we hear of him reading 'all day or as long as they would let him,'
confident that he was going to be famous, and promising his mother and
sister 'a great deal of finery' for their care of him when the day of
his fame arrived. Before he was nine he was nominated for Colston's
Hospital, a local school where the Bluecoat dress was worn and at
which the 'three Rs' were taught but very little else, so that the
boy, disappointed of the hope of knowledge, complained he could
work better at home. To this period we should probably assign the
delightful story of Chatterton and a friendly potter who promised to
give him an earthenware bowl with what inscription he pleased upon
it--such writing presumably intended to be 'Tommy his bowl' or 'Tommy
Chatterton'. 'Paint me,' said the small boy to the friendly potter,
'an Angel with Wings and a Trumpet to trumpet my Name over the World.'

At ten he was making progress in arithmetic, and it should be
mentioned that he 'occupied himself with mechanical pursuits so that
if anything was out of order in the house he was set to mend it.' At
school he read during play hours and made few friends, but those
were 'solid fellows,' his sister tells us; while at home he had
appropriated to himself a small attic where he would read, write
and draw pictures--a number of which are preserved in the British
Museum--of knights and churches, and heraldic designs in red and
yellow ochre, charcoal, and black-lead. In this attic too he had
stored--though at what date is uncertain--a number of writings on
parchment which had a rather singular history. In the muniment room
of St. Mary Redcliffe, the church in which Chatterton's ancestors had
served as sextons, there were six or seven great oak chests, of which
one, greater than the others and secured by no fewer than six locks,
was traditionally called 'Canynges Cofre' after William Canynge the
younger, with whose name the erection and completion of St. Mary's