Chatterton Author:David Masson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III BOUND FOR LONDON CAST out of all chance of a livelihood in his native town, there was but one course open to Chatterton : to bid farewell to Bris... more »tol and attorneyship, and try what he could do in the great literary mart of London. Sanguine as were his hopes of success, it can have cost him but little thought to make up his mind to this course, if indeed he did not secretly congratulate himself that his recent escapade had ended so agreeably. Probably there was but one thing that stood in the way of an immediate declaration by himself, after the fracas was over, that this was the resolution he had come to—the want, namely, of a little money to serve for outfit. No sooner, therefore, was this obstacle removed by the charitable determination of his friends, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Clayfield, the Catcotts, etc., to make a little subscription for him, so as to present him with the parting gift of a few pounds, than the tide offeeling was turned, and from a state of despondency Chatterton gave way to raptures of unbounded joy. London! London! A few days, and he should have left the dingy quays of abominable Bristol, and should be treading, in the very footsteps of Goldsmith, Garrick, and Johnson, the liberal London streets! Chatterton remained exactly a week in Bristol after his dismissal from Mr. Lambert's: i.e. from the 16th to the 24th of April. A busy week we may suppose that to have been for Mrs. Chatterton and her daughter; so much sewing to be done, so many other little preparations to be made for the poor boy's departure. This dreadful occurrence notwithstanding, and all that idle people are saying about it, do not they know him better than anybody else does, and may he not yet, they say to each other, make his way in the world as creditably as any of the best in Bris...« less