ings the employing of rat's-bane to deftroy that fect; and has lately written a bitter book against Fichte, entitled Clavis Fichtiana. Herder and Jacobi are at present the authors he most efteems. Herder entertains an equal efteem for him. Not fo completely does Wieland harmonize with our poet. The irregular fancy of the latter offends the fine Grecian regularity of the former, Wieland however does juftice to the genius of John Paul, In particular he admires the beautiful and fublime ideality of the characters in the Hefperus; and is of opinion, that fo pure and heavenly a character, as Chlotild's, never before emanated from the imagination of a poet. Richter does not confine himself to books; he likewife with great diligence and interest ftudies mankind. For this purpose he often feeks the crowded fcenes of bufy life, frequents public places, at merry-makings and on other festive occafions mixes among the common people, and filently obferves their ways and doings with a penetrating atten tive eye. He was lately on the point of marriage with a young lady of Hilburghaufen, who is faid to poffefs a foul congenial with his own: but he broke off the treaty, being of opinion that he could not make her fo happy as fhe deserved. He loves the whole female fex, and zealously preaches against their oppreffion and fubjugation by tyrant man. The latest production of Richter is entitled Titan; where in a high romantic flight he attacks the cold egotism of the prefent age. To this work he prefixed a masterly poetic dedication to the Queen of Pruffia and her three filters. The Queen invited him laft fummer to vifit her at Sans-fouci, where he frequently had the honour to dine and converse with that beautiful and univerfally adored princefs. This winter likewife he paffes fometime at Berlin: but, notwithstanding the flattering reception he there met with, he has fixed upon Weimar as his ufual place of refidence. Richter's Romances have all the humour of the witty Sterne, whom chiefly he has chofen for his pattern, united with the pathos of Rouffeau. But he often heaps too many metaphors and fimilies together, fo as to become tedious and even unintelligible. On the whole, indeed, his ftyle cannot ftand the test of ftrict criticism. He has created for himself a peculiar rhetoric. When he fhall have learned to confine within due bounds his exuberant fancy, and to give to his works a more pleafing form, he will rank as the first romance-writer of his country. He is not tranflatable into any other language; but it is worth the while to learn German on his account alone. THO CHATTERTON. HOMAS CHATTERTON, one of the moft extraordinary perfonages that has appeared in the prefent century, was born at Bristol, Nov. 20, 1752. His predilection for antiquities 59 was excited in his childhoon. He feems, likewife, when almoft an infant, to have imbibed a paffion for fame, and a thirst for diftinction: Traces of this were visible in his earliest intercourse, He always ambitiously fought the poft of pre-eminence among his play-fellows. He was not willing to confider them as his equals, he would have them his fervants. How often might the dawn of character be obferved in the fports and amufements of youth? In the mind of young Chatterton, the love of pre-eminence was an impetuous and ruling paffion. It imparted an unwearied activity to the energies of his mind; and infpired him with vigour, to refift that laffitude, which arifes from inceffant exertion. In his meals, he used an almost afcetic abstinence; and he flept but little. The greater part of every night he devoted to the multiform occupations of genius; his unquenchable paffion for fame almost enabled him to counteract the ordinary calls of nature for repofe; and without a confiderable portion of which common mortals would foon expire." To the early thirft of Chatterton for diftinction, and which, more fortunately for the world than for himself, took a literary direction, I attribute his forgery of the poems arributed to Rowley. He well knew that any poems, appearing in his own name, and as the productions of a parish boy, would have excited but little attention; and he certainly could not hope that they would cause his reputation to emerge from the bofom of obfcurity. But he knew that the publication of poems, faid to have been written in the fifteenth century, and with all the harmony of numbers which is perceptible in the writers of the eighteenth, would be a literary phenomenon, well calculated to excite general curiofity. Even in Bristol, where the heart is too ufually dormant to any emotions, but to thofe of gain or of voluptuoufnefs, a few sparks of curiofity and of interelt were elicited; and Chatterton found the thadow of