must be had:
Can honest consciousness of doing right
Provide a dinner or a bed at night?
What tho' Astrea decks my soul in gold,
My mortal lumber trembles with the cold,
Then, curst tormentor of my peace, be gone'
Flattery's a cloak, and I will put it on.

In a low cottage shaking with the wind,
A door in front, a span of light behind,
Tervono's lungs their mystic play began,
And Nature in the infant mark'd the man.

'The general sense of this extract seems to intimate that it consists of the supposed advice of some friend of Chatterton, who concludes his speech with apostrophes ("); when Chatterton represents himself as replying.

Every effort has been made to obtain the remainder of this poem, but without success. The last possessor who can be traced was the late Dr. Lort. His excutor, Dr. Halifax, has obligingly communicated the preceding fragment, but the remainder of the poem never came into his pos session. Many lines in the Extract from Kew Gardens will appear in the Whore of Babylon, but differently arranged.

Six times the youth of thorn, the golden Sun,
Thro' the twelve stages of his course had run,
Tervono rose, the merchant of the plain,
His soul was traffic, his elysium gain;
The ragged chapman found his word a law,
And lost in barter every fav'rite taw.

Thro' various scenes Tervono still ascends,
And still is making, still forgetting friends:
Full of this maxim, often heard in trade,
Friendship with none but equals should be made.
His soul is all the merchant. None can find
The shadow of a virtue in his mind.
Nor are his vices reason misapplied;
Mean as his spirit, sneaking as his pride.
At city dinner, or a turtle feast,
As expeditious as a hungry priest;
No foe to Bacchanalian brutal rites,

In vile confusion dozing off the nights.
Tervono would be flatter'd; shall I then
In stigmatizing satire shake the pen?
Muse, for his brow, the laurel wreath prepare,
Tho' soon 'twill wither when 'tis planted there.
Come panegyric: adulation haste,

And sing this wonder of mercantile taste;
And whilst his virtue rises in my lines,
The patron's happy, and the poet dines.
Some, philosophically cas'd in steel,
Can neither poverty or hunger feel;

But that is not my case: the Muses know
What water-gruel stuff from Phoebus flow.
Then if the rage of satire seize my brain,
May none but brother poets meet the strain:
May bulky aldermen nor vicars rise,
Hung in terrorem to their brother's eyes,
When lost in trance by gospel or by law,
In to their inward room the senses draw,
There as they snoar in consultation deep,
Are by the vulgar reckon'd fast asleep.

ELEGY,

WRITTEN AT STANTON-DREW.

[Transcribed from a MS. in Chatterton's handwriting.]

FAR from the reach of critics and reviews,
Brush up thy pinions and ascend, my Muse;
Of conversation sing an ample theme,
And drink the tea of Heliconian stream,
Hail, matchless linguist! prating Delia, hail!
When scandal's best materials hackney'd fail,
Thy quick invention lends a quick supply,
And all thy talk is one continued lie.
Know, thou eternal babbler, that my song
Could show a line as venom'd as thy tongue.
In pity to thy sex I cease to write
Of London journeys and the marriage-night.
The conversation which in taverns ring
Descends below my satire's soaring sting:
Upon his elbow throne great Maro sits,
Revered at Forster's by the would-be-wits;
Delib'rately the studied jest he breaks,
And long and loud the polish'd table shakes,
Retail'd in every brothel-house in town,
Each dancing booby vends it as his own:
Upon the empty'd jelly-glass reclin❜d,
The laughing Maro gathers up his wind;

writing.]

JOYLESS I hail the solemn gloom,

Joyless I view the pillars vast and rude,
Where erst the fool of superstition trod,
In smoking blood imbrued,
And rising from the tomb,
Mistaken homage to an unknown God.

Fancy whither dost thou stray,
Whither dost thou wing thy way,
Check the rising wild delight,
Ah! what avails this awful sight
MARIA is no more!

Ready to laugh before the tale begins:
To talk of freedom, politics, and Butes,
And knotty arguments in law confutes,

I leave to blockheads, for such things design'd,

Be it my task divine to ease the mind.

"To morrow" says a church-of-England priest, "Is of good St. Epiphany the feast.

It nothing matters whether he or she,
But be all servants from their labour free."
The laugh begins with Maro, and goes round,
And the dry jest is very witty found;
In every corner of the room are seen
Round altars covered with eternal green,

Which mortals, chronicles and journals name;
Where in strange jumble flesh and spirit lie,
And illustration sees a jest-book nigh:
Anti-venereal med'cine cheek-by-joul
With Whitfield's famous physic for the soul;
The patriot Wilkes's ever-fam'd Essay,
With Bute and justice in the self-same lay;
Which of the two deserved (ye casuists tell)
The conflagrations of a hangman's hell?

The clock strikes eight; the taper dully shines; Farewell my Muse, nor think of further lines: Nine leaves, and in two hours, or something odd, Shut up the book; it is enough by G―d,