Thomas Chatterton was tossed in a pauper�s pit in 1770, seventeen years of age. In his childhood he answered, when asked what he wanted drawn on a cup, �Draw me an angel with a trumpet, to trumpet my name around the world.� Eulogies are not given to those who take their own life. Not even if such an iconoclast wrote poems and sold them, sixteen together to buy a loaf of mouldy bread for one week and send the rest home to his sister and mother. Not even if he was a boy who Society had adored when he alleged his poems to be the work of a medieval monk, and when he finally had the temerity to acknowledge them as his own, Society scorned him as a thief and a counterfeit. Therefore, I will not present a eulogy here. I cannot even write a short biography of his life. I am far too tired. But after all, who in this damned sphere is not? The load of trepidation, ignorance, the consent of no one, and the general calumny of living too heavy for those who are born, unfortunately, thinking. And if ever parents wish to protect their children, in the tradition of starving people in Africa, the ought to tell dear Tommy, �Don�t think too much, darling, you might die of it.�
A singing stream in a silent vale,
A fairy prince in a prosy tale,
Oh, there�s nothing in life so finely frail,
As rose white youth.�
