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 340 CHATTERTON not estates in fee or for life. Chattels, on the death of the owner without a will, pass to his personal representatives instead of his heirs at law, and they constitute the primary fund for the payment of debts. Chattels personal may be transferred by mere delivery, without wri- ting ; and chattels real did not at the common law require for their creation or assignment liv- ery of seisin. Some things are either real estate or chattels according to circumstances. Thus, a house belonging to the owner of the land it is built upon constitutes a part of the freehold ; but if owned by a mere tenant, who has a right to remove it, it is his personal chattel. So an unharvested crop may be a part of the realty or a chattel, according as it does or does not belong to the owner of the soil. CHATTEBTON, Thomas, an English poet, horn in Bristol, Nov. 20, 1752, died in London, Aug. 24, 1770. His father, who was a school teach- er, died three months before his birth. At five years of age he was sent to a charity school, but was withdrawn after a year and a half as an incorrigible dunce. His mother then, taking him in charge, attracted his curiosity by an old manuscript with illuminated capitals, from which he rapidly learned to read. He reso- lutely prosecuted his studies, mastered various treatises on antiquities and heraldry, and con- ceived the wildest dreams of ambition. Sent again to school in his eighth year to a pedant of poetry, he was almost the only pupil whom his master could not excite to poetical enthu- siasm. In this school he remained seven years, veiling beneath an appearance of melancholy and incapacity the labor of an original mind, taking no interest in his associates, and de- voting himself intensely to miscellaneous read- ing. In his llth year he wrote verses, the fruits of painful elaboration, and chiefly of a sa- tirical character. In his 12th year he com- pleted the poem of "Elinoure and luga." His mother and sister, who seem to have been the only objects of his love, were surprised at his change to unwonted vivacity, and at the bril- liant hopes which h expressed as well for them as himself. In 1767 he was apprenticed to an attorney in Bristol, and though laboriously oc- cupied in the drudgery of copying, he yet found time to continue his study of history, theolo- gy, and especially antiquities and old English phraseology. In the next year he began his unparalleled series of literary impositions. A new bridge being finished at Bristol, lie sent to a. journal of the place an account of the cer- emonies on opening the old bridge, which he pretended was taken from an ancient manu- script. Being questioned, he said he had found the parchments in the chest of a wealthy mer- chant of the reign of Edward IV., "Canynge's cofre," which, having been preserved in a room of the Redclitfe church, had in 1727 been bro- ken open by proper authority, and some old deeds being taken from it, the remaining MSS. had been left exposed as of no value. Chatter- ton's father had taken a number of these parch- ments to serve as covers for books in his school, and among those remaining the youthful poet affirmed that he had found many writings of Mr. Canynge and his friends, especially of. Thomas Rowley, an ecclesiastic and poet. He was prepared to confirm his tale by several compositions which he had already finished, and by parchments which he had stained to resemble antiques. To a pewterer named Bur- gum, ambitious of heraldic honors, he gave a pedigree tracing his descent from the noble Norman family of De Bergham ; to the his- torian of Bristol he presented an account of all the churches in the city as they appeared 300 years before, which he had drawn from the writings of the "gode prieste Thomas Row- ley ;" to a theologian he sent a fragment of a sermon on the Holy Spirit, as "wroten" by Rowley ; to a wealthy citizen he presented a poem, the "Romaunt of the Cnyghte," writ- ten by one of his ancestors four centuries before. He contributed several fictitious poems to the u Town and Country Magazine " of London ; and to Horace Walpole, then prepar- ing his anecdotes of British painters, he sent an account of eminent "carvellers and peync- ters " who once nourished in Bristol. He labored without a confidant, sleeping little, preferring to write by moonlight, since he be- lieved that the presence of that planet added to his inspiration, roaming over the country on Sunday, lying in meadows, where in a sort of trance he would contemplate old churches and edifices, and nursing in solitude a wild and vain enthusiasm and a stoical pride of talent. The literary antiquaries, who had just been at war about the authenticity of Ossian, engaged in new controversy about the productions of Chatterton. Walpole was at first deceived by them, but having submitted them to Mason and Gray, the latter pronounced them to be forgeries. The result was that Walpole re- turned his MSS. to the young poet, who indig- nantly avenged himself by a bitter satirical attack. In his 18th year Chatterton was dis- missed from his apprenticeship, and set off for London. He designed a literary career, but declared that if disappointed he would become a Methodist preacher, a founder of a sect, or would have the pistol for his final resort. He contributed to reviews and magazines ; wrote political letters, sermons for clergymen, and songs for the public gardens ; was introduced to the lord mayor Beckford, formed high expec- tations of influence as an opposition writer, and boasted that he " would settle the nation be- fore he had done." At the death of Beckford soon after, he is said to have gone almost frantic; he dissipated his despair in elegies, removed to wretched lodgings, continued in his misery to remit presents to his mother and sister, to whom he had before announced his splendid hopes, suffered for want of food while with a gay exterior he frequented places of public amusement, retained his unconquer- able pride and vanity, confided his distress to