patronage (alas it was but the shadow!) in a furgeon and a pewterer. Another motive, which operated to the production of this wonderful forgery, was the defire of the young author to gratify his vanity, by impofing on the learned world. This he did moft ef fectually. The garb of antiquity, which he affumed, feems to have deceived fome of the moft profound antiquaries; and the genuineness of the poems might, to this day, have remained a mätter of ambiguity, if the forgery of Chatterton had not been. indifputably established by the tafte of Warton, and the precife and penetrating erudition of Tyrwhitt. The most remarkable circumftance in the life of Chatterton is the early maturity of his mind. His intellect, unlike the intelle& of most men, does not feem to have attained its greatness by a flow and gradual, but a rapid and almost inftantaneous expan fion. Of that taste, whofe divine irradiations are difpenfed to none but the man of genius-of that tafte, which is a fubtle and deli. cate emanation from a found judgment, quick perceptions, and a vigorous intelligence, and which beftows the power of difcerning beauties that are invifible to vulgar apprehenfions, and of forming combinations which strike univerfally by their juftnefs, or dazzle by their splendour-Chatterton poffeffed a more than common fhare, at a premature period. At the age of fixteen he produced the tragedy of Ella; in which there are the marks of a mind vigorous in purfuit, powerful in combination, and delicate in felection. In the perufal of Ella, who, that can fympathife with the varied agitations of the human breaft, can refrain from experiencing alternate emotions of foftnefs and of magnanimity-now melted by the tenderness of Birtha, now elevated by the heroifm of Ella? In the parting fcene, which is ably managed, the fpirit of the warrior predomi nates over that of the lover; while Birtha, an exquifitely winning portrait of female frailty, is carried refiftlefsly down the ftream of her fenfations. The fong of the minstrel is remarkable for its fimplicity, its fweetnefs and pathos. "Come with a corne-coppe and thorne, Lyfe and all yttes goode I fcorne, Gon to hys death-bedde, All under the willow tree, &c. &c.", In "the Fragment of Godwin," the chorus of Freedom would not have difgraced the lyre of Gray. In the battle of Haftings, amid a profufion of fimilies and metaphors, the exuberance of a juvenile imagination, there are examples of the true fublime. "The Ballad of Charity" cannot be read without tender emotions; for imagination inftantly fuggefts that the wretchedness of the poet was fignified in that of the pilgrim. To form a true eftimate of the genius of Chatterton, we must not forget that the beauties of his poetry are lefs refplendent than they otherwife would be, from the perverted and antiquated diction, and the often barbarous and incongruous idiom by which they are obfcured. Many of the words ufed by Chatterton, were the coinage of his own fancy; others are diftorted from their common and regular acceptation in ancient writers; and the elegance of modern phrafeology is blended with the fictitious incruftations of antiquity. The fenfations which we experience in perufing fome of the beft of our ancient poets, are not unlike thofe which will be felt by a man of a cultivated fenfibility, who walks in a gothic aisle when the rays of the moon are gleaming on the chambers of the dead; but thofe which we imbibe from the poetry of Chatterton, though they have lefs folemnity, have fomething more of foftnefs, as if we were fitting in an ancient choir, and were now infpired by the grandeur of the fcene-now melted by the fweet nefs of the harmony. The genuine poet is known by the degree of energy with which he can influence our fenfations, and make them refpond to his mafter volition; who powerfully touches the chords of our hearts, and deprives us of the poffeffion of ourselves. A fecond rate poet only plays about the heart; but a poet of the firft order, like Shakespear in many paffages, like Chatterton in a few, ftorms every avenue of the foul, and makes us glow with enthufiafm, or fadden with defpair. The genius of Chatterton languished in the atmosphere of Bristol; his productions were not to the taste of the merchants, who were wallowing in the luxury of wealth: while the poct was fuffered to feel the piercing anguifh of penury and of fcorn. He, accordingly, accepted the offers of fome London bookfellers, who invited him to the metropolis. In April, 1770, he left his native city, glowing, probably, with thofe gay illufions of fame and fortune, with which hope is continually cheating the burning fancy of youth. But the fond expectations of poor Chatterton were never realized; and