In 1769, Chatterton wrote to Horace Walpole, offering to send him some
accounts of eminent painters who had flourished at Bristol, and at the
same time mentioning the discovery of the poems, and enclosing some
specimens. In a subsequent letter he begged Walpole to aid him in his
wish to be freed from his then servile condition, and to be placed in
one more congenial to his pursuits.

In his choice of a patron poor Chatterton made a fatal mistake. The
benevolence of Horace was of a general kind, and never descended to
anything obscure or unappreciated. There was a certain hardness in that
nature of his which had so pleasant an aspect. 'An artist,' he once
said, 'has his pencils--an author his pens--and the public must reward
them as it pleases.' Alas! he forgot how long it is before penury, even
ennobled by genius, can make itself seen, heard, approved, repaid: how
vast is the influence of _prestige!_ how generous the hand which is
extended to those in want, even if in error! All that Horace did,
however, was strictly correct: he showed the poems to Gray and Mason,
who pronounced them forgeries; and he wrote a cold and reproving letter
to the starving author: and no one could blame him: Chatterton demanded
back his poems; Walpole was going to Paris, and forgot to return them.
Another letter came: the wounded poet again demanded them, adding that
Walpole would not have dared to use him so had he not been poor. The
poems were returned in a blank cover: and here all Walpole's concern
with Thomas Chatterton ends. All this happened in 1769. In August, 1770,
the remains of the unhappy youth were carried to the burial-ground of
Shoe Lane workhouse, near Holborn. He had swallowed arsenic; had
lingered a day in agonies; and then, at the age of eighteen expired.
Starvation had prompted the act: yet on the day before he had committed
it, he had refused a dinner, of which he was invited by his hostess to