distracted with the recollection of past neglect, and the profpect of future mifery, he took poifon on the evening of the 24th of Auguft, 1770, of which he expired the next morning, when he wanted almost three months to complete his eighteenth year. Far be it from me to become the apologift of felf-murder: but I muft fay, that when diftreffed genius (genius, whofe fenfations are fo tremblingly delicate, and which feels mifery with ten times the poignancy of ordinary mortals) in the bitternefs of anguifh, fhuts out the hope of mercy, by becoming its own deftroyer, thofe ought, in fome measure, to fhare the guilt of the crime, who refused the patronage by which it might have been prevented. Horatio! though too art defcended to the duft of thy fathers, or I should be tempted to fay that which would awaken thy remorse!! Mr. Warton has obferved, that Chaucer is like a genial day, in an English spring; but Chatterton appears to refemble a meteor feen in a fummer fky, which paffes away too foon for all its deviations to be noted, or all its luftre to be ascertained. To this I fhall only add, that, in the year 1790, I faw the mother and fifter of Chatterton. The mother was very infirm and fickly; the fifter kept a day fchool, and had, I think, one little daughter. They were in indigent circumstances. R SCHROTER. ARE indeed is the phenomenon of a private individual expending a confiderable part of his property in the purchasə of valuable inftruments; not for fhew, and as learned furniture for his houfe; but which he applies with unwearied perfeverance, and the happieft effects, to ufeful celeftial obfervations, and the difcovery of new truths, which immediately lead to the promotion of cofmography. Such a man, however, now lives in Germany; and with juftice may his country be proud of him. Though aftronomy be not his peculiar vocation, though he be not falaried for the purpofe; all the leifure that he can fpare from the laborious duties of his office, which he performs with the greatest confcientiousness, he applies, in a manner the most conducive to the progrefs of the fciences, to the most difficult obfervations of remarkable appearances of the heavens, to obferve which few aftronomers have either inclination or opportunity. John Jerome Schröter, Doctor of Laws, Grand Bailiff of a Province in the Electorate of Hanover, Member of the Royal Societies and Academies of Sciences of London, Gottingen, Stockholm, &c. &c. was born at Erfurt in Thuringia, on the 30th of Auguft, 1745. In his youth, he had neither opportunity nor leifure to ftudy mathematics, much lefs aftronomy; while at the univerfity, being chiefly engaged in the ftudy of the law, he had only, with much predilection and zeal, attended lectures on phyficol aftronomay, as a part of natural philofophy; and had likewife enjoyed the inftructions of Käftner in abftract mathematics. Soon after, he was fo overwhelmed with official law affairs, that he was obliged to labour day and night, facrificing his health in the confcientious performance of his duty. When he had been fome years Reporter in the Exchequer Chamber at Hanover, his natural genius for natural philofophy and altronomy again awoke; and he began, in 1778, to study the latter fcience with extraordinary ardour, and without the affiftance of any mafter. His progrefs at first was small, and his difficulties were increased by the want of neceffary inftruments. But his genius and perfeverance foon triumphed over every obftacle; and in 1779, already was he able to make, with an achromatic telescope, three feet in length, good obfervariations on the planet Venus. So rapid and promifing were the first steps of a man, who was deftined to purfue paths before untrodden, which led to new developements of the conftruc tion of the univerfe, and to more daring profpects into the great workshop of nature. His firft obfervations he made in 1779 and 1780, on the atmosphere of Venus, which have been inferted in his Aphroditic Fragments, of the fun, and of all the planets. To enumerate them all, it would require a volume; nor indeed is it neceffary; for who, in his native country, or among foreigners, is ignorant of the important fervices Schröter has rendered to aftronomy? What aftronomer, what lover of aftronomy, what man, in fine, of a cultivated understanding, is a ftranger to the ever memorable treasures, which in fo fhort a fpace of time he has revealed to us by means of his gigantic telescope, which himself had created. The names of Herfchel and Schröter will, like Caftor and Pollox, fhine refulgent ftars in the heavens, as long as fucceeding generations fhall not fink into the lowest ebb of humanity, and no longer honour that which conftitutes its greateft dignity. |